CHIAVARI, Italy –A few years back,
when I lived in Milan, I worked for the fashion newspaper Women’s Wear Daily. As a journalist,
I never worked alone. None of the
journalists did, nor do they now. We were always assigned photographers and one
of my favorite photographers was Davide Maestri. He was great to work
with.
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| Hosteria del Sole, Bologna, Italy |
Davide started working for WWD when
the office in Milan first opened and he knew everyone in the business. He also
knew all the ins and outs of the Italian fashion world. Women’s Wear Daily is
owned by publishing giant Conde Nast, so his photographs made the front pages
not just of WWD, but all the sister publications like W and Vogue Italia, as
well as many other fashion magazines and newspapers in Italy and the USA, and
they still do.
We covered a lot of assignments
together, years of assignments, not only in Milan but in Florence, Bologna and
lots of places in between. I really liked working with him, he was the consummate
professional but he had one little quirk. He didn’t like to eat in a restaurant
that didn’t have tiramisu’ on the menu. He loved tiramisu. He was mad for tiramisu,
so much so that over the years he had become a tiramisu expert. No matter what
city we were in, he knew which restaurants made the best tiramisu, and why it
was the best, and what was wrong with the tiramisu of the other restaurants who
didn’t make the cut.
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| Passion for Tiramisu |
I often teased him about his passion
and said that he and I should write a book on tiramisu, but he didn’t care
about writing a book, he just liked to eat it. I confess, it’s okay as a desert
but I’m much more interested in its history, and like so many things Italian, the
history of tiramisu is a little muddled.
The most colorful story of its beginning dates back to the late 1800’s
in a bordello in the northern town of Treviso, a short distance from Venice.
It seems that there was a lot of
competition for clients between the bordellos of Treviso and as an incentive to
attract clients, one bordello began offering a cup of espresso coffee to its
patrons. The other bordellos in town soon followed suit. As competition heated
up, some bordellos began offering savoiardi cookies (lady fingers) to dunk in
the cups of espresso coffee, or a glass of wine or other alcoholic beverage.
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| Treviso |
One enterprising Madam, who probably
didn’t have a sufficient supply of savoiardi cookies on hand, decided to
combine the cookies with the coffee and bind it together with Marscarpone
cheese and eggs. She named her dish Tiramisu, which means “pick me up” which
some of her clients may have needed after visiting the “ladies” of the house.
It may also have been an incentive to get the men up and out, instead of
wanting to hang around and take a nap.
This story is highly contested by
Treviso’s Trattoria Alle Beccherie which claims the dish was first prepared by
their pastry chef, Loly Linguanotto, less than two decades ago. Their story is
that back in 1970, after the birth of
her son, Ada Campoel, the owner of Alle Beccherie, wanted to create a desert
that would give her energy. The truth maybe somewhere in the middle as the Trattoria is
in a very old building in the historic center of Treviso and the bordello in
question may very well have been in the same building.
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| Beccherie's Tiramisu |
Here are two recipes for tiramisu.
The first is from Giuliano Bugialli’s Classic Techniques of Italian Cooking. While
Bugialli makes his own marscapone cheese and lady fingers, trust me, if you buy
good brands of marscapone and lady fingers, it will work just fine.
Tiramisu
Serves 12
8 ounces of bittersweet chocolate
24 ladyfingers*
2 cups of strong espresso coffee cooled
6 eggs separated
6 heaping tablespoons of granulated sugar
1 lb of marscapone
*if using store bought
ladyfingers toast them in a 375 degree oven for about 15 minutes.
Chop the chocolate
coarsely.
Put the ladyfingers on a
plate and lightly brush them with
the cold coffee
Arrange half of the
ladyfingers in a rectangular or oval dish, at least 2” high
Use a wooden spoon to mix the egg
yolks together with the sugar in a ceramic bowl. Mix until the sugar is
completely incorporated and the egg yolks have turned a lighter color. Then add
the mascarpone and stir gently. In a copper (or glass) bowl beat the egg whites
with a wire whisk until they are stiff. Gently fold the whiles into the
mascarpone-egg yolk mixture.
Use half of this mixture to make a
layer on top of the ladyfingers in the serving dish. Sprinkle with half of the
chopped chocolate. Repeat the procedure to make another layer of soaked
ladyfingers, the mascarpone mixture and the chopped chocolate.
Cover with aluminum foil and
refrigerate for at least 2 hours before serving.
The second recipe is a video recipe
(in English) that demonstrates another Tiramisu recipe. They are basically the
same, with just a couple of small differences. For example, the cook on the
video does not toast the ladyfingers, and truthfully, I don’t think it’s
necessary either. The video is from a very good Italian site called Giallo
Zafferano, and I’m sure Davide would give this recipe a thumbs up.
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