NY Style Cheese Cake a la Nina and write me a poem

NEW YORK STYLE CHEESE CAKE

I've been working with this recipe for close to 40 years! Yes, I started in the cradle...

So here's the adapted recipe from my friend Joni Di Giovanni's original one given to me when we were young girls together in bella Roma! At the time I lived there from 1970-1990 there wasn't a pasticceria (bakery)that sold this cake--so if you wanted it, you baked it! Just like cherry, blackberry, peach, blueberry, pear, and any other kind of American pie. I've always cooked, but I learned to bake from Expatriate American women. Viva!

A little note on living and baking overseas...
My dear friend, Angela Ragusa, may she rest in peace, was one of them, who taught me to bake bread, make croissant, and other goodies. Nelsa Montagna taught me the art of baking Italian sweets like crostata and mimosa. There were countless others. One southern chick, Priscilla Diaz, taught me to make "Tea Time Tassies" (one to these days, I'll write the recipe for that...if I can find it.)

And I in turn taught Nico's preschool class to bake chocolate chip cookies and muffins! No small feat, I can assure you, especially when the Italian Mammas were asked to leave me their children and pick them up 3 hours later! I had 1/2 the class on Friday afternoon, and the other 1/2 on Saturday morning...yes, I had a huge kitchen. And no, they didn't even know how to crack an egg--at first try, the egg, complete with shell, went into the mix. Start over: each child tasted every raw ingredient, and learned how to crack and egg, and gently drop the actual egg, sans shell, into the raw dough.

There were other chef/teachers along my path: Italian women who shared their recipes for tiramisu--God bless Margherita Melle--we even made it on our boat the Lady Drifter going to Sardegna! And Anna, a cleaning girl who taught me Neapolitan wonders! Not to mention la mia car'amica Pina Pintucci, who taught me mouth-watering savories, among others!

Back to Cheese Cake...

Blend the ingredients any way you want--food processor, in a bowl of a standing mixer, or by a small hand mixer--max nix--you can't go wrong. I've used all three methods. them all

Ingredients:

1 cup of heavy cream
2 large packages of soft cream cheese at room temperature--that's about 1 lb.
2 tablespoons of sifted flour
1 generous teaspoon (that is to say a little overflowing!) of vanilla
pinch of salt
3/4 cup of sugar
4 eggs.

Bake for 1 hour at 350" stick a toothpick in to see if it's done.

Okay, okay--for you enthusiasts...you may use a spring pan, and yes you may make a Graham cracker crust if you think this is a MUST!

For the crust:

4 to 5 oz. broken up Graham crackers: process these to crumbs (about 1 etto or 110 gr.)
4 Tbs. of very soft butter (1/2 etto)
1 Tbs. of sugar (10-12 gr. )

With the soft butter--butter the pan, then melt the rest and fling it into the crumbs mixed with the sugar. Mix well. Place this mixture into the bottom of a spring pan. Press and flatten this all around--bottom and sides--you can use the bottom of a 1 cup stainless steel measuring cup, or be inventive, choose your own method.

In a heated oven, bake the crust for about 10 minutes at 325 degrees. (In the mountains, bake for 12-13 minutes using convection baking!) While this is baking, mix all the cheesy ingredients adding them one at a time, and then pour this into the spring pan with readied crust.

Now bake in a preheated oven at 350 degrees, or until the internal temp registers 150 F.
While baking --do NOT open oven door. Let cool for at least 15-20 minutes on a rack and then slide a knife around the cake edge a few times. Then pop it into the fridge. Sever cold with blueberry, strawberry or cherry glaze, sauce, or just plain old jam.


Write me a Poem:
Don't say you can't, or never tried. Do not tell me that you never wanted to, have no ideas or imagination. there's a little poet in every one of us, and poetry enriches our lives! so sit down with a pencil and piece of paper and do this...

LESSON # 1. THINK

LESSON # 2. WRITE SOME COLLOQUIALISMS HAVING TO DO WITH ONE SUBJECT

LESSON # 3. LINK THEM

Here's my example--straight on this blog--no cheating--no pre-writing.


DEATH

Kick the bucket
Cashed in all his pennies
Dropped dead
Passed-on
Terminated
Deceased
Bit the dust
Died
Expired
Left this world
Went on to Heaven
Melting ice cubes in Hell
Wrote a will but never got to read it
Last breath
Dying in peace
His precious last
Received Extreme Unction
Expiry
Bought the farm
The End

Okay--next job is to link these, but since I have to go pick out some rocks for the garden--your on your own! Try! (Of course, you may want to pick a happier subject...but this is where my thoughts jumped to after cheese cake! Go figure.)