- Not only Befana socks filled with candies, chocolate, chewing gum, mandarins and dried fruit and a little sweet charcoal as a warning for the pranks of the children of the house.
Epiphany has been celebrated at the table since ancient times throughout the rural world as a symbol of the rebirth of nature after the winter solstice.
For Catholics it recalls the first manifestation of Jesus with the adoration of the magi, and the offering of gifts.
Hence the tradition of giving rich sweets such as homemade biscuits or pastries on the occasion.
In Italy, due to the containment measures of the pandemic, this year on January 6 the restaurants are closed but there are many starred restaurants, from Vittorio in Brusaporto in the Bergamo area to Rosanna Marziale in Caserta, offering imaginative signature biscuits to take away .
While in Spain, in France, Holland and Belgium up to some areas of Switzerland the triumph is the gallette de rois, leavened cakes that hide a solid element inside.
Whoever finds it is designated king for a day by the friends of the banquet during the feast based on abundant libations to which, by tradition, even the poor were admitted.
Chef Fabio Campoli, on social networks and on the website promoters of taste, remembers that the cake of the kings is the international symbol of the Epiphany, a dessert dedicated to the Magi with the particularity of taking on different shapes, colors and ingredients.
In Rome, those who want to taste the French interpretation can enjoy, in delivery or with take away, the menu of the young chef Letizia Tognelli conceived for Le Carré Français which ranges from the Tarte of apples and foie gras to the cheese dessert and then the Galette de Rois or red fruit Pavlova.
Open 7 days a week and active 24 hours a day with the internal laboratories of the bakery and pastry shop, led by pastry chef Giancarlo Bruno, the brand of the Breton entrepreneur Jildaz Mahé also works at night as does the Befana, to ensure delivery of this traditional dessert that hides a bean or a bean or a coin as a lucky charm.
In Switzerland, the cake of the Magi is packaged with a round-shaped piece of leavened dough around which 5 or 6 smaller spheres of the same dough are arranged in each of which a porcelain figurine or other material is inserted that gives right, to whoever finds it, to the title of king, or according to the symbols, of prince, minister.
And for the Epiphany there is no lack of advice for pairings with the glass such as the Lombardy Wine Tourism Movement which, in a party so whitened by snow, suggests combining a typical leavened product like the Valtellinese bisciola with aged Lugana grappa.
In Friuli, chef Antonia Klugmann pays homage to the party with a stracchino cake from the Cividale dairy with pears and grapes with rosemary.
And with the cold and bad weather that rages from North to South in a party to be spent at home "even at Epiphany let us be amazed by simple things" is the claim of the socks of a well-known brand of the made in Italy confectionery industry.
(HANDLE).
