Tegole valdostane

Rub the hazelnuts between your hands, a few at a time, so the skins fall away. The blanched almonds need nothing.

Check Most of the skin is gone; a few flecks do no harm.

Melt the butter in the small pan over low heat, then take it off the heat while you grind the nuts.

Check Fully melted, with no solid pieces left.

Put the skinned hazelnuts and the almonds in the food processor with half the sugar, 100 g, and pulse for a few seconds until they are reduced to crumbs.

Check Fine crumbs with no whole pieces left. Stop before it starts to clump.

Tip Grinding them with sugar keeps the nuts dry; ground alone, or for too long, they soon turn into an oily paste.

Tip the crumbs into the large bowl, pour in the melted butter and mix with the spatula until the mixture comes together.

Check It holds together in a compact mass when pressed.

Split the vanilla pod lengthways, scrape out the seeds with the tip of a knife and add them. Sift the flour straight into the bowl and mix well. Set the bowl aside.

Check No dry flour left.

Put the egg whites in the clean bowl and whisk them with the electric whisk. As soon as they start to foam, add the other 100 g of sugar and keep whisking until swollen and frothy.

Check A swollen, white, frothy foam. It need not hold stiff peaks.

Add the whipped whites to the nut mixture and mix them in with the spatula until the batter is even.

Check Smooth and even, with no streaks of white, and fairly soft: soft enough to spread thin with the back of a spoon.

Lay a sheet of baking paper, cut to the size of the tray, on the worktop. Drop portions of about 10 g on it, 10 cm–11 cm apart from centre to centre, so that once spread to 7 cm the discs have a gap of 3 cm–4 cm between them: they spread further in the oven. Weigh the first few to learn the size. Put no more than 8–10 on a sheet, as many as you can shape before they set.

Tip A piping bag with a plain nozzle also works.

Dip the back of a teaspoon in water and spread each portion into an even disc about 7 cm across. Wet the spoon again whenever the batter starts to stick.

Check Thin and even, about 2 mm–3 mm thick, with the edges no thicker than the middle: a thick disc stays soft in the centre.

As soon as the tray is out, lift each tegola with the thin spatula and lay it over a rolling pin, five or six to a pin, so it dries and cools with the curve of a roof tile. Work quickly: they set within a minute or so.

Check Each one lies snugly over the pin and holds the curve.

Tip If the last ones harden on the tray before you reach them, put the tray back in the oven for about a minute to soften them.

Repeat with the rest of the batter, five or six more sheets: spoon and spread the next sheet on the worktop while a tray bakes, slide it onto a tray and straight into the oven as soon as the oven is free, and curve each batch over the pins as it comes out. The baking paper can be used again.

Check All the batter is used and every tegola has cooled on a pin.

Serve them with coffee at breakfast, with tea in the afternoon, or at the end of a meal with a dry white wine, or with the valley's Nus Malvoisie flétri, made from dried grapes and scented of dried fruit and jam, served at 14 °C. They also go with pastry cream, ice cream, hot chocolate, crema di Cogne, or fiocca, whipped cream with sugar and a few drops of grappa. Keep the rest in a tin, in a dry place.