Italian Piedmont Seirass Cream | Coppa Sabauda
Coppa Sabauda is a Piedmontese cup dessert built on seirass, the whey ricotta of the western Alpine valleys, and it is far lighter than the mascarpone desserts most people associate with the region. Marsala raisins sit at the bottom of the glass, a loose seirass cream fills it, a dark amarena gel cuts through the middle and a shard of hazelnut praline supplies the only hard texture. Nothing is cooked once the glass is assembled, so every component has to be right before it goes in.
Yield: 4 cups. Prep: 45 minutes. Cook: 15 minutes. Chill: 4 hours. Total: about 5 hours. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: dolce. Region: Piedmont, the Alpine valleys west of Turin.
The Story
Seirass is the Piedmontese name for ricotta, and the word travels with a specific meaning. It is made in the valleys west and southwest of Turin, the Val Pellice, the Valle Po and the Valli di Lanzo, from the whey left over once a toma or a mountain cow milk cheese has been drained. The whey is reheated, the remaining proteins rise, and the cook skims them off: a second cheese pulled out of what would otherwise be waste. The most famous version, seirass del fen, is drained in cloth and then rolled in mountain hay, which dries the surface and leaves a faint grassy note on the rind. It has been sold in the Turin markets for centuries and it remains, in its own valleys, a breakfast and dessert cheese rather than a filling for pasta.
The dessert format around it is Turinese rather than Alpine. The confectioners of the Savoy capital built their reputation on the coppa, a layered cup served cold in a glass, and on the use of fortified wine in pastry: Marsala reached the Piedmontese kitchen through the same trade that made zabaione a Turin signature, and raisins plumped in it are one of the oldest sweet garnishes in the city's repertoire. Amarene, the small sour cherries preserved in syrup, arrived from Emilia and Piedmont adopted them as the acidic counterweight to anything creamy.
The hazelnut is the local element that ties it together. The Tonda Gentile of the Langhe is the finest Italian hazelnut and the reason Piedmont invented gianduia, and a plain sugar praline made with it appears in every Turin pastry shop. Coppa Sabauda is not an ancient recipe with a documented origin; it is the obvious Piedmontese assembly, and the name simply records whose kitchen it belongs to. Sabaudo is the adjective for the House of Savoy.
Ingredients
For the seirass cream
Fresh seirass, or whole milk ricotta, 2 cups (450 g)
Heavy cream, cold, 3/4 cup (180 ml)
Confectioners sugar, 1/2 cup (60 g)
Egg yolks, large, 3
Dry Marsala Superiore, 3 tbsp (45 ml)
Granulated sugar, 2 tbsp (25 g)
Finely grated lemon zest, from 1/2 lemon
Fine sea salt, 1 small pinch
For the Marsala raisins
Golden raisins, 1/3 cup (50 g)
Dry Marsala Superiore, 1/4 cup (60 ml)
Granulated sugar, 1 tsp (4 g)
For the amarena gel
Amarena cherries in syrup, drained, 1/2 cup (120 g)
Syrup from the jar, 1/4 cup (60 ml)
Water, 2 tbsp (30 ml)
Lemon juice, 1 tsp (5 ml)
Cornstarch, 1 tsp (3 g)
For the hazelnut praline
Peeled hazelnuts, Tonda Gentile if possible, 1/2 cup (70 g)
Granulated sugar, 1/3 cup (65 g)
Water, 1 tbsp (15 ml)
Fine sea salt, 1 small pinch
For finishing
Whole amarena cherries, 4
Crushed praline, 2 tbsp, reserved from above
Finely grated lemon zest, a little per glass
Preparation
Step 1: Draining and tasting the seirass
Set the seirass in a fine mesh sieve over a bowl, cover it and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, or overnight if it is very wet. Discard the whey that collects. Then taste a teaspoon of the drained cheese on its own, cold and unsweetened, and decide how acidic it is before you commit to any sugar quantity. Keep it refrigerated until the moment you use it.
Step 2: Plumping the raisins in Marsala
Warm the Marsala with the teaspoon of sugar in a small saucepan until it is just below a simmer, then pull it off the heat and add the raisins. Let them stand at room temperature for at least 1 hour. They should end up plump and heavy with barely any liquid left around them. Drain them properly before they go into the glass, because loose Marsala thins the cream above.
Step 3: Cooking the Marsala and yolk base
Whisk the yolks with the granulated sugar and the 3 tablespoons of Marsala in a bowl set over barely simmering water. Whisk continuously for 6 to 8 minutes, until the mixture is pale, thick enough to hold a ribbon and reads 165F (74C). That temperature makes the yolks safe and thickens them without scrambling. Take the bowl off the heat the moment it reaches it.
Step 4: Cooling the base completely
Set the bowl over ice water and whisk until the base is at refrigerator temperature, no warmer. This step is not optional and it is the one most often rushed. A base that is even slightly warm will slacken the seirass and melt the whipped cream on contact, and the finished cream will never recover the body it should have. Scrape it down and keep it cold.
