Tortoni
I grew up in Hastings, a suburb of New York, so it sounds like a lie when I say that I ate pizza maybe once a year when I was a kid. My brothers and I have a parlor trick where we recount our culinary nativism to the shock and amusement of others. My older brother “discovered” bagels at the age of 11 when he stayed over night a Greek kid’s house. I was served stewed tomatoes at the Pollack’s and will forever think of stewed tomatoes as “Jewish food”. Yogurt was marketed to us by the milk man and rejected by my mother in the dying days of milk delivery. It was only when my younger brother fraudulently filled out the order form and placed it in the milk box that we were allowed to partake in the exotic healthiness of the cultured “hippie food.”
We ate out infrequently. My mother was a big fan of Schrafft’s, and thought that Howard Johnson’s was a fair approximation of it (it wasn’t). My father didn’t really like to eat out. You know why? This may come as a shock to those of you that don’t understand the mores of the 50’s and 60’s. My dad didn’t care to eat out because he ate lunch in a restaurant every day.
If he took you to work with him, which happened once a year if you were lucky, you would eat at the Bull and Bear restaurant in the Waldorf Astoria where the Maître-d knew his name. If you were eating at the Bull and Bear for lunch, would you want to go to Ho-Jos or Schraft’s for dinner? Fuck, no, you wouldn’t. You’d rather sit in your study drinking scotch, let the kids eat at five, and wait for the meatloaf. You white male millennials are lucky that you don’t know what you missed. For those of us who endured the training period of patriarchal manliness only to have the whole system dissolve before our eyes, such memories are kind of painful though I wouldn’t want to turn back the clock.
When we ate out as a whole family, which was rarer still, and usually a by-product of traveling or visiting people, we had to eat at a place that had a full bar. Parents, you see, need to smoke and drink cocktails while their kids look at the menu or play in the parking lot (it was a more civilized time). For us, that meant Scappy’s, an Italian restaurant attached to both a bar and a bowling alley.
Scappy’s was acceptable for a number of reasons. First, my mother got her hair done by one of the Scaperrotta brothers. She was also a member of a women’s bowling league that bowled at Scappy’s on Monday mornings. She like the Scaperrotta brothers, and she had a warm place in her heart for Italian family dining. It would take another whole post to unpack why. The shorthand is that as the daughter of Mill owners in Westerly, RI she spent her childhood and public school years befriending “Italians” while not being allowed to be friends with them because their parents worked in the Mill.
I don’t remember the food at Scappy’s. I’m embarrassed to say that as a child I usually ordered a club sandwich. What a waste. I can’t remember what anybody else ate. I’ll have to ask my brothers.
I do know that for desert there were only two options, tortoni and spumoni. Do you know what tortoni and spumoni are? Neither did we, so the waiter would describe them for us. The problem was, what if you ordered wrong? What if you wanted the tortoni and ordered the spumoni? You just fucked up one of your limited chances to get a real desert for the year. It’s easy for me to know now that I wanted the tortoni. THANK YOU, INTERNET. For the record, they both kind of suck, if you’re a kid. Spumoni has dried fruit (yuck!) and I think the Scappy’s version of tortoni had toasted coconut on top (double yuck!).
Take it away, Wikipedia:
Spumone (from spuma or “foam”), plural spumoni, is a molded gelato (a lower-fat Italian form of ice cream) made with layers of different colors and flavors, usually containing candied fruits and nuts.
(from Wikipedia)
Biscuit Tortoni is an ice cream made with eggs and heavy cream, often containing chopped cherries or topped with minced almonds or crumbled macaroons. It is believed to be named after an Italian café owner in Paris in the 18th century.[1]
The dish has appeared on restaurant menus in the United States since 1899,[2] if not earlier.
As I have said many times before, there is no nostalgia quite a powerful as food nostalgia. Most of my life since 50 has been an attempt to recreate the eating experiences of my youth, so this Christmas I made and served tortoni to my dad and brothers. Nobody remembered either. My older brother said he would have preferred spumoni, but he said that just to hurt me. Everyone said the tortoni was excellent. It was very easy to make. I got the recipe from MyRecipes.com. This is the cheesy, simple version of tortoni. I made some slight changes.
Ingredients
- 1 (14 oz.) can Eagle Brand® Sweetened Condensed Milk
- 3 tablespoons lemon juice
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2/3 cup coconut macaroon crumbs, about 5 macaroons
- 1/2 cup slivered almonds, toasted
- 1/3 cup maraschino cherries, chopped
- 2 cups (1 pint) whipping cream, whipped
- 24 foil baking cups
- Garnishes: Semi-sweet chocolate curls, cherries, macaroon crumbs or almonds
How to Make It
Step 1
Beat sweetened condensed milk and lemon juice in large bowl with electric mixer until well blended. Stir in vanilla, macaroon crumbs, almonds and maraschino cherries. Fold in whipped cream.
[Change 1: I used a teaspoon of vanilla, a teaspoon of Marsala wine, and some amount less than a teaspoon of almond extract]
[Change 2: I used both green and red cherries that I chopped, but I chopped them fine and didn’t add them in until the folding in, because I didn’t want them to get pulverized]
[Change 3: I couldn’t find almond macaroons, so I used stella dora almond toast. I ground it up in a food processor. It made the tortoni slightly gritty. The second time I made the recipe, I used coconut macaroons. I think next time I will stick to the toast but use much less of it and sprinkle the remainder on top.]
[Change 4: I used slivered almonds and toasted them under the broiler before pulsing them in the food processor until they were chunks]
[Pro Tip: I would whip the shit out of the cream. Maybe someone will correct me, but I don’t think you run any risk of making it too stiff. If it isn’t stiff peak, the tortoni mixture doesn’t look as nice when you put it in the cups.]
Step 2
Fill baking cups with tortoni mixture. Garnish with chocolate curls, cherries, crumbs or almonds.
Step 3
Freeze 6 hours or until firm.
[I think I read somewhere that it is good for a couple of weeks. I used muffin tins. I let them set for a half hour or so, then took them out, covered them in cling film, then with aluminum foil. I was able to stack them in the freezer and the tortoni looked fine when I got them out.]
Others in This Series
- Why the best meals are the ones that you ate before 15 (6/8/2016)
- Toast (6/9/2016)
- Childhood Sweets: Fluff & Dusty Millers (6/19/2016)
- The BLT (8/17/17)
