PREPARATION: 10 MINUTES
COOKING TIME: 35 MINUTES
Castagnaccio, or baldino or pattona, is a typical sweet prepared with chestnut flour and enriched with raisins, pine nuts, walnuts and rosemary. It is difficult to establish the exact origin of castagnaccio. We made the Tuscan castagnaccio, but this recipe is also widespread in Veneto, Piedmont, Lombardy... all regions where chestnuts are a very common ingredient in the kitchen. What unites all the variants is the peasant origin of the castagnaccio: water, chestnut flour and rosemary. Castagnaccio was already well known and appreciated in the 1500s, so much so that an Augustinian father mentions it in one of his writings. It seems that the creator of the castagnaccio was the Tuscan Pilade da Lucca who is mentioned in the "Commentary of the most notable and monstrous things in Italy and other places" written by Ortensio Orlando and published in Venice in 1553. However, it was from '800 that the Tuscans exported castagnaccio to the rest of Italy and in this period it was enriched with raisins, pine nuts and rosemary. Every family keeps the recipe for castagnaccio, we offer you ours!
Ingredients for 6 people
500 g of sieved chestnut flour
70 g of soaked raisins
50 g of shelled walnuts
30 g of pine nuts
a few needles of rosemary
300 g of fresh ricotta
extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons of sugar
1 tablespoon of powdered sugar
1 teaspoon of salt
In a large bowl, mix the flour with a cup of cold water until the mixture is smooth and without lumps, then add more water until it reaches a medium density (about half a liter of water).
Add sugar, 3 tablespoons of oil, salt, squeezed and dried raisins and mix well.
Carefully grease a rectangular baking tray at least 2 cm high with oil, then pour the dough into it, sprinkle the surface with pine nuts, chopped walnuts and rosemary.
Bake in a preheated oven at 180 °C for about 20 minutes.
In the meantime, pass the ricotta through a sieve, add the icing sugar and mix with a whisk until a frothy consistency is obtained.
Serve the castagnaccio still warm, cut into slices and accompanied by tufts of ricotta mousse.
