The biscuits in the picture are ‘Ferratelle’ (as they are called in the Lazio region; English Wikipedia refers to those as ‘Pizzelle’ – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzelle ) that Jyothi made the other day.
Jyothi is an awesome cook and baker so she always tries to re-create flavors she has tasted or she’s read or heard stories about. Most of the times she succeeds, too – and often she improves them.
Anyhow, for making this type of biscuit you need a special iron which is held by hand over a hot burner on the stovetop; the iron is used to squeeze the dough and impress a pattern on the biscuit while it cooks.
My granny (my dad’s mother) used to make them when I was a kid but – alas – after her death I was still young and not really versed in baking so I didn’t claim it right away and therefore I didn’t inherit it; by the time I asked my dad about it, years later, it had gone lost. Jyothi and I have been looking to buy one of those irons for years – but most people don’t cook nor bake anymore which makes specialized tools hard to find, and/or very expensive.
While occasionally I had found and bought ‘industrial’ or ‘off the shelve’ versions of these biscuits, they are not the same thing: I had not eaten proper ones made at home, with love, since I was about 10 years old.
And now… surprise! Last weekend we finally stumbled into an iron of this kind at a local market: one more sign from the Universe that we’ve come to the right place. Needless to say, Jyothi nailed the recipe on her second attempt: they taste just like the ones my granny was making.
My granny would have liked Jyothi but she died too early to meet her.
She would have also appreciated our choice to move to a rural area and live in nature.