Step 5: Building the seirass base
Press the drained seirass through the fine mesh sieve into a cold bowl, then work it with a spatula, not a whisk, until it is completely smooth. Fold in the cooled Marsala base, the confectioners sugar, the lemon zest and the salt. Taste again now and adjust the sugar upward if the acidity is still forward. Stop as soon as the mixture is uniform.
Step 6: Folding in the whipped cream
Whip the cold heavy cream to soft peaks only, the stage where it still slumps off the whisk. Fold a third of it into the seirass base to loosen it, then fold in the rest in two additions with a wide spatula, cutting down and lifting rather than stirring. Stop while a few faint streaks are still visible. Spoon it into the glasses over the drained raisins and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
Step 7: Cooking the amarena gel
Blend the drained cherries with the syrup, the water and the lemon juice to a coarse puree. Slake the cornstarch in a tablespoon of cold water, stir it in, and bring the mixture to a simmer in a small saucepan for 1 minute, stirring, until it coats a spoon lightly. Cool it completely before it touches the cream.
Step 8: Setting the hazelnut praline
Toast the hazelnuts at 325F (165C) for 8 to 10 minutes, until fragrant. Cook the sugar with the water in a small heavy pan, without stirring, to a medium amber caramel, add the salt and the warm nuts, swirl once to coat and pour onto a lined tray. Let it set hard, then break half of it into shards and crush the rest.
Plating
Serve in clear glasses, straight sided and narrow rather than wide, so the diner reads the layers from the side: dark raisins at the base, pale cream above, a stripe of amarena gel near the top. Chill the glasses along with the filled cream for the last 30 minutes. A cold glass keeps the cream firm for the ten minutes it takes to eat it.
Spoon about 2 teaspoons of the cooled gel over the surface and let it find its own edges instead of spreading it. Stand one praline shard upright in the cream, off centre, so it stays dry and audible under the spoon. Add a single whole amarena, a small scatter of crushed praline and a little lemon zest. Nothing else belongs on top, and the praline goes on at the last second.
Professional Technique
Seirass is not ricotta as the rest of Italy understands it, and that is the whole technical problem of this dessert. It is a whey cheese from cow milk, recovered from the liquid left behind by another cheese, so it starts out considerably leaner than a sheep milk ricotta and it carries a sharper lactic edge. Two consequences follow. The first is stability: fat is what holds a cold dairy cream in suspension, and a seirass base has less of it, so the finished cream tastes lighter on the palate but stands up worse in the glass. It will slump if it is asked to hold for more than a day or if any component leaks liquid into it. The second is acidity, which has to be balanced rather than covered, either with more sugar or with a fatty dairy addition, cream or a spoonful of mascarpone, that buffers the acid with fat instead of masking it with flavour.
So judge the acidity before anything else. Take a teaspoon of the drained cheese on its own, at refrigerator temperature, with no sugar on it. A good seirass reads milky and faintly sweet, with the sourness arriving late and fading quickly. If the sour note arrives first and sits on the tongue afterwards, the cheese is older or the whey was more acidic than usual: raise the confectioners sugar by about 2 teaspoons and add an extra tablespoon of cream for every cup of cheese, and do it at the base stage. Correcting after the whipped cream is folded in means beating a set mixture and losing exactly the air you just worked into it.
Texture and Moisture Control
The mechanical rule is that seirass gets smoothed, never whipped, and always cold. Its low butterfat means it takes up almost no air on its own, and whatever little it does take up collapses within minutes because there is not enough fat to hold a wall around the bubbles. Beaten in a stand mixer it looks promising for half a minute and then turns grainy and weeps, and no further folding brings it back. Push it through a sieve cold, work it with a spatula only until it is uniform, and let a separately whipped cream supply all the air at the end.
Water is the other enemy, and every component is a potential source of it. Undrained seirass keeps releasing whey into the glass and leaves a thin pale pool at the bottom within hours. Raisins that go in still wet with Marsala do the same from below. A gel cooked too briefly will run down through the cream instead of sitting on it. Drain hard, cool everything to refrigerator temperature before it meets the cream, and keep the praline in a sealed jar away from the refrigerator, since caramel pulls moisture out of cold air and goes tacky in under an hour.
Professional Mise en Place
This dessert is almost entirely advance work, with only the gel and the praline going on at service. Organise it so the seirass has its full draining time.
Equipment and tools
Fine mesh sieve, and a second smaller one for the cheese
Heatproof bowl for the water bath, plus a bowl of ice water
Wide silicone spatula, balloon whisk, digital thermometer
Small heavy saucepan for the caramel, lined tray
Four clear straight sided glasses
Prepared ahead
Seirass drained and tasted, up to 1 day ahead, refrigerated
Marsala raisins, up to 3 days ahead, drained on the day
Amarena gel, up to 3 days ahead, refrigerated in a sealed jar
Praline, up to 5 days ahead, in a sealed jar at room temperature
Cream assembled and glasses filled, up to 1 day ahead
Service setup
Filled glasses at the back of the refrigerator, covered
Gel at refrigerator temperature in a small spoon jar
Praline shards and crushed praline in separate sealed containers
Whole amarene drained on paper, lemon and zester ready
Spoons chilled, glasses wiped before they leave the kitchen
Chef Tips
Buy seirass from a Piedmontese cheesemonger if you can, and ask when it was made. Anything more than four days old is noticeably more acidic and you will spend the whole recipe compensating. If only supermarket ricotta is available, choose the whole milk one in a basket rather than a tub, and expect to use slightly less sugar.
