Timballo from The Leopard
A Bourbon dish, at the time of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies.
«The timballo of the Leopard, mentioned in the book by Tomasi di Lampedusa. A base of pastry dough is stacked, layer by layer, with slices of fried eggplant, cooked Capitelli ham, fresh Ragusan cheese, homemade macaroni noodles seasoned with meat sauce from our purveyor Giuseppe Grassi, pork from Agostino Ninone Sebastiano, and chicken from Aia Gaia.
«This is all brought together with a bechamel scented with bourbon vanilla, a lighter, more pleasant version than the traditional pastry cream».
Note
The defiant challenge of this timballo isn’t the exuberant filling, but rather that we have shrunk it into a mini-version; a single portion. An example of culinary engineering.
In The Leopard, Tomasi di Lampedusa writes:
The burnished gold of the wrapper, the fragrance of sugar and cinnamon that emanates; was nothing but a prelude to the sensation of delight that came from inside when the knife broke the crust: first it burst into wafts of aromas. Then we saw the chicken livers, the hard boiled eggs, the slices of ham, chicken and truffles in one, unctuous mass, scalded by the short macaroni noodles, to which the meat extract lent a precious chamois color.