Neapolitan taralli: the result of the Neapolitan culinary tradition.
The Neapolitan taralli are also defined "Taralle 'nzogna and pepe" (taralli, lard and pepper) to recall the main ingredients.
As you will find out in our column "Cooking in the Neapolitan area"Many of the Neapolitan recipes employ poor ingredients and tend to adopt theart of recycling without wasting anything, but always getting exceptional results and unique in their kind.
The taralli, specifically, in Naples at the end of '700 they were produced starting from the residues of the bread dough and to add more substance and taste, the sugna, almonds and pepper were added to the recipe. It was the rich meal of the poor.
Today, however, there are many Neapolitan excellence producers that produce industrial quantities of taralli made with selected products, of excellence and with greater digestibility than in the past.
Ingredients
600 gr. made with flour
150 gr of suet1
1 beer yeast cube
300 gr of peeled almonds
Salt and Pepper To Taste
Preparation
Place the flour in a fountain, in the middle melt the yeast with lukewarm water, then add the sauce, salt and plenty of pepper.
Work the dough energetically with your hands and gradually add half of the almonds (also broken in half).
Then obtained from the mixture of sticks with a diameter of about ½ cm and about 15 cm long.
Twist two at a time on themselves and close them giving them the typical shape of the taralli.
Arrange them on a floured tablecloth and let them rise for an hour and a half without covering them.
After this time, place the remaining almonds on each plate (2 or 3 for tarallo).
Bake for about 25 minutes in a preheated oven at 200 degrees. Then let it rest for a while and put it back in the oven for another 20 minutes to “dry” or better “to biscuit” in order to eliminate the humidity of the dough and make the tarallo more crumbly and tasty on the palate.
The taralli, if stored in containers or tightly sealed bags, are stored for several days.
The taralli in the Neapolitan Smorfia make 70 and have thus become part of the life of all the Neapolitans who when something ends up successfully say: "It is fernute to tarallucce and wine".
Footnotes
1It is a fatty food that allows the dough to rise better and gives it more fragrance because it facilitates internal cooking. It is often substituted for cooking oil in the oven because it has a high smoke point, lending itself well to this kind of preparation.
