Let's start 2020 by introducing you to a new one typical Messina specialty, The Cannolo.
There Messina cuisine, compared to the culinary traditions of the rest of Sicily, it is characterized by having fewer Arab influences, being more affected by the Greek influence: this often makes our desserts less sugary and heavy.
The cannoli are one of the best known specialties of Sicilian pastry. The traditional filling consists of sifted and sweetened sheep's milk ricotta. The filling is then added candied fruit in Palermo while in our city of Messina we use the drops of chocolate and finally a light sprinkling of powdered sugar and very fine chopped hazelnuts.
Ingredients for the crust: 7-8 cannoli
- 250g of flour 00
- 30g of sugar
- a pinch of salt
- 30g of lard or butter
- 1 whole egg + (1 egg white to moisten the closing point of the cannolo paste)
- 10g cocoa (a scant teaspoon)
- 50g of marsala
- 1 liter of oil for frying
- 3 steel cylinders for cannoli
Ingredients for the filling:
- 500g of sheep's milk ricotta
- 220g vanilla powdered sugar
- A pinch of cinnamon and chocolate chips
In a bowl, pour 250g of 00 flour, 30g of sugar, a pinch of salt, 50g of Marsala wine, 1 whole egg, 30g of lard, and 10g of cocoa (a small teaspoon). Knead with your hands until you get a fairly compact and dry hazelnut colored dough, wrap it in cling film and let it rest in the fridge for at least 1 hour. Work the dough with a rolling pin (or with the machine to make lasagna pasta) until you get a thin sheet; Spread the dough around a steel barrel, thus obtaining an oval shape (the cannolo has a length of about 15 cm), brush the closing point of the cannolo with egg white. Fry in hot oil for about 30 seconds.
For the filling, sift the ricotta and then mix it with the icing sugar and a pinch of cinnamon to taste. For obtain a more velvety cream pass the sheep ricotta and sugar with the food processor (be careful, blend small quantities and only for a few seconds, otherwise the ricotta becomes too liquid). Let the ricotta rest in the fridge for a few hours so that it absorbs the sugar well and fill the crusts of the cannoli only at the time of their consumption, to prevent the ricotta from excessively softening the crust. Add the chocolate chips and sprinkle with powdered sugar and chopped toasted almonds, or hazelnuts or pistachios.
TO Messina there are many pastry shops in which to taste excellent cannoli but certainly one of the most popular in the city is the cannolo della Irrera pastry shop, which was included in the first place among the best Sicilian cannoli in the ranking of the website Shots of Taste (https://www.scattidigusto.it/2016/09/27/5-migliori-cannoli-siciliani-classifica/).
