I first heard about these when I moved to Boston for school. The North End, also called Little Italy, had several bakeries that served lobster tail pastries. They were these crunchy bundles that were stuffed with a sweetened ricotta filling. Traditionally, the filling is a mixture of semolina, ricotta, citrus, and sugar, but I decided to go a different route, and just do a lightly seasoned ricotta cheese because I don’t have the patience to make, cool, and blend prepared semolina into ricotta cheese when it all yields basically the same fucking texture anyways it is more baking-ready than preparing the semolina filling and it still works.

For the dough, I combined the recipes and techniques of my pasta and phyllo doughs, just because I know that those doughs can react well to being stretched and rolled. I used olive oil to soften the glutens and honey to help with the caramelization of the pastries themselves. I figured that the olive oil, if anything, helps tie these desserts into the Italian heritage that they are supposed to have.

For the dough:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour + more for rolling
3 tablespoons honey
1/3 cup olive oil + more for brushing
1/2 cup water
a pinch of salt

Combine ingredients into a dough, kneading for five minutes, then and allow to sit. Divide the dough into four balls and dust with flour. Roll each ball out to the thinnest setting on the pasta machine. Stretch out each length of dough until it is doubled in width. Brush each length of dough with olive oil and roll up into a large scroll that uses all four pieces. Refrigerate for 15 minutes. Cut the dough into eight pieces and using lightly oiled fingers, press and push the dough into a cone shape. Stuff with the ricotta filling and seal the ends. Brush with egg wash and bake at 375 degrees F for 25 minutes.

For the filling:
2/3 cups ricotta cheese
3 tablespoons honey
a pinch of salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
lemon zest

Literally just combine.

For egg wash:
1 egg
2 tablespoons olive oil

Combine.

For plating:
Once the pasties are done baking, optionally dust with powdered sugar.