A SWEET COMPLIMENT

"These are sweet, like you", said the student who brought me these scrumptious cannoli today. One is filled with Modican chocolate and the other with ricotta:

What a sweet thought!

THE CANNOLO THAT FELL TO EARTH

Look out, NASA! You've got competition from Sicily, no less, in the form of the "Sicilian Space Program"! This was the brainchild of three young people from Enna - Antonella Barbera, Fabio Leone and Paolo Capasso - who one evening had the idea of sending a cannolo into space.

Our determined space pioneers paid for the mission from their own funds and equipped themselves with two video cameras, an empty ice cream carton, a GPS system, a helium-filled balloon, a small parachute and, of course, the "cannolo", made from modelling paste.

Next, they had to get permission from Enac [the Italian Civil Aviation Authority], Enav [the company which provides civilian air traffic control to the Italian state] and the military at Sigonella - all of which took 45 days, during which time the three friends finalised the details of their project.

At last, the launch date of 2nd February arrived and the cannolo took off from Rocca di Cirere in the Enna Geopark. It reached a height of almost 30,000 metres before the balloon disintegrated two hours later and the parachute brought the adventurous cannolo back to earth as planned. It was retrieved by the "Sicilian Space Program" team at Bompietro in the Madonie [Palermo Province], 25 km from the launch site. 

Antonella, Fabio and Paolo say they see the cannolo flight as a gift to Sicilians and hope it has made them smile. I think it is safe to say they have achieved this, as the video has now gone viral. They also say they celebrated with a cannoli party - let's hope that this time they were well-deserved real ones!

AN ENIGMA

A cloudless sky, a temperature of 25 C and the 8th December holiday ensured that everyone was out and about for the final day of Modica's Chocobarocco 2010 Festival and the fun went on well into the evening.   Needless to say there were piles upon piles of chocolate, plus chocolate pasta, chocolate sculptures, chocolate beauty products - chocolate everything, in fact.

But no Sicilian festival is complete without cannoli and these pistacchio and ricotta-filled ones made by the good folk of Bar Elena in Piana degli Albanesi were just irresistible:

"Please don't ask us to cut a cannolo in half", pleaded a notice.  My question was, "Why would anyone want to?"

NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL CANNOLI!

- As displayed in a bar in Modica Bassa.

DINNER WITH "LOVE SICILY"

A few weeks ago I contacted Katia of the loveSicily website and blog to ask her if I could visit her Cookery School in Modica Bassa with a view to writing an article about it for this blog. Imagine my delight when Katia not only agreed to my suggestion, but invited me to participate in one of her courses, starting later today [Monday].

Tonight I attended Katia, Ronald and Angelo's "welcome dinner" for the course participants and this is the lovely food that Katia served:

Such a simple, yet elegant and pleasing starter - ricotta flavoured with lemon:

The three stages of caciocavallo ragusano cheese - fresh, semi-matured and matured [stagionato] served with tomato, carrot and chilli sauces. Katia advised us to save the chilli sauce for the strong, stagionato cheese [centre]:

There was good local bread:

Pasta alla Norma: Katia buys these special gladiatori pasta shapes from the Pastifico Tiziano Viva in Pozzallo:

I'm in full agreement with Katia when she says you have to have cannoli when in Sicily! She buys the cannoli pastry tubes from Modica's Bonajuto for, as she explained, "When someone does something better than you do, you should show humility and buy it". First she brought in the plate with the cannoli tubes, ground pistacchi and piping bag of ricotta flavoured with ground chocolate chips and icing sugar [made by grinding ordinary sugar]:

Next, she filled the tubes with the ricotta mixture at each end:

Finally, she dipped the ends into the pistacchi:



All I could say was, "WOW!"

Katia told us that Italy's health and safety police have turned their attention to cannoli. [Perhaps they get to taste some while they inspect pastry-making premises?] Pastry-makers traditionally used a kind of bamboo to form the pastry around and, as bamboo is porous, the cannoli cooked perfectly, inside and out. The stainless steel cannoli tubes that they are supposed to use now do not produce the same result and the pastry-makers are frustrated. Is nowhere safe from these silly rules?

Thank you for your warm hospitality and for a superb dinner, Katia, Ronald and Angelo. See you later this morning!