Shortbread biscuits (canestrelli)

As I said before, I did not write the instructions but I have translated from Genoese dialect the text of Renato Campi, who I thank from the bottom of my heart. My small additions are in italics. Let’s start!

I usually whip through recipes, there are so many of them, but I’ll really explain the canestrelli that we make in Ronco with their fantastic taste. First of all, you need decent ingredients to make a good biscuit.

We will make them with plain flour (zero bran), freshly collected eggs, the freshest butter and the right amount of sugar.

I leave you Renato’s recipe with the odd suggestion from me in italics: “You need: three hundred grams of flour, two hundred grams of butter, two fine egg yolks, a hundred grams of sugar, the grated rind of a lemon and a pinch of salt.

But the main secret is to mix everything in the usual way to make a cake, I repeat, respecting tradition.

Pour the flour in a pile on the pastry board, make a well in the middle, add the egg yolks, chunks of butter, sugar and grated lemon rind and to finish a pinch of salt which serves to soften and blend the flavours.

Mix all the ingredients by hand and with gusto so that the dough becomes nice and smooth. You can also mix in the blender switching on the blades several times for 4 seconds until the mixture is well blended.

Taste it raw which will certainly show you how good it really is.

Roll out with the rolling pin and flatten the shortcrust pastry dough which must be about a centimetre thick (I make it a bit less thick). I recommend rolling out the shortcrust pastry dough between two sheets of baking paper.

With the moulds (the daisy-shaped ones with a hole in the middle) make the shapes, which ladies like so much; do remember dear ladies that before putting in the oven you must carry out an operation with the leftover egg white: with one finger “grease” all the biscuits which will help them to remain nice and shiny while cooking.

If you don’t have the cutter, a flower shaped mould will do, use the top of a bottle of water for the hole in the middle.

For a refined version, whip the egg whites and put them on top of the biscuits, one teaspoonful per biscuit, which in effect has little flavour but looks good and costs hardly anything.

For the cooking, with no set times (I leave them for 15/18 minutes at 170°C in a conventional oven), you need only to pay attention and cook them as you like in the oven and when they look right to you, pull them out without too much fuss, waiting for them to cool down.

With a glass of muscatel and perhaps a little cream you can eat half a tray while waiting for dinner time to arrive”.