Just like breakfast in Italy.
Recipe:
Orange Flower Pine Nut Torta
The flavor of orange flower water haunts my culinary dreams. It’s made from the flowers of bitter oranges, the entire idea of this stuff, including the pretty little bottles it comes in, gets me a little crazy (strangely, the bitter oranges have the sweetest blossoms, and that’s why they’re used). I have occasionally woken up from naps smelling it. The aroma is more of perfume, a light citrus perfume, than it is of citrus straight. It doesn’t smell like orange zest; it smells like flowers. I get whiffs of it every so often while I’m cooking anything to do with ricotta, since orange flower water was a component of the best ricotta cheesecakes from my childhood. I now consider that cake to be incomplete without it, and many Italian bakers in New York now leave it out. Why would they do that? I’ve tasted orange extract used as a replacement, a flavor that not only is nothing like orange flower water but is just a load of chemicals. (more…)
Erica De Mane 