Asure (Noah's pudding)

For ➍
125 g barley or pearl barley (or a grain product like Ebly)
4 tbs rice
75 g sugar
1 ts vanilla extract (or 1 small package vanilla)
1 tbs custard powder (or 125 g drained chickpeas)*
water
8 dry apricots, soaked in water overnight, cut in pieces***
4 dry figs, cut in pieces***
4 tbs ½ cup raisins***
2 tbs cup walnuts, crumbled, for garnish

Boil the barley and rice in separate pans. Drain.
Mix barley, rice, chickpeas* and other ingredients*** (except walnuts), add some water**, and let cook for 30 m. Stir occasionally.
Pour into a large service bowl or individual serving bowls and let cool for 2 h.

*When using custard powder, mix it with 2 tbs of warm milk. Use Turkish asure powder instead. Adjust the sugar, as the asure powder is very sweet. Or use chickpeas to thicken.
**Any amount you see fit: the lesser, the thicker the pudding will become.
***Save some of the fruit to garnish the pudding.

This recipe is one of the oldest and best known desserts of Turkish cuisine. It is traditional to give some away to friends and family, and stems from a popular Middle East legend, echoed in the Bible. The feast is still repeated every year by the Islamic community. The recipe uses the age-old habit of making sweets with beans and cereals (instead of modern sugar) and dates back from at least the Ottoman times.
...5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, Noah was king of the city of Shuruppak. His was a trade empire, and he built a large trading ship. At that time, there was a raging flood and rainstorm. He and his family loaded animals, grain, fruit and beer on board. The rain continued for 40 days. Afterwards there was no land in sight for 7 days. They ran out of drinking water and since the sea was salty, they had to resort to drinking beer. They eventually landed on Mount Ararat, still one of the most spectacular sights on earth, now bordering the Armenian region of Turkey, close to the Iranian border. As a celebration for their survival, Noah made a pudding out of some cereals, dried beans and fruits for his family...
The image shows an old etching of Mount Ararat and the Lake Van.

Zuppa Inglese (Italian trifle)

For ➍-➏
200 g Savoiardi or ladyfingers biscuits
75 cl milk
50 g flour
100 g sugar
30 g bitter cocoa powder
4 egg yolks
10 cl of rum
10 cl Alkermes or other aromatic liqueur, for example Strega or Amaretto (or use a self-made quick coffee liquor)
whipped cream & maraschino cherries for decoration

Have ready a deep, smooth-sided mold, lined with aluminum foil or oiled paper.

Put all but 10 cl of the milk in a pot. Heat over a very gentle flame.

Beat the yolks in a deep bowl with 75 g sugar, then sift in the flour, beating steadily.

Put the remaining sugar in another pot,d mix the cocoa into it, stir 2 tbs of cold milk into the mixture. Heat it over a low flame, avoiding lumps.

Gently stir the remaining cold milk into the egg mixture. Stirring constantly, add the hot milk to the cream. When the cream is well mixed, gently pour it back into the pot. Return it to the slow burner. Heat, stirring, until it barely reaches a boil, and cook for 2 m, stirring gently. Remove the pot from the fire, pour half the cream into a bowl, and gently stir the chocolate into the remaining half to obtain both pastry cream and chocolate cream.

Mix the rum and liquor with 5 cl of water in a bowl, brush the Savoiardi lightly with the mixture, and use them to line the pudding mold.

Pour the pastry cream over the Savoiardi. Cover it with a layer of brushed Savoiardi, and finish with the chocolate cream, followed by a final layer of brushed Savoiardi. Cover the pudding with aluminum foil and chill it in the refrigerator for at least 12 h.

Remove the foil, cover the mold with a serving dish and upend it, so the pudding comes to rest upon the serving dish. Remove the aluminum or oiled paper of the mold.

Serve it either chilled, or partially frozen. Decorate with dollops of whipped cream, and maraschino cherries cut in half.

'Zuppa Inglese' (meaning: English soup) is a close variant of an English trifle, especially common in Tuscany, because the English tourists who lived in the region a century ago often asked for it. Recipes first appeared in the towns of the Emilia-Romagna region, in the late 19th century. Some date it back to the 16th century kitchens of the Ferrara Dukes of Este, who asked their cooks to recreate English trifle.

Sophia Loren's tiramisu

For ➑
3 eggs, separated
5 tbs sugar
170 g mascarpone
36 Savoiardi (lady finger biscuits)
25 cl orange liqueur
25 cl espresso coffee
50 g black chocolate, grated
10 g cocoa powder (or 50 bittersweet chocolate, grated)

Combine egg yolks and sugar in a medium-sized bowl and beat well.
In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.
In a third, larger bowl, combine the egg yolk mixture with the mascarpone, then fold in the egg whites to produce a creamy mixture.
Arrange a tight layer of ladyfingers in a 22x30 cm serving dish.
Using a spoon, drizzle about half the liqueur and half the espresso over the ladyfingers.
Cover the ladyfingers with the mascarpone mixture and the grated chocolate, and dust it with a little more than half the cocoa.
Cover the filling with a second layer of ladyfingers and drizzle with the remaining liqueur and espresso.
Top with the remaining cocoa before serving.

Italian cinema diva Sophia Loren has published two collections of her favourite recipes, Italian of course, Neapolitan by proxy, la cucina sfiziosa, hearty food with a little extra. Here she gives her version of the tiramisu dessert, substituting the classic amaretto by orange liqueur.
The forerunner of the tiramisu, with custard, rather than mascarpone cheese, was popular in Tuscany, as zuppa del duca, a dessert for the ducal visit of Cosimo III de' Medici to Sienna, or the closely related zuppa inglese, the Italian version of the English trifle. No written sources about the recipe are available before 1983, pointing to its appearance in 1971 in Veneto's Treviso . The name means 'cheer up' or 'give some strength', giving birth to legends that the dessert was invented by Venetian lace-workers, or women of a casa chiuso**, or by Northern Italian wives making it for their soldier husbands in WWI. It became widely popular in the 1980's.
Read more Sophia Loren recipes: Sophia Loren's raw tomato spaghetti, vermicelli with sauce alla Sofia.
(**Several Italian dishes are rumoured to have been invented by women of the trade to regain their strength, such as the spaghetti alla puttanesca.)