New ways with Sapori
A well-stocked kitchen is vital during the festive season when expected and unexpected guests are the norm and good food is essential. Make sure you have something to hand as it very unpleasant to be caught out with nothing to offer when friends and relatives visit. Frozen fruit, jams and chocolate help you to prepare delicious cakes and puddings and some Sapori products in your cupboard will save you time and make it easy to turn out unusual treats that taste delightful.
The story of Sapori and its festive sweets
Virgilio Sapori started the company that still bears his name in Siena in 1832. He began by making panforte in a small workshop on the historic Via Francigena. More varieties were added to his repertoire, and now the business is an internationally-known brand that is part of the heritage of Siena.
Siena is a UNESCO World Heritage Site which only began to prosper when it was invaded by the Lombards after the sacking of Rome. The new Lombard overlords rerouted the road between Rome and their northern territories through Siena, making it an important trading-post, with constant streams of pilgrims and merchants passing through. The Lombards surrendered to Charlemagne in the late eighth century, but Siena continued to prosper, becoming a money-lending centre. One of the oldest banks in the world - the Monte dei Paschi di Siena - still has its medieval headquarters there. Siena was ruled by bishops, then by the aristocrats, and then, in the 12th century, by a self-governing commune as a city-state republic. Its rival city-state was Florence, and its opposing Ghibelline position to the Guelph position of Florence is the backdrop to Dante’s Commedia.
Panforte di Siena
Sapori can lay claim to having made this traditional Sienese sweet famous throughout the world, with a particular association to Christmas. The cake is dark, compact, flat and round, and is packed full of candied fruits, nuts and spices. The name means ‘strong bread’ or rather, ‘fortified bread’, and the recipe derives from the medieval manner of baking a cake-like mixture fortified with anything sweet that was to hand. A document written on parchment in 1205, from the estate of the Cacciaconti family of the Castello di Montisi, tells how the inhabitants of the hamlet of Montecellesi (today’s Montecelso), were obliged to take to the nuns as a tribute a good number of panes pepatos.
Pandoro
Pandoro is typically shaped like a vertically-ribbed cone, and is served dusted with vanilla-scented icing sugar. Its name means ‘golden bread’, and reflects its luxury status in centuries gone by, when the rich ate white bread, and the poor ate black bread or none at all. Breads enriched with eggs, butter, sugar or honey were only for the superbly wealthy and for royalty, fit only for the palace. Italian desserts of the 17th century included ‘royal bread’ made from white flour, sugar, butter and eggs. The first use of the term pandoro dates to the 18th century, when it figured in the cuisine of the Venetian aristocracy. The formula for making pandoro was developed and perfected over the 19th century in Verona, traditionally Venetian territory, and its modern history begins there in 1894, when Domenico Melegatti obtained a patent to make pandoro on an industrial scale. That is when it truly entered the annals of Italian confectionery.
Panettone
Old London had its plum pudding, but Milan had its panettone. This festive cake remains a symbol of the city. It is made with dough cured over several days, giving the cake its aerated texture, to which candied citrus peel and raisins are added. In some regions of Italy, it is served with crema di mascarpone, a cream made from mascarpone cheese, eggs and a sweet liqueur. The word panettone simply means big bread, but it could also be a corruption of pan del ton or pan di tono, which means ‘luxury bread’. This has given rise to all kinds of legends, like the one about a baker called Toni who first made this cake. In the first half of the 20th century, competition between Milanese bakers for the production of panettone was so fierce that prices fell drastically, and by the end of World War II, it was so affordable that it became Italy’s leading Christmas sweet.
Cantuccini
Cantuccini were originally known as biscotti di Prato, or the biscuits of Prato, and that is what they are still called there today. The cantuccio was actually the discarded ‘trimmed off’ bit at the end of the roll from which the biscuits were cut, but soon it came to mean the biscuit itself. The recipe was devised as a way of using up the great crop of almonds that grew in the area. The man who made these biscuits famous was the confectioner Antonio Mattei, through his confectionery, Mattonella. Pellegrino Artusi, in his landmark book La Scienza in Cucina e L’Arte di Mangiare Bene (Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well) describes his meeting with Mattei and how he was particularly taken with his almond biscuits.
Amaretti
These almond biscuits are suffused with the aroma and flavour of the amaretto liqueur in which they are soaked after baking, giving them their name.
Cavallucci di Siena
The name literally means ‘small horse’, and could come from the fact that the original recipe in days gone by was a coarse, massive biscuit. Today’s version seems to more closely resemble the berriguocoli, or apricot-shaped biscuits, eaten by the well-to-do in the 16th century, and given as festive gifts. They are made with walnuts and candied fruit.
Ricciarelli di Siena
Ricciarelli are said to get their name either from the original curled shape (ricci means curls), or from the man who first thought them up: Ricciardetto della Gherardesca. The original recipe is thought to be of Middle Eastern origin, because of its use of almonds and spices - though the same could be said for almost all the festive sweets of the region. Chocolate-covered ricciarelli are known as ricciarelli rozzi, or ‘crude ricciarelli’, though no one seems to know why. They are soft small cakes made with almond paste.
How to serve theme
Amaretti are often dipped in red wine, and cantuccini in vin santo, the sweet wine produced in Tuscany and Umbria.