Recipe: Canistrelli

Name: Canistrelli
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 40 min
Total time: 50 min
Ingredients: Pour un saladier de Canistrelli :; 500 g de farine de blé ordinaire; 100 g d'huile d'olive; 100 g de sucre cristal (pas semoule); 1 pincée de sel fin; 1 bon verre de vin blanc sec corse, si possible, mais un vin aromatique du midi fera parfaitement l'affaire; 3 ou 4 cuillers à soupe de graines d'anis vert (si vous n'en trouvez pas, 1 petit verre à liqueur de pastis, mais c'est moins bien); 1 sachet de levure chimique

By Dubarry ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.3/5 (6 reviews) Desserts

Prep 10 min

Cook 40 min

Total 50 min

This is the most emblematic of Corsican dry cakes. You will find it very easily during your holidays in Corsica, sometimes in more or less outlandish « tourist » versions (vanilla, chestnut, or even chocolate!), quite often of rather ordinary quality with unidentified ingredients (unspecified vegetable fat), but with a little luck or research, you can find good ones, even excellent ones, mainly from artisan bakers and pastry chefs. There are as many recipes as there are micro-regions, or even families, and you will also read about various cooking methods.

Recette Canistrelli - Chef Patrick Asfaux — Photo: Stephane Dubarry@aftouch

Ingredients

For a bowl of Canistrelli:

500 g of ordinary wheat flour
100 g of olive oil
100 g of crystal sugar (not caster sugar)
1 pinch of fine salt
1 good glass of dry white Corsican wine, if possible, but an aromatic wine from southern France will work perfectly
3 or 4 tablespoons of green aniseed (if you cannot find any, 1 small liqueur glass of pastis, but it is less effective)
1 packet of baking powder

Step-by-step directions

1 Mix flour, sugar, salt, aniseed (if using seeds) and baking powder in a bowl and make a well in the centre.

2 Pour oil and wine into this well (and pastis if you are not using aniseed grains).

3 Mix with your fingertips, quickly and above all without kneading.

4 Spread the dough by hand with the palm of your hand to a thickness of about 2 cm (a rolling pin is not essential but preferable), sprinkle finely with crystal sugar and press the grains onto the dough with the palm of your hand.

5 Cut with a knife into pieces of about 6 cm in length (make slightly irregular cuts to stay true to tradition: see the photo, historically canistrelli were often cut in a V shape) and place them slightly apart on a baking sheet with the usual precautions.

6 Bake for approximately 40 minutes in a preheated moderate oven (thermostat 5/150 °C): they should be golden brown. As the cooking aroma spreads through the kitchen, you will be transported closer to the island.

7 Enjoy dipped in a glass of well-chilled Corsican Muscat wine or with coffee in the afternoon. These canistrelli keep very well in a dry tin.

Chef Patrick's Comment

A good regional recipe, if you find green anise it will be a plus. In some old recipes, the sugar in the dough was replaced by mountain honey and the canistrelli were moistened with milk before baking.

Specialite culinaire de corse Choucroute au vin blanc Au café Dessert à l'anis