Frustingo · Frustingo Marchigiano (Bostrengo)
Marche · dolce · serves 12 · 240 min total · easy
An ancient peasant Christmas dolce of the Marche hills, surviving in dozens of village variants from Ascoli Piceno to Pesaro. "Frustingo" comes from frustum, the Latin scrap — the cake of leftovers: dry bread, end-of-harvest nuts, last figs of summer dried in the autumn sun, sapa from October's grape pressing. Made the week before Christmas; ripens until Epiphany.
Ingredients
- 400 g dried figs
- 150 g walnuts, chopped
- 100 g almonds, chopped
- 80 g hazelnuts
- 150 g sultanas
- 60 g pine nuts
- 100 g dark chocolate, chopped
- 30 g unsweetened cocoa
- 120 g dry breadcrumbs
- 80 ml olive oil
- 150 ml sapa (cooked grape must) or vincotto
- 1 orange orange zest
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 0.5 tsp grated nutmeg
- 0.5 tsp black pepper
Method
- Stem the figs, cover with hot water, leave to soften 1 hour. Drain, reserving the soaking liquid, and chop roughly.
- Toast the walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts and pine nuts in a dry pan until fragrant. Chop coarsely.
- In a wide bowl, combine the figs, all the nuts, sultanas, chocolate, breadcrumbs, cocoa, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, orange zest.
- Pour over the olive oil and sapa. Add enough of the fig soaking liquid to make a sticky, heavy mixture — it should hold its shape on a spoon, not pour.
- Line a round 24 cm tin with baking paper, oiled. Mound the mixture in, pressing flat so it is 3 cm thick.
- Decorate the top with whole almonds in a rosette and a few pine nuts.
- Bake at 160°C (320°F) for 70–80 minutes — the top sets, no longer wet to the touch.
- Cool completely in the tin. Wrap in baking paper and rest at least 2 days before cutting — the flavour deepens to almost-port.
- Cut into small wedges (it is very rich) and serve with a dessert wine.