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How chefs in India reimagined the tiramisu
Summary
Indian pastry chefs have leveraged the malleable nature of tiramisu to give their own twist to the Italian dessertThe thing about tiramisu is this: you could hate desserts and you could hate coffee, but you could still love tiramisu. Coffee-soaked ladyfinger (or savoiardi) biscuits are stacked together with cloud-like mascarpone in this Italian gold-standard of a dessert that’s typically finished with a dusting of bitter cocoa. Like most other cult foods of its ilk, tiramisu has its fair share of disputed origin stories—including one that credits its genesis to the brothels of Treviso in Veneto, Italy. A more widely accepted theory traces the Italian dolce to 1972, when Le Beccherie restaurant, also in Treviso, included the pudding on their menu.
Since then, tiramisu, which translates to “pick me up" in the Treviso dialect, has been regarded as a co-creation of the restaurant owner Ado Campeol, his wife Alba and Le Beccherie’s pastry chef, Roberto Linguanotto. The latter’s name might ring a bell. News of the 81-year-old chef’s passing took over social media feeds last week with netizens across the globe reflecting on his legacy.
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What Le Beccherie created wasn’t just a dessert, but a culinary canvas for boundless reinterpretation. Today, it’s not uncommon to find some version of the tiramisu, be it on the menus of fine-dines, quick-service restaurants or hole-in-the-wall cafés. Tiramisu’s appeal is so far-reaching that in 2013, an Italian astronaut requested it be on the menu for the International Space Station. The dessert has an institution to its name—Accademia del Tiramisù, established in Treviso in 2011, which hosts annual events such as the Tiramisù World Cup and Tiramisù Day.
Needless to say, the confection has found a footing in India, but what makes it a favourite on menus?
“One of the most intriguing aspects of tiramisu is its ability to bridge the gap between high-end modern cuisine and comforting home-style fare," says Bengaluru-based Vinesh Johnny. He is at the helm of Lavonne, a pastry academy and café, and the Malaysian café Kopitiam Lah, which he co-owns with his Malaysian wife Joonie Tan. Johnny’s statement inadvertently echoes the thoughts of Tiziano Taffarello, president of Accademia del Tiramisù, who once said, “It’s the most popular dessert in the world because its ingredients excite all the taste receptors that we have on the tongue."
Chef Prateek Bakhtiani of Ether, a chocolate atelier in Mumbai that offers a barrel-aged tiramisu with mascarpone, vanilla beans and slow-roasted almonds, looks at it slightly differently. “I think it’s the mascarpone; it effortlessly accepts a large variety of flavour additions and playfulness. At the same time, should there be a misstep, mascarpone does a great job of ensuring that any harsh flavours are mellowed," he explains.
Tiramisu’s chameleon-esque nature has been leveraged by chefs and establishments of all kinds. Italian restaurant Toscano in Pune uses a “blend of fresh double espresso infused with Kahlúa syrup" in their Amaretto tiramisu, while Mumbai’s Italian diner Toast Pasta Bar uses an Indian-spiced rum. At Idyll, a cocktail bar in Bengaluru, it is infused with Indian flavour with a ghewar tiramisu that replaces savoiardi with the Rajasthani disc-shaped sweet. At Delhi’s Miss Pinto, the Pick Me Up Tiramisu is imbued with filter coffee and Old Monk rum.
“The magic of tiramisu begins with its foundational elements. Its components, though simple, provide a dynamic base," says Johnny. At Kopitiam Lah, the classic is reimagined as a fun trifle, where the traditional espresso is swapped with Malaysian kopi and mascarpone for a sabayon-mascarpone mousse made with Carnation’s evaporated milk, a staple in coffee shops in Malaysia. To top it off, there’s Dalgona foam.
The dessert has also served as a springboard for form variations, inviting adaptations into cakes, cheesecakes, donuts (Mumbai’s dessert café Poetry by Love and Cheesecake does one) and croissants.
Anushka Malkani, owner and pastry chef at Mumbai’s Masa Bakery, once served a tiramisu-filled croissant, inspired by xuixo, Spain’s cream-filled answer to the croissant. “Tiramisu as a dessert allows you to play with different textures and flavours. All of its elements are easily adaptable," she says.
Culinarians are no strangers to criticism, especially when it’s a classic in question.
Chef Manuel Olveira of the Spanish diner La Loca Maria, Mumbai, remembers customers in the early days of the restaurant lamenting his version. “A few people felt that ours wasn’t a tiramisu, because visually they were expecting something more traditional," he says. Olveira’s deconstructed version comes with a base of delicate coffee sponge, layered with mascarpone spuma between crisp coffee meringues that lend a delightfully malty flavour.
How much of the tiramisu’s metamorphosis is vilification and how much is victory—who can tell? But in so far as its creator was concerned, Linguanotto welcomed interpretations, pithily putting matters to rest with his capping statement: “As long as it lifts you up, it’s fine by me."
Suman Mahfuz Quazi is a food writer and the creator of The Soundboard, a community dedicated to gourmands in India.
