'Mpanatigghi
Modica, Sicily
In Modica they have been folding ground beef into chocolate cookies since the 1500s. The pastry shops will bet you cannot taste the meat, and they win that bet.
Lean beef, cooked gently and minced to a paste, is close to neutral: mostly protein and moisture. Inside the filling it behaves like ground nuts, keeping everything dense and fudgy while dark chocolate, almonds, cinnamon, and cloves supply the actual flavor. The payoff is a soft, spiced chocolate filling with unusual richness and staying power.
These half-moon pastries come from Modica in southeastern Sicily and date to the island's centuries under Spanish rule. The name derives from the Spanish empanadillas, and the pairing itself, meat with chocolate, arrived on Spanish ships from the Americas, along with the cold-worked chocolate tradition Modica still keeps. One legend says convent nuns invented them to smuggle nourishment to preachers weakened by Lenten fasting; a more practical theory holds that sugar and cocoa acted as preservatives, keeping cooked meat safe for weeks before refrigeration existed.
Either way they became travel food, dense and long-keeping, and the Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia praised them as the perfect nourishing dessert for a journey. They are still made year-round in Modica's pastry shops, including Antica Dolceria Bonajuto, one of Sicily's oldest chocolate makers, and eaten with coffee like any other cookie.
Ingredients
- 300 g (2 1/2 cups) all-purpose or 00 flourfor the dough
- 100 g (1/2 cup) sugarfor the dough
- 100 g (7 tbsp) cold lardfor the dough; butter works
- 1 whole egg plus 2 yolks eggsfor the dough
- 2 tbsp Marsala winefor the dough; another sweet wine is fine
- 1 pinch saltfor the dough
- 150 g (5 oz) lean ground beeffor the filling; veal is traditional too
- 150 g (1 1/2 cups) blanched almondstoasted and finely ground
- 100 g (3.5 oz) dark chocolate, 70% or Modica-stylefinely chopped
- 100 g (1/2 cup) sugarfor the filling
- 1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/8 tsp ground cloves
- 1-2 egg whitesto bind the filling
- for dusting powdered sugar
Method
- Rub the cold lard into the flour, sugar, and salt until the mixture looks sandy.
- Add the whole egg, yolks, and Marsala, bring the dough together, knead it briefly just until smooth, then wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
- Cook the beef in a dry nonstick pan over medium-low heat, breaking it up constantly, until it is just no longer pink but has taken no color, then drain and cool it.
- Grind the cooled beef in a food processor until it is nearly a paste.
- Mix the beef with the ground almonds, chocolate, sugar, cocoa, cinnamon, cloves, and a pinch of salt, then beat in one egg white until you have a thick, moldable paste, adding the second white only if it stays crumbly.
- Heat the oven to 180 C (350 F) and line two baking sheets.
- Roll the dough out 2 to 3 mm thin on a floured surface.
- Cut discs of 9 to 10 cm, rerolling the scraps once.
- Place a walnut-sized ball of filling on each disc, fold into a half-moon, and press the edges firmly to seal.
- Cut a small slit in the top of each cookie, the traditional vent that keeps them from bursting.
- Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until pale gold; they should not brown deeply.
- Cool completely on a rack so the filling can set, dust with powdered sugar, and store in a tin, where they keep for a good two weeks.
Cooked it? Say how it went. Tweaks, substitutions, honest verdicts, all welcome.
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