Tag: custard

#ilLatoDolceDiRana: Sweet ravioli with chocolate and custard – Italian Cuisine

A new contest of La Cucina Italiana begins with Giovanni Rana: taking part is easy and… sweet!

Would you like to see your recipe published on La Cucina Italiana?
Here is an opportunity to try!

La Cucina Italiana has indeed launched a contest with Giovanni Rana for creative and original cooking i sweet ravioli with chocolate, a new and limited edition product thanks to which you can offer an incredible dessert in a few minutes or indulge in imaginative creations, to be combined with fruit, whipped cream, candied fruit and spices.
Do you know what the beautiful thing is?
The recipes are always fast and within everyone's reach. Instead, what is needed is a little inventiveness. But we will help you in this too!

Follow our suggestions and participate.

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO IN BRIEF

Create your recipe with Giovanni Rana's Sweet Ravioli with Chocolate and your favorite ingredients.
Prepare it, plate it up and take a nice photo of the ingredients.
Post the photo on Instagram with the hashtag #ilLatoDolceDiRana telling us your recipe.
Tag @giovanniranaita, @lacucinaitaliana and someone special you want to dedicate dessert to.
You have until December 31, 2021.
Read the regulation in detail.

Before starting, we recommend that you look at our recipes

The pastry chef of La Cucina Italiana has created five simple and delicious desserts using the new sweet ravioli with chocolate by Giovanni Rana and many delicious seasonal ingredients. We observed it, took notes of the passages, and we tell you about them to inspire you.

A sweet sprint

You will immediately realize that to cook sweet ravioli with Rana chocolate you need very little time (1 minute to fry them and 6 to sauté them in butter) and a lot of imagination to season them, garnish them and serve them in a different way.

You are ready?

After reading and experimenting with the recipes of La Cucina Italiana, invent your own. Prepare the dessert, plate it up and photograph it, highlighting the ingredients you have chosen and using plates and tablecloths that enhance it.

How to write the post for Instagram

Post the photo of your dessert on your Instagram profile with the hashtag #theSweetSideOfRanto. Dedicate it to someone special to you, tag it and explain why.

An important note: participation in the initiative is not subject to the purchase of the product and the photograph can portray the combined ingredients and not necessarily the ravioli.

The most creative recipe
By 31 December 2020, the editorial staff of La Cucina Italiana chooses the most creative post or the one with the most original or delicious recipe. But it doesn't stop there.

The author is invited to perform his recipe in the kitchen of the Pastificio Rana in Verona, with a photographer documenting the preparation: the dish and the cook thus become the protagonists of an advertorial article in the February 2021 issue of La Cucina Italiana.

This year, however – we know it well – is a bit different than usual, and projects often have to adapt to the limitations caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. If it is not possible to take the shots in Giovanni Rana's headquarters, the editorial staff of La Cucina Italiana will interpret the best recipe, and an interview with the author and his photo will be included in the dedicated advertorial.

Don't forget that sweet ravioli have a big heart

Before moving on to the recipes, we remind you that the sweet ravioli with Rana chocolate are not only tasty to eat, but they are good for you. In other words, they are good on the inside for their unexpected and greedy taste, and they are good on the outside because they support those most in need through a solidarity project. In fact, for each package purchased of sweet ravioli with chocolate, Pastificio Rana will donate two fresh products from its line to Banco Alimentare, which will distribute them to charitable structures throughout the Italian territory, to bring a moment of joy and goodness to people's tables. more in difficulty. "

Our recipe: Sweet ravioli with chocolate stir-fried with vanilla custard, ladyfingers alchermes and raspberries

Duration: 45 min
Level: Easy
Servings: 4 people

INGREDIENTS
A pack of sweet ravioli with Rana chocolate
500 g whole milk
240 g ladyfingers
70 g sugar
20 g butter
18 g corn starch
1 vanilla pod
4 egg yolks
4 tablespoons of alchermes
Cocoa powder

PREPARATION
Prepare the custard
In a saucepan, heat the milk with the vanilla. Meanwhile, in a bowl separate the yolks from the whites. Mix with the 60 g of sugar and 15 g of corn starch.
When the milk boils, remove the vanilla, pour it over the egg yolks and mix. Put the mixture back into the saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring constantly, making sure that no lumps form, until it becomes a soft cream. Turn off the heat and let it cool.
Cook the ravioli in a pan with 20 g of butter, 1 tablespoon of sugar and 300 g of water for 6 minutes.
Divide the custard into four bowls. In each, lay two sautéed ravioli on top. Add some pieces of ladyfingers sprinkled with alchermes and a sprinkling of cocoa.

How to make custard without eggs – Italian Cuisine

It can happen, in these difficult days, that you don't have all the ingredients you need at home and, as you know, you have to go out as little as possible. Then one arranges oneself with what one has. For example, you can make a pastry cream without eggs

There custard without eggs it is the smartest recipe there is when you want a dessert, but it has practically nothing at home.
It is prepared in a short time only with milk, sugar is flour and it can be used to fill cakes and biscuits, but also to prepare delicious cups with cream, fresh fruit, dried fruit, grains, biscuits and everything you like.

Like a cooked milk

Egg-free custard is a kind of cooked milk because the main ingredient is milk, to which a sweetener, i.e. sugar, and a thickener, i.e. flour or starch are added.
Needless to say, the milk must be very good, possibly fresh and whole.
If you want you can also use the cream for a more full-bodied result and a more intense taste. And if you are vegans… below we give you some advice for a version designed especially for you!

