"Italian" Ricotta Cheese Pie (Torta di Ricotta)

One of my favorite cookbooks is Susan Purdy’s As Easy As Pie (Atheneum, New York, 1984), a book I found about 12 years ago at Strand, the large used bookstore on Fulton Street in Manhattan.  From it you can learn about the history of pies from Biblical times to the New World.  You can also learn what makes an American pie (“any pastry crust with a sweet or savory filling baked in a shallow round dish with a slanted sides”) a tart (a European cousin of the American pie with only a bottom crust and baked in straight-sided pans), and that deep-dish pies are always baked in deeper plates with a top but without a bottom crust.  What I appreciate the most about this book are the author's detailed instructions on pie making, from pastry-making techniques to how to make different types of pastry dough by using a variety of flours and fats, or by adding to the dough other ingredients such as nuts and chocolate.  I equally appreciate that each recipe even highlights what can be prepared in advance and that through the book Susan Purdy provides tips and hints on how to deal with problems commonly encountered in pie making.  In sum, it’s a book I can’t do without when I want to bake a pie. 

That’s why I found myself flipping through its pages when I wanted to make a pie to bring to a friend’s party.  I wanted to use ricotta as the main ingredient for its filling because I had some in the house that needed to be used.  Her recipe for Italian Ricotta Cheese Pie (Torta di Ricotta) suggests using one of four different types of crust: Basic All-Purpose Flaky Pastry, Sherry Pastry Variation, Nut Pastry Variation, or Cream Cheese Pastry.  I went for the basic recipe because I still have a lot to learn and wanted to check how using vegetable shortening (Crisco) affected the texture of the crust to compare with my recollection of the oil pastry I had made for the rice and mushroom pie (September).   I put no sugar in the crust dough to limit the level of sweetness of the pie.  Even though I don’t think this is an Italian crust (in Italy we don’t have Crisco), the result was good and interesting.  In any case, this is not a traditional Italian cheese cake because a traditional Italian cake would use mascarpone or some other creamy Italian cheese or some cream, and not processed, American cream cheese.

One common problem in making cheese cake is the development of surface cracks, and my cake was not immune to it.  Surface cracks can develop by over-beating the eggs that traps additional air in the batter which tries to escape when it expands while baking in the oven.  They can also be due to sudden changes in temperature.I think that in my case the latter was the cause of the deep slash in the middle of the top of the pie because it only developed after I removed the cake from the oven.  (For interesting and useful tips on making cheese cake, read http://www.dianasdesserts.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/bakingtips.cheesecakes/Cheesecakes.cfm) Probably, I should have turned the oven off few minutes earlier and at that point let it finish baking for few more minutes before cooling at room temperature.  This is another lesson learned.  Nevertheless, the ricotta pie tasted good and was proclaimed by everybody “blog-worthy”.  

Ingredients (for 11-inch pie):

For the pastry:

1 ½ cups all purpose flour

½ tsp salt

6 Tbs unsalted butter, chilled

3 Tbs Crisco

1 teaspoon lemon juice

3 Tbs ice water

1 egg yoke (optional)

Filling:

1 ¾ lb whole or reduced fat ricotta

3 eggs

1 cup granulated sugar

1 package (8 ounce) cream cheese, cut up in small chunks

1 tsp almond extract

1 ½ dark chocolate chips

To make the pastry:

1. Combine flour and saltin the bowl of the mixer or a large bowl. If using a mixer, beat the butter and Crisco together with the dry ingredients at low speed until the mixture looks like dry rice.  If you use your hands to combine the ingredients, incorporate the fats into the dry ingredients using only your finger tips or a pastry blender to limit warming the mixture and melting the fats. (You may want to put the bowl in the refrigerator for ½ before starting making the pastry to help keeping the mixture cool while you work it).
2. Add the liquid ingredients to the mixture a little at a time to control the amount of liquid you add to the pastry.  The amount of liquid you need will vary according to the humidity in the environment.  If you use a mixer, beat the ingredients at low-medium speed until the dough clumps around the paddle.  If you mix the ingredients by hand, work the dough until it clumps together but before it forms a ball to avoid overworking it.
3. Put the dough on a sheet of wax paper and form a ball.  Wrap it and put in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. 
4. After the dough is chilled, set the ball of dough on a lightly floured, large piece of wax paper, and pat it down to a disk.  Using a lightly floured rolling pin and moving from the center to the side, create a disk about 1/8 inch thick and 13 inches in diameter. 
5. Put the baking dish over the dough and flip the latter over it.  Press the dough down against the bottom and wall of the baking dish.  The dough should hang about ¾  to 1 inch over the border of the pie dish. Cut off the excessive dough. Fold the dough around the rim and pinch it with your fingertips to flute the border of the pie shell.
6. Pre-heat the oven at 425 F degrees.  With the tines of a fork, prick the pastry all over the bottom, and chill it until firm, 15-20 minutes.  Then put the pie crust in the oven for about 10 minutes to partially blind bake it. Cool it on a wire rack and lower the oven temperature to 350 F degrees.

To make the filling:

1. If using freshly made ricotta, or if it looks like it has some liquid (the one I used being low fat and commercial did not have any liquid!), press it in a strainer over a bowl to remove extra fluid.
2. In a mixing bowl beat the eggs well.  Brush some of the beaten eggs over the pie shell to seal it against the moisture of the filling. Add the sugar into the eggs and beat them for 2-3 minutes.  Add ricotta, cream cheese, and almond extract, to the eggs and sugar mixture and beat it until smooth.  Stir into it the chocolate chips.

Baking the pie:

1. Pour the filling into the pie shell making sure not to overflow it.  Bake it in the center of the preheated oven for 45 minutes.  Turn the oven off and remove the pie from the oven after about 10 minutes.  Cool it on a wire rack.  Serve it either warm or at room temperature.