Ricciarelli di Siena

Ricciarelli require three things: excellent almonds, proper technique, and the willingness to wait. Americans want to mix and bake in the same hour. These cookies refuse such treatment. The dough must rest overnight. The shaped cookies must rest again before baking. Time is an ingredient here, as essential as the almonds themselves.

There is no flour in these cookies. The almonds provide all the structure. This means the quality of your almonds determines everything. Stale almonds, rancid almonds, almonds that have sat in a warehouse for a year: these will betray you. Seek out almonds that smell sweet and fresh when you grind them. The fragrance of good almonds is the fragrance of these cookies.

The technique is unusual. You grind the almonds to a powder, mix them with sugar and barely loosened egg whites, then wait. The overnight rest transforms the sticky mass into something workable. The second rest, after shaping, creates the thin crust that cracks so beautifully in the oven's gentle heat. Skip either rest and you will wonder why your cookies do not look like the ones in Siena's pastry shop windows.

Simple does not mean easy. It never has.