Twice a year, Houstonian Ann Iverson hosts award-winning cookbook author and Italian cooking teacher Giuliano Hazan in her home kitchen for a series of intimate cooking classes that are open to the public. Each class includes a four-course meal that students prepare under Hazan’s guidance, plus regional Italian wines to guzzle while learning, cooking and eating during the four-hour class. This fall’s dates are November 4, 5 and 6, and you can find out more here.

In the meantime, just to tantalize, Hazan has provided SideDish with the following recipe, which will appear in his new cookbook, Hazan Family Favorites, to be published next spring.

NONNA MARY’S CIAMBELLA
By Giuliano Hazan
© 2011

“When I was growing up in New York, from third grade through high school, I was blessed with the opportunity to spend my summers in Italy. I would stay with my grandmother in Cesenatico, hang out at the beach with my friends and eat the wonderful food my grandmother cooked. I have never become accustomed to the traditional American breakfast of eggs and fried pork products or even cereal. Some fresh bread with butter and jam and caffélatte is my preferred breakfast, with the proportion of coffee to milk increasing as I got older.

“But even better than bread and butter is a breakfast sweet, such as my grandmother’s ciambella. She always seemed to have some on hand. It’s very easy to make and keeps wonderfully well on the kitchen counter for as long as a week. It may well keep even longer, but I’ve never been able to resist eating it for long enough to find out. The classic shape of a ciambella is a ring; in fact, there is a saying for when something doesn’t work out, non tutte le ciambelle riescono col buco, which means, “not all ciambelle come out with a hole.” My grandmother always made hers in the shape of a loaf and it was no less delicious for it, and that is how I still prefer to make it.”

INGREDIENTS

3 cups all-purpose flour
¾ cup sugar
2 Tbsp.whole milk
3 eggs
1 Tbsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. salt
12 Tbsp. unsalted butter (1½ sticks)
1 lemon

METHOD: Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Put the flour, sugar, milk and 2 of the eggs in a food processor. Add the baking powder and salt taking care not to put one on top of the other or the salt may inhibit the action of the baking powder. Cut the butter into at least a dozen pieces. Grate the zest of the lemon taking care not to dig into the white pith. Add the butter and lemon zest to the other ingredients and run the processor until a dough is formed.

Transfer the dough to a counter and knead it gently until you obtain a smooth ball of dough. Shape the dough into a loaf about 12 inches long and 3 inches wide. Place it on a baking sheet that has been buttered and floured or lined with a nonstick baking mat. Separate the remaining egg, placing the yolk in a small bowl and discarding the egg white. Add 2 teaspoons water and whisk the yolk. Make 4 or 5 shallow diagonal cuts on top of the dough and brush the surface with the yolk and water mixture. Bake in the preheated oven for 35 minutes. When ready, the ciambella should be golden brown and feel fairly firm when prodded. Yield: 1 loaf.