The Sicilian Cannolo
It’s still me, Jonas!
Last week I told you about Piana degli Albanesi (click here to read the article), there I spent a beautiful weekend in the company of my girlfriend and as a good Sicilian I let myself be pampered by the local cuisine.
Among the many culinary delights I am lucky enough to know Cannolo Siciliano is the absolute protagonist of the scene and today I want to tell you about it.
Is your mouth watering already?
The Sicilian Cannolo
The Sicilian cannolo is certainly one of the best known, loved and above all exported all over the world. It is a real symbol of the local confectionery art. All the greatest chefs have wanted to celebrate it, in fact today there are different interpretations of it, from the cannolo to the pistachio of Bronte to the very recent decomposed cannolo.
But let’s talk about the traditional one: the cannolo is typically made with a fried wafer rolled up and filled with fresh sheep’s ricotta cheese. Very simple you would think, and yet so good!
The wafer must be crispy and full of bubbles, the filling contrasts like a sweet caress for the palate enriched with candied fruit, chocolate drops, vanilla and/or cinnamon aroma.
In the traditional version, the cannoli are usually decorated with icing sugar, dried fruit grains (almonds, pistachios, hazelnuts) and candied fruit that is placed on the portion of filling that comes out of the wafer.
A true expert knows that to keep the wafer crunchy the filling is added at the end, just before being tasted.
The first witness of the creation of the Cannolo was even Cicero, in 70 B.C., who during a trip to Sicily was bewitched by a “Tubus farinarius dulcissimo edulio ex lacte fartus”, that is a tube of flour filled with soft milk cream.
But how did we get to the cannolo as we know it today? There are different versions, halfway between history and legend, reality and fiction.
The first hypothesis dates back to Arab domination. They are thought to have had the idea of mixing fresh ricotta cheese with sugar to create a sweet, white mousse.
According to another story the cannolo was born in Caltanissetta inside a monastery. Some historians claim that the cloistered nuns, modifying and reworking an ancient recipe, invented the cannolo as we know it now.
But one of the most reliable hypothesis today would trace the birth of the cannolo back to the Convent of Santa Maria di Monte Oliveto in Palermo, exactly behind the Cathedral.
According to this story, the Sicilian Cannolo is nothing more than a carnival joke concocted by the cloistered nuns of the convent for novices. It is said that the nuns would have filled a tub with ricotta cream and replaced the classic taps with the rind of the cannolo, it is no coincidence that the word cannolo, in Sicilian, means tap.
You can find the cannolo in every corner of Sicily in all its versions: from the cannolicchi, that is the cannoli in reduced form, as big as a finger, to the giant cannoli in the area of Piana degli Albanesi, where I was.
To make a jump absolutely, after a tasting of typical products, to conclude in beauty with a Cannolo is equivalent to having a fairy tale with a happy ending.
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