In your own cookbook can’t miss a honest and rustic cookies recipe for breakfast.
Frollini cookies are a classic among Italian sweet recipes for breakfast or merenda.
So take pen and paper, write down the recipe and put it in your home cookbook. From today it will have a new page and flavor. The one for frollini cookies.
These cookies are very simple to prepare and absolutely delicious. I made a rustic version of frollini using buckwheat flour and I hope you’ll like its special taste. Frollini cookies are honestly good for breakfast, merenda or after dinner snack.
Food Rituals.
Even if I love cookies, I have to admit, I rarely eat cookies for breakfast.
For me, even if it’s quite unusual for an Italian, breakfast is almost always and only, savory. But woe betide if I don’t have a cookie at home for after dinner when, finally, I reach the sofa and fall asleep my thoughts counting cookies as if they were sheep. Ending up the day with the taste of a cookie is one of my food rituals.
Do you have any?
All around the world, food has contributed to shape cultures and nations. Every country and each person has a particular relationship with their cuisine and food traditions. I’m thinking of Italy where meals are the cement that consolidates families and friendships together. But not only in Italy, everywhere you can find general enjoyment and obsession with food beyond a objective need to eat, that is one of the things that makes us unique as a species. Every day we celebrate our being human through food-based customs.
According to some they represent the skeleton of the day and define us as individuals as well as in relation to our community. And it is striking to think that a simple ritual, such as putting candles on a birthday cake, makes the taste of food even more intense.
Rituals and Liturgies.
Every ritual has its liturgy. I’m thinking, for example, to the Japanese tea ritual.
Or to the Neapolitan coffee old-style. Both are a demonstration that without liturgy there is no ritual.
Some rituals are intimate and private.
For some, it is the pleasure of saying goodbye to the day by waking up very early.
Silence is also part of the ritual. As well as watching the sky turn red as the sun rises holding the coffee cup in your hands.
Then there are the food rituals that we celebrated along with others. Workmates who have drinks together once a week. Historical dinners in the contrade (quarters) of Siena among only people of each district.
Many rituals tell of us and our family. The habit of celebrating Christmas Eve or Christmas lunch and, again, what food to bring to the table, almost always, come from our own family traditions.
We often continue to cook a certain recipe because it evokes dear memories of dear people. Among the comments of today’s post I published on Instagram, Alessia wrote that she has got many food rituals. But I loved one among what she wrote, the habit to taste first tigella empty and to share it among all the family.
Some rituals change over time. Often food rituals are induced and we perpetrate them without even realizing how deeply rooted they are in us.
If you try to write your list, you may be surprised by how many habits associated with food, you have. And, if you want, I’ll wait for you in the comments below the Frollini Cookies recipe.
About my Old and New Food Rituals.
My freelance days are almost always different from each other.
Not that it was better before. When I worked full-time for the university I was commuting, always out and about.
Likewise, I have some rituals related to food.
The most important of which is undoubtedly Christmas.
More than a ritual, a book of rituals. The things I cook, the way I do them. Some old decorations, some smells and tastes that should not be missing in the kitchen in the days before the feast. For instance, the smell of cocoa and spices to make cookies during the week before the Immaculate.
Again, at least once, during the winter, I make “hot wine”, so once upon a time in Romagna mulled wine was called. I prepare it especially for its smell. And each time I remember the winter evenings when my family used to play endless games of cards eating dried fruit until the moment of the mulled wine. In a few minutes the kitchen was pervaded by the enveloping scent of spicy wine and, till today, I associate it with a lovely memory.
Today
I’m very keen on a recent habit. Breakfast with my dog Emma. When I go out very early in the morning, I miss all day long that brief moment, just ours, which gives me great joy.
And, for some time now, one of my favorite rituals has been the evening aperitif at home. It’s just a glass of wine while my husband and I prepare dinner and tell each other about the day.
Among my food rituals, there’s one connected to baking cookies. Once they’re baked, I always ask my husband to taste the first one. Like my grandmother used to make with me, the first one was never for her, and so do I.
And speaking of rituals. I’ve heard that in a happy home, cookies sing in the pantry.
Make your place a happy place. Make frollini cookies.
Buona vita, Monica
Food Tips
Keep cookies in a metal box, they’ll be fragrant for a long time.
Buckwheat flour, despite its name is not a cereal, is naturally gluten-free. If you replace durum wheat flour with cornstarch, the shortbreads become gluten-free.
Italian Frollini Cookies Recipe
for many cookies
Buckwheat flour, 200g
Durum wheat flour, 100g
Brown sugar, 40g
Raw cane sugar, 60g
Butter, 150g
Milk, about 10g
Egg, 1
Natural extract of vanilla and salt, q.b.
Directions
In a bowl mix flour and sugar.
Add the egg and cold butter cut into chunks.
Start kneading by adding the milk a little at a time.
Wrap the dough in the film and let it rest for an hour in the fridge.
Then roll out the dough thin, about 4mm, using the rolling pin.
Use a cookie cutter or a glass to shape the shortbread.
Cover a baking tray with baking paper and bake in a preheated oven, 180C degrees (static function), for about 20 minutes.
Let it cool before storing.
Reading Tips about Food Rituals
K. Blixen, Babette’s Feast
C. Lévi-Strauss, The origin of Table Manners
C. Lévi-Strauss. The raw and the Cooked
