Nigella Eats Everything

When you think of Italian food you probably don’t automatically fantasise about something sweet. ‘Dolce’ is a word we have absorbed into the English language thanks to Dolcelatte cheese and Dolce & Gabbana yet not for its original meaning. To me the word conjures up images of sorbet, a glass dish of fresh and juicy fruit splashed with orange juice, or gelato creamy and cold, and fiendishly tasty.

Maybe this is because dessert in Italy, to me, seems to serve as refreshment to the summer heat or as an innocent morsel to sedate your palate after dinner. By visiting Italy in the winter, however, dessert was a new dimension to the eating experience.

Continuing from my last post which described pizza in visceral detail, Calum and I visited Florence for my birthday. After gorging ourselves with pasta, gnocchi, fresh fish, cured meats, bruschetta, and other delicious delicacies, Calum and I still managed to find room to share dessert. Whether this was merely to delay returning to the arctic afternoon outside I don’t know, but we soon found ourselves enthusiastically selecting desserts from the menu. On one occasion, we were delivered a slab of dense, crumbly cake upon which was a thick pile of ricotta swirled with gooey chocolate sauce. Sprinkled on top were moist cake crumbs jumbled with chunks and shards of chocolate. It didn’t take us long to clean the plate.

Tiramisu is a classic Italian dessert made with mascarpone cheese, coffee and dried sponge biscuits, and is translated as ‘pick me up’. In my opinion it is nothing other than indulgent. Layers of mascarpone custard divide the coffee-soaked biscuits, each dollop of cream dusted with rich dark cocoa powder.

A strikingly simple Italian dessert is zabaglione. I’ve always been intrigued by this dessert – partially because I can’t pronounce it, but also because it looks like a thick and heavy cream even though it contains none. Similar to tiramisu it is a fluffy egg custard, however, this is laced with Marsala wine and speckled with vanilla, warming the rich moussey-cream. It has the velvety texture of a melted marshmallow, lazily dripping from the spoon, light as a cloud.

The zabaglione recipe I followed suggests a base of tart and juicy blackberries and any remaining are rippled through, creating a mottled pale purple. Although I kept the layer of fruit, ensuring the bite of sour fruit to be a satisfying surprise at the base of the glass, I then sprinkled the mousse with fruit and grated chocolate. Any fruit can work instead of blackberries, as can any other fortified wine instead of Marsala.