KNEADING IN NOTO

No visit to beautiful, architecturally homogeneous Noto is complete, in my opinion, without stopping off at the Caffè Sicilia to enjoy ice cream and cake with unusual but delicate and harmonious flavourings so it was good to see their creator, Corrado Assenza, welcoming the remaining contestants of Bakeoff Italia - Dolci in Forno to his city on TV on Friday.

The technical challenge for the contestants was to produce their own replicas of Corrado Assenza's dolce dell'estate which contains, among other ingredients, a tomato gelatine, nectarines in a special syrup, basil, oranges, hibiscus, black pepper, gin and vodka:

Photo: facebook

If you read Italian, you can find the recipe here .

I have usually been to Noto in summer so I can't say I've noticed the quality of its winds but, judging from this episode, they must be rather choosy, for they blew only on the hair of presenter Benedetta Parodi, ruffling it gently while the contestants, also in the open air, sweated profusely.

The television audience was treated to stunning views of Noto while the judges enjoyed slices of Corrado Assenza's creation on a terrace.

You can watch the Noto episode here until 31.1.17.

Now we are all waiting for the final this Friday and I for one will be glued to my TV. I might even try some of the recipes soon but not before I've asked ny hairdresser how to get my own special breeze blowing flatteringly through my locks whilst leaving everybody else alone!

THE ALTRUISM OF COOKS

I've always thought that most cooks are naturally helpful and unselfish, willing, as they are, to share their recipes at the drop of a cranberry and to give tips and encouragement to others. But last Friday, on Bakeoff Italia - Dolci in Forno, we saw a quite extraordinary example:

In this seventh episode of the fourth series, the contestants who had already been eliminated from the contest were invited back for a cookoff in which one of them could be reinstated. They had to make the ever-exacting Ernst Knam's seven-layered torta extreme and the twist was that the contestants still in the competition, not the show's resident judges - Knam, Clelia d'Onofrio and Antonio Lamberto Martino  - would do the  blind tasting. Then the two best cakes would undergo scrutiny from the resident judges. The cakes chosen were baked by contestants called Annalisa and Stefania but neither seemed very happy. After a few minutes, we learnt why; they both felt that there was another cake on the table which was better than theirs and that their peers had made a mistake in their tasting. Obviously, in pointing this out, they had sacrificed their own chances of being allowed back into the competition. Presenter Benedetta Parodi asked the resident judges to taste all the other cakes, which they did, and they agreed with Stefania and Annalisa that the best cake had been baked by a contestant called Bartolomeo.

How nice to see such altruism in a reality TV show!

You can watch the episode here until 31.1.17.