What kind of cooks are you?
Do you observe a recipe, maybe one from your family cookbook, or the inspiration of the moment?
Family recipes and recipe development.
To me, they’re two sides of the same coin.
Did you have your own family cookbook? A notebook where, during the time, someone wrote grandma’s apple pie recipe, mom’s lasagna and old uncle’s cookies. Maybe an old notebook with yellowed pages.
Well, I love and preserve some of my family’s cookbooks. And, of course, I love cooking traditional dishes of Emilia-Romagna, the Italian region where I was born. At the same time, I had understood I love developing recipes using fresh ingredients and following the inspiration of the moment.
It happens, for example, to be at the market, see an ingredient on the stalls and find myself thinking about cooking, matching, textures.
From that moment I can’t wait to go back to my kitchen, put on my apron, and start cooking driven by curiosity to leave my hands free to follow my thoughts and taste the dish that will become.
About carrots, Squacquerone of Romagna cheese and savory pies.
This recipe was born in this way.
At the market I bought colored carrots, purple and orange. I was just thinking about a side dish when, during a last stop at the dairy, because eggs are never enough, I “hear” a familiar accent coming from cheeses (I was born in Romagna even if I live in Bologna since 20 years).
But, first of all, before going ahead, I have to tell you something about squacquerone.
It’s a typical, fresh cheese of Romagna and a PDO product.
The main ingredient is full fat cow’s milk which is curdled. The shape is indefinite (which is where it gets its name from: “acqua” meaning water and describing its soft, liquid consistency). its color is white. It is soft and tender, without a rind and tastes of slightly acidulous milk.
In Romagna, people mostly eat squacquerone spread on piadina romagnola.
But even if I’m romagnola, I admit I don’t like fresh cheese into my piadina. “What if I use it differently?” I thought. Said, done.
The Recipe.
For the base choose the dough you prefer among savory shortcrust pastry, puff pastry and brisé. You can make the base from scratch, even without gluten, or buy it ready.
For the filling, I preferred not to mix the two main ingredients, carrots and soft cheese, letting the carrots maintain a certain consistency.
I mixed squacquerone with a bit of mascarpone to correct the natural acidity of the soft cheese. So that cooked carrots do not sink into the cream cheese, I bake the pie without them, let the base cook and cream becomes more solid, then I gently place the carrots on the pie. The carrots can be purple or orange (if you scroll the post you’ll find a picture where I used these too), or the color you want.
In order to reduce the cooking time and so that the carrots are not too hard, I prefer to cook the carrots first. You can choose between two different ways: boil the carrots in boiling salted water or roast in the oven. I prefer the second method but, in both cases, I brush the carrots with a mixture of honey, water, salt and oil.
Fresh thyme combined with carrots, adds a fragrant and tasty note.
Buona cucina, Monica
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Food Tip
You can change squacquerone with another soft cheese, for instance stracchino or robiola.
It works well like aperitivo if you are 4-6 people. But if are 2, serve it like main dish with a side or like a side for scrambled eggs.
Squacquerone and Carrot Savory Pie Recipe
serves 2-4
rectangular baking tray, 20cm
List of Ingredients
savory pie dough, 120 g approx.
carrots, purple or orange, 6
100 g of squacquerone di Romagna
egg, 1
50 g of fresh mascarpone
honey to taste
fine salt, olive oil to taste
Method
Clean the carrots and cut the bush.
First method: cook carrots in boiling salted water for about 12 minutes. Drain, let it cool, cut the carrots in 4 parts lengthwise, brush with a mixture of olive oil (one tablespoon), a pinch of salt and 1 tablespoon of honey (if the sauce is thick, add a little water and mix).
Second method: wash and peel carrots, cut the carrots into 4 parts lengthways, brush as I indicated above, place on a baking tray covered with baking paper and bake in a preheated oven for about 20 minutes (180C degrees, static function).
In the meantime, in a bowl mix cheeses with egg and season with oil and salt. Set aside.
Roll out the dough very thin, about 3mm. Cover the mould with baking paper, place the dough on the bottom, pour the cream cheese, form the edges by rolling the excess dough inwards.
Cook the pie with no carrots, in the preheated oven (180C degrees) about 15 minutes. Then place the carrots on the top of the savory pie and finish to cook (about 12-15 minutes)
Serve it warm.
