La Torta Antica Ericina

Name: La Torta Antica Ericina
Yield: serves 6
Ingredients: 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour; 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt; 1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar; 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon; 9 tablespoons sweet butter, chilled, cut into 1/2-inch pieces, plus additional as needed; 4 tablespoons moscato or other sweet wine, chilled; 1 plump vanilla bean; 1 1/2 cups heavy cream; 2/3 cup mascarpone; 1 1/2 pounds whole-milk ricotta (best if purchased in bulk from an Italian grocery or a specialty cheese store); 1 cup confectioners’ sugar, plus additional as needed; 2 egg whites, beaten to a froth

January 24, 2012

Bestriding the shoulders of the island’s western verges is the perfect borgo medievale (medieval village) of Erice, called so after he who was the mythical son of Venus, sired by the king of the ancient tribe of the Elimi. There is a fascination about the village, its apocryphal tales and its truths—gifts, one thinks, of the cults that once worshiped the gods of beauty and love there and carved into the village walls scripts still undecipherable. Limpid, sweet is its air, and from its sweeping lofts one sees Mt. Etna, her fury diffused in far-off mists. And there on a small piazza sits the pasticceria of Maria Grammatico, who fashions the most gorgeous, most delicious evidences of rustic Sicilian pastry. Many of Signora Grammatico’s formulas are borrowed from the epoch of the Ericina convent pastry-making—it, too, having once practiced a temperate rather than a Baroque style. This is a version of the celebrated Ericina ricotta pie.

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