Me and Gennaro love a sweet treat, we love a cake ((We do indeed)) and Gennaro's got
a little treat for us to behold because we're gonna make the most delicious lemon and polenta
Amalfi cake, right?
It's cake, yes.
This is where you come from!
Torta, torta, Amalfi torta.
Torta, crostata.
Torta di limone ((Torta di limone)).
It's so good!
Cake.
So simple!
Tart.
So delicioso!
First thing that I love, in life... is Gennaro.
I said yes!
And the other thing I like is cake.
So this is celebrating one of the key ingredients of the Amalfi coast and it's a beautiful lemon.
Are we gonna use juice?
No.
Are we gonna use zest?
No.
We're gonna boil the lemon over here, we've boiled this for about 20 minutes in boiling water.
When it's soft let it cool down a little bit...
Gennaro show them your lemon.
And as you can see my lemon's a bit bigger than his lemon, but lemons do change in size
y'know as you go around the world...
so roughly that or that, it's all good ((A little bit cooled down)).
It's not very specific is it?
But don't worry about it, just let your hair down and whatever size lemon you get in life,
go with it.
And then by boiling the lemon you're just creating almost like a marmalade-y depth of
citrus joy okay, so if you cut that in half Gennar.
Gennaro is just removing the seeds, that's the only thing that we don't want, we want
the pith, we want the juice, and we want the skin, but not the seeds.
Here I've got 250 millilitres of beautiful extra virgin olive oil.
Now using fat in a sponge, traditionally would be butter right, which is sweet and delicious.
But of course in Southern Europe where it's hotter, olive oil is used and you get amazingly
light sponges in the use of olive oil.
So 250 millilitres of extra virgin olive oil, we're gonna go in with the skin and the pith
and all the juice of that lovely lemon, and then I'm just gonna whizz it up, it's gonna
be beautiful.
I wish you could smell, it's already smelled, the lemon zest that goes around it's incredible.
So in the bowl the recipe is very very simple, we're gonna go in with 4 eggs and they're
lovely free-range eggs, and we'll whisk those up.
And we're gonna go in with another 250 grams, but this time of simple white caster sugar.
As soon as it starts to go pale, which is not quite yet Gennaro just a little bit yeah
just...
((Do you want me to do it?))
D'you know what, I do, I wanna see your action, I wanna see if your action is different to mine.
And then I'm gonna add in this wet element here which is the - look at the color, amazing
((Oh my my)).
Extra virgin olive oil and the lemon.
And then as soon as you've done that we're then gonna go in with 250 grams of almonds,
so these are ground almonds, and then last but not least polenta, 100 grams goes in.
So that is basically our batter.
All I wanna do, just to amplify the flavour, is a little pinch of salt in there.
It's ready now!
Beautiful, now.
At this point you've got the base of a beautiful sponge; normally me and Gennaro
will cook it in a nice little 20 centimetre cake tin right, that'll give you a lovely
little torte okay, but today, because we wanna do these for the restaurants we're gonna do
lovely little individual ones,
and I think it's fantastic to show you that you can do nice big tarts or little small ones.
We will cook these beautiful tarts for 20 minutes, these little ones,
at 160 degrees Celsius.
So, you wanna get a nice little spoon of this mix into these little 5-inch molds.
I'll put the rest in there.
You alright ((Yeah I'm good))?
It's not even cooked yet!
So let's get these cooking Gennar ((Right)).
And then we can show these lovely people what to do next.
Put them in the oven.
So Gennaro, whack that one in.
Don't bend it when you close this, gently.
Right.
So, while that cooks, me and Gennaro we're gonna do a little clean-down and then we'll
show you what to do next.
While our beautiful sponges cook we have got some beautiful tartlets already cooked and
you can see they've got a nice bit of colour and they're cooling down on a cake rack.
So Gennaro, talk to people about one of the kings of the dairy world, mascarpone cheese.
It's a base for all kinds of tart, also with pasta, with the lasagna, with so and so and so.
It's kind of like the Italian's version of clotted cream.
So in that mascarpone we're gonna put some of this beautiful vanilla paste, a little
yoghurt is a nice kind of acidity to work with the richness ((I love yoghurt)) that
just loosens up the mascarpone and takes it a little bit further.
And then also we're gonna use just a little bit of sugar, just enough to sweeten it, so about...
((It's enough)) yeah!
There's a really amazing kind of Amalfi expression of like a lemon drizzle syrup.
So basically it's lemon juice and honey boiled together to make the most amazing syrup.
Okay that is nearly done yeah ((Can I have a little go?))
Yeah.
You could use this idea you know as you would a buttercream, on a little muffin, on a little
cake, you can use it in tarts, tartlets, on tortes.
So I'm just gonna take a nice spoonful of this cream and just blob it on each one of
these... on it goes.
Lemons, everything was to do with the lemons!
You having a coffee in the morning, and you have lemon inside, you have another sorbet
with the lemon, you have an ice cream with the lemon, you have a tart with the lemon
like we do this one, you mix lemon and ricotta that is fantastic a little bit vanilla inside,
just water and lemon, just a squeeze and a lemon in a glass.
Lemon with pasta ((Lemon pasta)), lemon in a dressing ((Lemon in a dressing, zest of
lemons spray everywhere, feel good under the sun, lemon all over you...)).
Okay so I think we've established that Gennaro and all the people of Amalfi love lemons, fair?
((Yes they do indeed)) Anyway, once we put the mascarpone on these lovely tartlets, we'll
sprinkle them with some lovely toasted almonds, even more.
Let me get a little plate, I'm gonna place the tart on each one.
Shall I do a little zest of lemon?
Why not, because I don't think there's enough lemon in this dish currently.
Instead of grated which you can do it, it's just have a little little, just a few leaves
of zest.
I'm just drizzling a little of that lemon and honey syrup over the top, absolutely stunning,
and of course that will sort of get into the cream and the sponge.
And then over here you can see Gennaro's done a fantastic job of doing little finely sliced
lemon.
I wanna have a tiny tiny bit of lovely bitter chocolate.
Just put it on a clean surface, put it up to your side get a large knife, and just bring
it towards you like this.
Just a little bit, it's a gesture.
What I should do, because Gennaro's here, is just take a little bit of basil ((Why not,
it's nice!)) and just give it a little kick like that for no reason, and there you go,
that is Gennaro's beautiful Amalfi lemon torte.
Made by the man himself with a little help from me.
So, here it is, our little individual Amalfi inspired tart, cake, torte.
Torta di limone.
Beautiful.
Oh my gosh.
Oh yeah.
Oh this is... oh my... really good.
That is really good.
Normally a sponge is just like spongy, which is why it's called a sponge.
This is like, it's a torte, it's kind of crumbly it's moreish the almonds in there and the
lemon is so fragrant and delicious.
Delicioso.
So, from me and Gennaro, we wanna send our love and this recipe and until next time,
what do we say?
Arrivederci!
Arrivederci, ciao.
I'm gonna take two of them with me.
Okay, yeah...
I'll go the other way.