Jim Skamarakas

One of the things I had a lot of this week was food. I went to Seattle for the CIO Summit with 2 customers. On Thursday at lunch I looked over at the desert table and saw slice4s of chocolate cake with green in the middle and on the outside. I immediately thought it was chocolate mint or chocolate chip mint cake. I always liked this ice cream and my mind just jumped to that obvious conclusion.

And was wrong. The cake was a neopolitan cake. Next to it was a lemon cake and next to that a tiriamisu cake. Italian day for desert I guess.

Ingredients
 Short-crust pastry  500 gr.
Ricotta cheese  500 gr.
Sugar  200 gr.
Cooked wheat  220 gr.
Candied lemon peel  40 gr.
Milk  2 dl.
Butter  30 gr.
Eggs  5
Lemons  1
Salt  a pinch
Candied orange peel  40 gr.
Icing sugar  50 gr.
Cinnamon  1 pinch

Preparation
 If you use frozen short-crust pastry, let it warm up at room temperature. If, on the other hand, you wish to try your hand at preparing it, go the School section.

Prepare the wheat in a saucepan, together with the milk, butter and the grated rind of half a lemon. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring often, over a medium heat.

Put the Ricotta cheese, sugar, cinnamon, the rind of the remaining half of the lemon, the salt and the candied peels cut into small pieces, into a bowl and mix well. Add 4 yolks and whisk 3 whites stiffly and add them both to the mixture and mix delicately.

Roll out the short-crust pastry until it is about half a centimetre thick and line the cake dish. Cut away the excess pastry from the top of the dish and put it aside.

Pour the mixture into the cake dish and level the surface. Decorate it with strips of the left-over pastry forming a criss-cross effect which you will then brush with an egg yolk.

Put the dish into a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees for an hour and a half. Before serving, sprinkle the top with icing sugar.
 
The Chef’s tips
 The cooked wheat given in the recipe can easily be found in grocer shops. Should you use raw wheat, you must consider the soaking times and the longer cooking times.
 
Curiosity
 Cinnamon is well known as an ingredient for cakes. It has many properties amongst which that of restoring appetite due to physical stress.

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