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08/01/2001 Archived Entry: "Tortoni"

I will be teaching a class on Italian-American cooking – “Neapolitan Food and the Immigrant Experience” – at À La Carte in Lynbrook, Long Island, on Monday night, October 15. I have given a lecture on that subject before, but never before have I combined the talk with demonstrating some of our favorite Italian-American dishes. And I don’t mean meatballs and spaghetti. The menu is Caesar Salad, Penne alla Vodka, Chicken Scarpariello, and, for dessert, Tortoni. These are all foreign foods to someone from Italy.

Remember Tortoni? I won’t go into the history here. You have to attend the lecture-demonstration to get my story. But I will tell you that it was definitely not created in Italy and that it is named for a person. Meanwhile, I did not have a Tortoni recipe to demonstrate. I was going to develop one myself, which I casually mentioned in passing to my buddy Frank Garofolo, a genuine Italian-American and a chef-instructor (and so much more) at Peter Kump’s New York Cooking School. Frank had two recipes, one light and the other incredibly rich. I’m going with the rich one. Naturally.

Frank calls his recipe Semifreddo Napolitano, and Tortoni is, indeed, a toasted almond semifreddo. Semifreddo is a category of frozen dessert that was, say Neapolitans, invented in Naples. Often, but not always, a semifreddo is made by first cooking a zabaglione (also spelled zabaione in more modern Italian), which is eggs, sugar and a liquid, usually an alcoholic beverage, beaten in the top of a double boiler. Then whipped cream is folded in, and sometimes egg whites, too, for lightness. In most Italian-American restaurants, zabaglione is a froth made with Marsala, the sweet wine of western Sicily. It is most often served as a topping for berries. But zabaglione can be made with any wine or liqueur, and it can be made thick, as opposed to a froth, if you stir it instead of beating it, which is the case with a zabaglione base for semifreddo.

The Tortoni that was the number one dessert at the Italian-American restaurants of our youths was just toasted almond ice cream and it was certainly flavored with almond extract, not real almonds. Frank’s recipe, on the other hand, is made with real toasted almonds, as well as Amaretto di Saronno liqueur and Amaretti di Saronno cookies, which are both flavored with bitter almonds.

There’s more about semifreddi and another recipe for Semifreddo di Amaretti in The Maven’s Diary, June 2, 2001.


Tortoni
Makes 6 1/2-cup servings

1/3 cup whole, blanched almonds
6 individual Amaretti di Saronno (they are packed two together in tissue)
4 egg yolks
1/2 cup instant-dissolving sugar
1/3 cup Amaretto di Saronno liqueur
1 cup heavy cream

Spread the almonds on a baking sheet and toast them in a preheated 350-degree oven for 12 to 15 minutes. After about 8 minutes in the oven, turn the almonds with a spatula. Toast until they are a lightly browned, but not as brown as they would be with their skins still on. As soon as they are brown, remove them from the hot baking sheet and allow them to cool on a plate.

When cooled, using a rotary grater, grind the nuts to a fine powder. Or, place them in the smallest bowl of a food processor with 2 tablespoons of the sugar and process into a fine powder, being careful not to let the nuts get pasty.

You should have 1/2 cup, powdery, finely ground almonds, plus a couple of extra tablespoons. Set aside the 1/2-cup to flavor the Tortoni. Reserve the extra tablespoons to sprinkle on top of the finished dessert.

Place the amaretti between sheets of waxed paper, or in a small plastic bag, and roughly crush the cookies, making a mixture of very fine crumbs and some the diameter of an eraser head. Set aside.

Fit out a medium saucepan with a metal mixing bowl on top. Do not use a double boiler. The bottom third to half of the bowl should fit into the saucepan. Fill the saucepan with just enough water to come under and not touch the bottom of the bowl. Bring the water to a gentle simmer.

In the bowl, using a wire whisk, beat the egg yolks and sugar together until the sugar has dissolved and the yolks are pale yellow. Beat in the Amaretto di Saronno liqueur.

Place the bowl over the simmering water and adjust the heat so the water remains just under or at a simmer. Start out by lightly beating the egg mixture, then stir constantly, scraping all the surfaces of the bowl with the whisk. When at its maximum thickness, the zabaglione will turn a uniform yellow color, instead of having a darker yellow under a lighter surface foam. Do not overheat or the eggs will curdle.

Let the zabaglione cool to room temperature. It will thicken more as it cools.

Stir the 1/2 cup of ground almonds into the zabaglione, then all but a rounded tablespoon of the amaretti crumbs.

Combine the extra rounded tablespoon of crumbs with the extra 2 tablespoons of ground almonds – to use as a garnish/topping.

In a clean bowl, beat the cream until it forms stiff peaks.

Fold the whipped cream into the zabaglione base.

Spoon the completed mixture into individual cups or glasses. Sprinkle the tops with the reserved mixture of amaretti crumbs and ground, toasted almonds.

For cups, small porcelain, souffle-dish style ramekins are ideal. Or, use paper cupcake cups in glass pudding/custard cups, then remove the paper inserts to serve the frozen dessert.

Variation: Although everyone who tasted this Tortoni thought it was divine, I wouldn’t mind it being a little lighter, if only to make it a tad more like the Tortoni served in old Italian-American restaurants. To that end, I would reserve one or two of the egg whites, beat them to stiff peaks, and fold them in along with the whipped cream. That would increase the volume of the mixture, too, so you would have slightly larger portions or about 2 more portions.