In the Rascard Restaurant kitchen, jams and preserves are still prepared as our grandmothers did at home.
Or as it would now be better to say our great-grandmothers. The ingredients are fresh fruit, with a preference for the excellences of our territory such as Renette apples and Martin Sec pears, sugar, flavorings and of course a lot of patience. Because every step is performed strictly by hand.
It is from the union of our jam, prepared according to the original recipe, with shortcrust pastry, made with fresh butter from the pastures of the Aosta Valley, that our jam and marmalade tarts are born. A dessert that encapsulates the flavors of yesteryear.
The secret to a perfect and delicious fruit tart is in the choice of butter for the pastry and fruit for the filling. For this reason we use only fresh butter from the pastures of the Aosta Valley for the dough, prepared from cows fed exclusively on the grasses of our pastures.
And for the filling we choose the excellences of fruit growing in our region: the Renetta apple with its fine and fragrant flesh, the Martin Sec pear with its sweet and aromatic taste, and the berries, picked and immediately used in our kitchen so that we can savor all their freshness.
Cake with apricots is a mouthwatering dessert where the soft flesh of this velvety summer fruit sinks into a soft shortcrust pastry.
For this cake we choose apricots from the Wachau, a quality grown in Alpine regions and famous throughout Italy for its full shape and sweet, juicy flavor.
Coffee, chocolate or berry panna cotta:
We prepare panna cotta using fresh milk and cream from the farms of Valtournenche.
We then offer it in three versions to satisfy every taste. With coffee for those who want to end their meal with a dessert with a stimulating taste. With chocolate for those who can never give up the pleasure of cocoa. Berry flavored for those who also like to smell the scent of forest fruits at the table.
Hazelnut semifreddo the main ingredient is Tonde Gentili Trilobate hazelnuts, a quality Piedmontese cultivar considered the finest Italian hazelnut.
The berry semifreddo is prepared with typical products from the undergrowth of our valley: freshly picked strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries.
There are at least five thousand varieties of apples in the world. If we multiply each of them by the thousands of ways to cook them, the result is a boundless universe of delicious dishes, such as our caged apples.
The main ingredient in this baked dessert is the Renetta Canada apple, the true queen of the Aosta Valley orchards. This particular quality combines a refined and pleasantly tart flavor with special antioxidant qualities that are invaluable for health.
After cleaning it, we stuff it with jam, then place it in the center of a thick layer of puff pastry, wrapping it to form a small bundle.
We brush its surface with beaten egg and bake it in the oven for half an hour so that a golden, crispy crust forms.
Perhaps it is because of the goodness of apples from our region or because the harshness of life in the mountains taught us to transform what little food we had into delicious dishes, the fact is that the recipe for apple pie from the Aosta Valley is so special that it deserves the title of ancient apple pie.
As was once done, we also prepare the dough today with dry bread soaked in milk, sugar, eggs, yeast, honey, white flour and toasted yellow flour.
For the apples we choose Renetta Canada apples with fine, fragrant flesh that precisely in cakes express their qualities to the fullest. Once the cake has come out of the oven, it is hard to resist the temptation to immediately eat a steaming hot slice.
We prepare this with melted dark chocolate chips that we patiently mix by hand with fresh eggs and mountain butter.
At one time Bavarese was considered an entremêt, a sweet or savory dish served as a culinary interlude between two important courses. Over time it has risen to the status of a dessert, especially popular because it manages to combine the creaminess of puddings with the elegant shape of cakes.
This spoon dessert lends itself to a thousand interpretations. We chose to flavor it with an assortment of those juicy berries that grow wild in our valley.
In the grand spectacle of the Alps, strudel undoubtedly occupies the leading role in the confectionery scene. This German name alone is enough to bring to the minds of adults and children alike images of enchanted valleys, cloud-crowned mountains and fragrant forests.
Every cook has his or her favorite apple for making strudel. We choose Renetta Canada, the symbol of the fruit-growing tradition of the Aosta Valley, which because of its fine, fragrant flesh is among the most suitable for all confectionery processing.
Crema di Cogne is a classic recipe of Aosta Valley confectionery. It is a spoon dessert that can be enjoyed either alone or accompanied with ladyfingers or with Valdostan tegole, thin cookies made with chopped almonds and hazelnuts.
Crème caramel pudding is the most famous of all spoon desserts. We cook it the way our grandmothers did. We boil milk, sugar, lemon zest and vanilla while whisking eggs in a bowl. We then pour the milk slowly over the eggs so as not to cook them. We then pour the mixture into the molds, which already contain the homemade caramel, and complete cooking in a bain-marie oven.
The perfect crème caramel is creamy but at the same time so firm that it holds its shape perfectly when it comes off the mold.
Bonet is a pudding whose recipe originated in the Piedmontese Langhe in the 18th century. Its name was inspired by the shape of the copper mold where it is baked, similar to that of a headdress that was fashionable at the time called "bonet."
It is a dessert with a pleasantly bitter taste, created from crumbled macaroons mixed with sugar, bitter cocoa, eggs, milk and cream. It does not lack an alcoholic note provided by a spoonful of brandy.