Friday, August 23, 2013

Paste Secche (Almond Bread/Biscotti)

It's the name that confuses me!

Half of the phone conversation was spent trying to describe the next thing I wanted to make with Nonna. "You know, those biscuits with the almonds in them?  They were really crunchy?  And thin?"
It turns out that there are a lot of different types of crunchy Italian biscuits containing almonds.
"You sometimes have them in your cupboard!"  That wasn't a useful statement either!

Finally a light bulb went on somewhere.
"Paste Secche! You want to make past secche.  Almond bread."




This is what happens when you grow up in a bilingual family which uses a Southern Italian dialect and then decides you only get to learn proper Italian.  Which is different, by the way, from the language my grandparents speak.

Or maybe I just never caught the name of the thin, crunchy almond biscuits I used to eat at an alarming rate.  They are so thin you see, you can eat about 17 at once.




And now the best part is that I know they are almost as easy to make as they are to eat - four ingredients, two trips into the oven, and a very sharp knife.