Use a dry Marsala Superiore, not a sweet one and not a cooking Marsala. The sweet bottlings push the whole dessert into confectionery and flatten the seirass, and the cheap cooking versions carry added salt that shows up immediately in a cold cream.
Make the praline on a dry day if you have the choice, and do not cover it while it is still warm. Trapped steam softens caramel from the inside and a shard that went into the jar brittle can come out bendy the next morning.
If the finished cream is looser than you want after chilling, do not whisk it. Fold in 2 tablespoons of additional cream whipped to firm peaks, gently, and give it another hour in the refrigerator.
Common Mistakes
Skipping the draining. Seirass holds far more whey than it looks as though it does, and an undrained cheese guarantees a watery pool under the cream within a few hours. Two hours in a sieve is the minimum and overnight is better.
Whipping the seirass. It is too lean to take air and it breaks down into a grainy, weeping mass under a whisk or a mixer. Sieve it and work it with a spatula, and let the whipped cream do the aerating.
Folding into a warm yolk base. A base that has not been cooled to refrigerator temperature will slacken the cheese and melt the cream on contact. Cool it over ice water and check it with a finger before it goes anywhere near the seirass.
Sweetening blind. Seirass acidity varies from batch to batch, so a fixed sugar quantity will sometimes give a sour dessert and sometimes a cloying one. Taste the drained cheese alone first, then adjust at the base stage.
Adding the praline early. Caramel absorbs moisture from cold air quickly and a shard set into the cream an hour ahead loses its snap completely. It goes on as the glass leaves the kitchen.
Wine Pairing
Moscato d'Asti DOCG: The Piedmontese answer and the safest one. Its low alcohol, around 5 percent, keeps it from overwhelming a lean dairy cream, and the soft carbonation lifts the fat off the palate between spoonfuls. The peach and orange blossom aromatics sit alongside the lemon zest rather than competing with it, while the residual sugar is high enough to stay sweeter than the dessert, which is the one rule that cannot be broken with a sweet wine.
Brachetto d'Acqui DOCG: A sweet red from the same corner of Piedmont, lightly sparkling and very low in tannin, which is what makes it safe with dairy. It is built on red fruit, strawberry and wild rose, and it meets the amarena gel directly instead of working around it. Serve it at 46F (8C) in a small glass. Its modest alcohol and gentle acidity keep the seirass tasting fresh rather than heavy.
Vin Santo del Chianti Classico DOC: The choice for the hazelnut side of the dessert. Aged oxidatively in small barrels, it develops dried apricot, orange peel and a pronounced toasted nut character that mirrors the praline caramel rather than contrasting with it. It also brings more acidity than most passito wines, which cuts the cream, and enough alcohol to carry the sweetness without becoming syrupy.
Moscato di Scanzo DOCG: A dried grape red from Lombardy, rare and worth finding, and the match for the Marsala raisins at the bottom of the glass. Its raisin, dried rose and candied peel profile is the same flavour family as the plumped fruit, and its tannin is soft enough not to clash with the cheese. Pour it in small measures, since the alcohol runs high and the dessert is deliberately light.
Storage & Reheating
This is a cold dessert with nothing to reheat, so storage is about holding each component dry. The assembled glasses keep covered in the refrigerator for 24 hours, without the gel and without the praline. Past that the seirass begins to release whey and the cream loses its body, since there is not enough butterfat to hold it indefinitely. The amarena gel keeps for 3 days in a sealed jar in the refrigerator and the Marsala raisins for 3 days in their liquid.
Praline keeps for 5 days in an airtight jar at room temperature with a little rice at the bottom to absorb moisture, and never in the refrigerator, where it turns tacky overnight. Do not freeze any part of this dessert: the seirass cream separates irreversibly on thawing and the gel weeps. If you need to get ahead further than a day, hold the drained cheese, the raisins, the gel and the praline separately and assemble the glasses on the day you serve them.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 4 cups:
Calories: 540 kcal
Total Fat: 31 g
Saturated Fat: 16 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Unsaturated Fat: 13 g
Cholesterol: 205 mg
Sodium: 130 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 52 g
Fiber: 2 g
Total Sugars: 45 g
Added Sugars: 31 g
Protein: 15 g
Lactose: 5 g
Principal micronutrients: calcium, phosphorus, vitamin A, vitamin E, riboflavin, selenium
These figures are estimates and depend on how much whey the seirass gives up in draining.
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