Caterina Scarano grew up in Mottola, Puglia, in southeastern Italy. She remembers her mother and her aunt getting together starting weeks before Christmas to make traditional sweets. “Every weekend, they would get together and make so many sweets. We’d be together all day, some of us baking, some playing cards or bingo. As children, we would gather around the adults and ‘steal’ some of the dough to play with or eat raw. The smell of citrus, honey and sugar is still in my memories,” she said.
She remembers the Christmas season as two weeks of family reunion. “Christmas is a very important holiday for us. We get together, make food, share food and listen to the adults tell stories about their childhood.”
The family would gather at her house or that of her aunt and prepare focacce con cipolla e olive, the traditional Puglian onion and olive pie. “On Christmas Eve, we would get together and eat focacce, play bingo, then go to church at midnight. When we got back home, we’d eat a little more, then everyone goes to sleep and we get up on Christmas Day to make fresh pasta for Christmas lunch.”
Scarano came to the United States in 2014 when her husband's job offered the opportunity for the couple to travel abroad. They started out in San Diego, then moved to Atlanta in 2015. That year, she took a job with Storico Fresco, where she learned she was good at working with doughs and making pasta. She also gained experience as a pastry chef there. The pull of nostalgia made her want to share the recipes of her childhood, and she opened Caterí Authentic Italian Food in April 2019.
For her company, she prepares focacce, grissini and crostate filled with homemade chocolate-hazelnut paste or strawberry jam, all traditional dishes from Puglia, as well as other baked treats, filled pastas and lasagna.
And as she works, she remembers back to her childhood kitchen. “I was always there helping. My auntie would show me how to knead the dough and shape the purcidduzzi. She would even let me help some. The purcidduzzi are a favorite, the one sweet that was a staple of our Christmas.”
For our readers, Scarano reproduced some of these recipes from her home and that of her husband. The Cuscini di Gesú Bambino are a traditional dish of Puglia. “We would buy them from bakeries or make them at home. They are basically a simple sweet turnover with a chocolate stuffing. Usually the stuffing is made with nuts, but I like these made with chickpeas.” Like many Italian desserts, the cuscini are sweet, but not overly so.
Hazelnuts are a popular nut from the Piedmont region of Italy, and Scarano and her Brutti Ma Buoni take full advantage of their rich flavor. These cookies are the sweetest of Scarano’s recipes she shared with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, but the roasted nuts and toasted sugar make a cookie that’s richly flavored but not cloying. Scarano learned to make these when she met her husband and moved to northern Italy.
And her panettone truffles pay homage to thrifty cooks everywhere. “Panettone (a brioche-type yeast bread) is a staple of our Christmas. It’s never homemade. The recipe takes days to make and over 50 hours to rise. It’s a long process, so you buy from a bakery. But when you go to someone’s home, they will always serve panettone. After the holidays, everyone has leftover panettone. The truffles were born as a way to use up those leftovers.”
RECIPES
It’s not too late to vary your Christmas cookie tray with some treats from Italy. Because they’re not overly sweet, they’re a great change from chocolate crinkles and icing-covered sugar cookies.
Cuscini di Gesú Bambino (Baby Jesus Pillows)
The charming name for these cookies refers to their pillowlike shape. If you don’t tell your guests the filling contains chickpeas, they will never guess.
This dough goes together quickly. You want it to have the consistency of pie dough so it will roll out easily. If you find one egg isn’t enough to get the consistency you want, whisk a second egg and then add it a bit at a time until you get a dough you can work with.
— Adapted from a recipe provided by Caterina Scarano.
Brutti Ma Buoni (Ugly but Good)
This unusual treatment for the meringue feels like a variation on the classic Italian meringue in which a hot sugar syrup is drizzled into softly whipped egg whites. The result here is a finished cookie that is light brown and crisp all the way through. If you like hazelnuts (Nutella, anyone?), you will love these.
We tested the recipe not with whole raw hazelnuts but with roasted, chopped hazelnuts we found in the baking aisle of our local Kroger. At the busy holiday season, this saved one special shopping trip and a few minutes of preparation time. A 6-ounce package yielded 1 1/2 cups chopped hazelnuts, which was just right for this recipe.
— Adapted from a recipe provided by Caterina Scarano.
Panettone Truffles
Panettone is a beloved Italian holiday classic, a lightly sweet brioche-type yeast bread baked in a cylindrical shape. The dough is rich with candied citrus peel, and the loaf is usually decorated on top with whole skin-on almonds.
We found panettones ranging from just over a pound at Sprouts to 1-pound 10-ounce loaves at Alon’s. The recipe will use about half of that larger loaf.
We confess that unlike a good Italian grandmother, we used a food processor to turn our panettone into coarse crumbs, then added the milk, cream cheese and sugar and lightly pulsed again to yield a mixture that held together perfectly for forming into balls.
— Adapted from a recipe provided by Caterina Scarano.
Purcidduzzi
Purcidduzzi is a traditional Christmas treat in the region of Puglia where Scarano is from. These are simple to make, and the orange zest-flavored olive oil is a delicious surprise in the dough. Mix the dough in a bowl or mix it together right on your work surface.
You can bake these, but traditionally they are fried. Tiny balls, piled on a cake plate, make a festive holiday centerpiece. The smaller the ball, the crunchier the purcidduzzi will be. We found some of our taste testers preferred them a little bigger so the interior retained a soft texture.
If you like, fry all these ahead of time and then wait to glaze until just before serving. Be sure you use a honey with a flavor you enjoy because it will be a predominant feature of the finished cookies.
— Adapted from a recipe provided by Caterina Scarano.
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