Last week I was looking through Gil Marks' cookbook The World of Jewish Desserts for a Rosh Hashanah recipe that I could make for my office, and I decided try something completely new and unknown to me -- his recipe for Sfratti (Italian Nut-Filled "Sticks"). I had never heard of this cookie before or even seen it in a bakery, so I wasn't sure what it was supposed to look like or how it was supposed to taste. But the recipe headnote drew me in. Marks writes that the word "sfratti" means both "sticks" and "evicted" in Italian, and this popular Rosh Hashanah treat gets its name from its resemblance to a stick (and the Jewish sense of humor that transforms objects of persecution -- the means of force used to expel Jews at times in history -- into a sweet symbol).
These cookies have a pastry made with white wine that you mix by hand. You combine flour, sugar, and salt, cut in cold butter, and then incorporate white wine until the dough holds together. You divide the dough in two parts and chill it before rolling it out.
The filling is honey cooked with chopped walnuts, orange and lemon zest (I didn't have an orange and used lemon only), cinnamon, cloves, and freshly ground pepper. While the mixture is still warm, you form it into six narrow logs. I found this part of the recipe quite challenging; the filling started to set even while it was still quite hot, and I had to work fast to try to shape it while it was still pliable. Cooked sugar can be incredibly hot and I kept burning my fingertips. Still, I ended up with six even honey-walnut logs.
I rolled each part of dough into a rectangle measuring approximately 14-inches by 12-inches. To get the dough to this size, I had to roll it between two sheets of parchment as thin as possible. The dough got sticky as it warmed up, and I had to refrigerate it after rolling to firm it up a bit before encasing the filling. Then I cut the dough into three 14-inch by 4-inch rectangles, and rolled up a log of the filling inside each piece. I cut the rolls into 2-inch pieces, brushed them with egg glaze, and baked them.
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Even though I had rolled the dough very thin, it expanded in oven and transformed into an outer casing that was both thick and remarkably sturdy. When I accidentally dropped a cookie as I was transferring it from the pan to a cooling rack, it hit the counter with a solid thud that sounded like a stone; it was completely unscathed and did not lose a crumb. The cookies were so hard that it actually took a concerted effort to bite through the pastry -- I don't think I have ever made a cookie that gave my teeth such a workout.
But once I managed to actually get a taste, I really liked these cookies. I liked the flavor of the pastry, and the sweet, crunchy, candy-like interior. And although they were difficult to eat, I didn't find the hard texture of the cookie unpleasant. Plus, Marks says you can keep the cookies for two weeks and I absolutely believe that!
The funniest thing about this cookie is that most people who saw it assumed it was rugelach -- while there is definitely a physical resemblance, this cookie could not be more different from rugelach. No tender pastry, no jammy filling, and an audible crunch. Of course maybe I made them all wrong and the pastry wasn't supposed to be so hard -- but I don't really care, I enjoyed them anyway!
Recipe: "Sfratti (Italian Nut-Filled 'Sticks')" from The World of Jewish Desserts by Gil Marks, recipe available here on epicurious.com.
These cookies have a pastry made with white wine that you mix by hand. You combine flour, sugar, and salt, cut in cold butter, and then incorporate white wine until the dough holds together. You divide the dough in two parts and chill it before rolling it out.
The filling is honey cooked with chopped walnuts, orange and lemon zest (I didn't have an orange and used lemon only), cinnamon, cloves, and freshly ground pepper. While the mixture is still warm, you form it into six narrow logs. I found this part of the recipe quite challenging; the filling started to set even while it was still quite hot, and I had to work fast to try to shape it while it was still pliable. Cooked sugar can be incredibly hot and I kept burning my fingertips. Still, I ended up with six even honey-walnut logs.
I rolled each part of dough into a rectangle measuring approximately 14-inches by 12-inches. To get the dough to this size, I had to roll it between two sheets of parchment as thin as possible. The dough got sticky as it warmed up, and I had to refrigerate it after rolling to firm it up a bit before encasing the filling. Then I cut the dough into three 14-inch by 4-inch rectangles, and rolled up a log of the filling inside each piece. I cut the rolls into 2-inch pieces, brushed them with egg glaze, and baked them.
.JPG)
But once I managed to actually get a taste, I really liked these cookies. I liked the flavor of the pastry, and the sweet, crunchy, candy-like interior. And although they were difficult to eat, I didn't find the hard texture of the cookie unpleasant. Plus, Marks says you can keep the cookies for two weeks and I absolutely believe that!
The funniest thing about this cookie is that most people who saw it assumed it was rugelach -- while there is definitely a physical resemblance, this cookie could not be more different from rugelach. No tender pastry, no jammy filling, and an audible crunch. Of course maybe I made them all wrong and the pastry wasn't supposed to be so hard -- but I don't really care, I enjoyed them anyway!
Recipe: "Sfratti (Italian Nut-Filled 'Sticks')" from The World of Jewish Desserts by Gil Marks, recipe available here on epicurious.com.
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