Recipe for egg-free custard

To prepare the cream without eggs heated in a saucepan 500 ml of milk with a berry of vanilla or with the zest of half a lemon. Watch out for the inner white part because it is very bitter and should not be used at all.
Then add 80 g of sugar and let it melt off the heat.
Remove the vanilla or lemon zest and add 60 g of flour well sifted.
Stir quickly with a hand whisk and return the saucepan to the stove, continuing to cook for a few minutes on very low heat and stirring constantly with the whisk.
The cream is now ready.

Gluten free cream

We talked about flour, but you can also replace it with potato starch, both if you want to obtain a cream with a super light texture, and if you want a gluten-free cream.
Rice flour and specific gluten-free flours are also fine, but remember to always sift them well and add them to hot milk outside the stove and always stirring with a hand whisk.

Fight against lumps

Even in the egg-free cream you have to fight against the possible formation of lumps because, as we said, the flour must be sieved well and added and mixed with great determination otherwise it cooks quickly.
If, despite having followed all these indications, the cream should make a fuss, intervene with a immersion blender.
You have to take a stand in certain cases and be able to work hard.

Vegan cream

To prepare one vegan custard you must not only eliminate the eggs, but also replace the cow's milk or the cream with the vegetable milk and the sugar with the brown sugar.
Among the different types of vegetable milk we recommend the sweetest and tastiest ones such as almond and coconut.
Good, but also very delicate those of oats and rice.
Soy milk is always good, but only if you love its decidedly more intense flavor than the others.

Yellow cream, but without eggs

To prepare an egg-free cream that is still yellow, there is only one solution: you need to color it.
To do this you must not use food coloring, but simply some naturally colored powders such as turmeric, which does not have a strong flavor and therefore does not cover the taste of milk.
Saffron also colors everything yellow, but be careful not to use too much because it feels.

Chocolate cream

Once the cream is ready, you can turn it into a cocoa cream by simply adding two tablespoons of cocoa to the still hot mixture, or 100 g of melted dark chocolate.
With the cocoa cream and the white one you can make two-color cups, but also fill two different layers of cake. Obviously an eggless cake!

In the gallery you will find all the desserts that you can prepare with egg-free cream

The zeppole di San Giuseppe are pancakes garnished with custard which are fried – Italian Cuisine

They are the dessert of the Neapolitan tradition associated with Father's Day and are prepared in every family on March 19th. Once they were given to everyone, friends and acquaintances, as a auspicious gesture

A mixture of water and fried flour and then covered with sugar, cinnamon or honey: these were these the zeppole of San Giuseppe until the end of 1800 in Campania, prepared every March 19 for the feast of the saint, which then became the all fathers day. From then on, however, the recipe improved, to become that of choux pastry, stuffed with custard and topped with a black cherry. It is also said that at the beginning of 1900, in Naples, the pastry chef Pintauro had the idea of to fry his San Giuseppe zeppole on the sidewalk in front of his shop, perhaps to compete with the many improvised fryers that invaded the city streets that day. All the authors of the time wrote about the goodness of its zeppole! If you prefer a lighter dessert, know that there is also one light version of fried San Giuseppe zeppole: baked zeppole.

As tradition dictates

Fried St. Joseph's zeppole they are a dessert of the Campania tradition. Legend has it that Joseph, fleeing to Egypt with Mary and Jesus, improvised himself a deep fryer in order to support his family. Therefore, these pancakes have always been the typical dessert for all dads' feasts. In Naples on March 19th all the pastry shops prepare the San Giuseppe zeppole and it is said that in the past years these sweets were given to everyone, relatives and friends, as a good omen.

Our recipe for fried San Giuseppe zeppole

Ingredients

For the choux pastry
300 g 00 flour
5 dl of water
5 egg yolks
2 egg whites
80 g butter
1 pinch of salt
fry oil

For the custard
5 yolks
3 spoons of sugar
1 tablespoon of flour
500 ml of fresh cream
1 vanilla stick
powder sugar
Cherry Jam

Method

For the choux pastry
Measure the flour in a glass and then measure as many glasses of water and put them in a saucepan. Add the salt and butter and when the water starts to form bubbles, pour the sifted flour into it and start to mix vigorously with a wooden spoon. Keep stirring until the pasta detaches from the edge of the saucepan. Transfer it to an oiled surface and when it is lukewarm, work it with your hands, adding the egg yolks and the egg whites one at a time. Work until they are completely absorbed and then let the pasta rest for 30 minutes in a cool place. At this point, take a pastry syringe and pour the pasta into it. Press it by making two spiral overlapping strips on a perforated ladle that you will dip in boiling oil to fry.

For the custard
In a saucepan, whip the egg yolks with the sugar and then add the spoonful of flour. Heat the cream with the vanilla stick, and when it is warm, remove the vanilla and pour the cream over the yolks, stirring constantly with a whisk, so that no lumps form. Continuing to stir, bring to the heat until the cream has thickened. Turn off and let cool. Once cold, pour a little cream on each zeppola and then garnish with small pieces of black cherry jam. Finish with a sprinkling of icing sugar and serve.

In the tutorial some tips to prepare the best zeppole di San Giuseppe.