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LA PASTIERIA

How it started?
From a cake of the italian tradition, the "pastiera", our shop seeks to embottle the italian experience. With local products involved in its creation, the pastiera will be declined in four different versions, one for each season.

Our venue is an old haberdashery. The laws in our city, Benevento, prevents citizens from creating new commercial activities in the historical centre.
In the south of Italy ideas are not the ones that are lackin. We are missing an overall system that can allow and support their development.

What you will see here is for now a collage of the different approaches from me, Elda, and my partner, Federico Castracane.
As an architect, he is going to help me develop the interior of the old building, making it merge with the overall concept of healthy food consumption within a community.
The seasonal approach is not only to educate our costumers about what are the products of the season, it is also to create an inner network of smaller local producers. By involving their products in our everchanging cake, we support their approach to production. Not only that, by purchasing said products and reselling them in our venue we invite our costumers to get to know them and use said products in their everyday cooking.

Now, this space will exist only trough a website within speculative visuals, presented as if the place does exist. The cake, on the contrary, will exist and it will be sold, so that the inner mechanisms will work.

RANDOM CHARACTERISTICS FROM THE ORIGINAL RECIPE:

1)The aromas in the pastiera are fundamental. The pastiera smells of spring and orange blossom, an irreplaceable aroma that must be dosed well.

2)Wheat is the cornerstone of the Neapolitan pastiera. And it is irreplaceable. Not everyone likes it, especially for the granular consistency, which can be remedied by blending a part, in order to make the mixture more creamy.

3)The right ricotta for the pastiera is sheep's ricotta, it is fatter and tastier. The only valid alternative is buffalo ricotta, which is also very tasty and has a good percentage of fat.

4)The original recipe calls for lard, both in the pastry and in the wheat cream

5)In the original recipe there is no custard, this was an introduction of the latest fashions, because in reality not everyone likes wheat and therefore the custard camouflages a little grainy consistency, giving more creaminess to the slice, however much the result is very good with the addition of the cream, it detaches a lot from the original pastiera version.

6)The candied fruit are irreplaceable. Aside from the question of the scent they give to the pastiera, the candied fruit have a very specific function of releasing humidity to the filling making it soft and moist even in the following days. that's why the pastiera is kept for many days. the candied fruit guarantees a greater preservation of the product.

THE ORIGINAL RECIPE:

INGREDIENTS

FOR THE SHORTCRUST PASTRY
350 g of flour
175 g of butter or lard
140 g of sugar
2 whole eggs
zest of 1 orange
FOR THE STUFFING
350 g of cottage cheese vaccine
250 g of sugar
300 g of pre-cooked wheat
200 ml of milk
2 whole eggs
1 yolk
150 g candied fruit (cedar and orange)
2 teaspoons of orange blossom water
zest of 2 oranges
zest of 1 lemon
1 pinch of sale

I then tried to understand to which kind of aesthetics big companies look to, when making a dairy alternative appealing for example.

PHOTOS OF THE VENUE:
Situated in the historical centre of the city, this place has had the curtains down for the past 10 years at least. We would like to make the curtains go up on the internet and show its potential.

I also started to investigate on how to transform the recipe in a balanced treat. I was interested in navigating the vegan approach to dairy, the nutritional factors and and its aesthetics. I started off by watching tons of videos of vegan enthusiasts, sharing their recipes on the tube.
Here is an example:

My own take on the pastiera's recipe for the winter season would be a hot orange cream, laid on top of an orange-ginger cookie.
As I mentioned in the intro, our goal is to embottle the italian experience. The glass in which it would be cointained is in the shape of a volcano, the one in Naples. The "crater" will be closed by a layer of transparent agar, for you to crack open and enjoy the treat.

During these weeks I worked on the recipe. It is still not quite there I think, but almost.
I found some old family recipe for the cake itself but now I have to figure out how to use substitutes that can make it more balanced without losing the original taste of it.

Federico did some rendering of the space, with an idea for the main desk. We would like to have a trellis to support plants over the desk, from January unti April it would be orange and lemon trees. The trellis creates ai aisle on its left side, where people can observe how the cake is being made behind the desk, just befor consuming it.

Another viewpoint of the space from the desk

The space upstairs could host the products from the local companies involved in the seasonal recipe, but we are going to see if it can work with the space in a later step of the process. What you can see here is a selection from our brainstorms, that adds up to where are we now.
I almost perfected the recipe with dairy substitutes and the packaging, which will be made out of reshaped glass containers. I need to research on the local companies in the area of Benevento and implement their products in my recipe.
Federico has the plants of the building and he is researching in a suitable interior solution for the Pastieria.

Til then,
Elda & Federico