Here a list of the top Sicilian recipes

July 6th, 2007 · No Comments

Here a list of the most know Sicilian recipes.

Sicilian Cassata recipe This is one of the most classic Sicilian cakes, and though some people link it to the island’s Arab period because of the candied fruit that goes into the ricotta cream. The word Cassata could derives from the Latin Caseus, which means cheese. In other words, Cassata is one of the world’s first cheesecakes. Another origin of this word could be from Arab “Quas’at” that means “a small round bowl “.

Cassata is made with pan di spagna (or pancake), ricotta cream (like cannoli ones), candied fruit.

INGREDIENTS:

PREPARATION:

Preheat your oven to 360 F (180 C).

Whip 6 egg white to firm peaks with a pinch of salt. In another bowl, beat 6 yolks with 3/4 cup of the granular sugar, until the mixture is frothy and pale yellow.

Sift the flour with the baking powder and slowly add it to the beaten yolks, together with a couple of tablespoons of egg white and the grated zest of the lemon; finally, gently fold the beaten egg whites into the mixture. Turn the batter into a buttered and floured pan (9 inch square) and bake it for a half hour; remove the cake from the oven and let it cool before removing it from the pan.

In the meantime, grind the almonds in a food processor, using short bursts to keep them from liquefying. Add 2 1/2 cups of powdered sugar, the bitter almond essence diluted in 1/4 cup water, and blend until the mixture is homogeneous. Dust your work surface with the potato starch before turning the paste out onto it (you can also turn it out onto a sheet of wax paper), and incorporate a few drops of green, diluted in a few drops of water. Work the paste until the color is uniform and then wrap the paste in plastic wrap and chill it in the refrigerator.

Put the ricotta through a fairly fine wire mesh strainer and combine it with 1/2 cup granulated sugar, the vanilla, the chocolate, and the diced zuccata. Next, roll the almond paste out 1/4 inch (1/2 cm) thick and as wide as the cake pan. Line a 10-inch (25 cm) diameter pudding mold with slanting walls with plastic wrap, and lay the almond paste over it. Next, line the bottom and sides of the mold with half-inch thick sheets of the cake you baked; make a syrup by diluting some Marsala with a little water and a little sugar, and sprinkle it over the cake. Fill the box thus obtained with the creamy ricotta mixture and cover it with more of the cake, sprinkling again with the Marsala syrup.

Lay a dish over the cassata, press down gently, and chill the cassata for several hours in the refrigerator. At this point turn the cassata over onto the serving dish and remove the mold and the plastic wrap. Beat the remaining two whites and sift the remaining powdered sugar into them, beating all the while to obtain a thick, homogeneous cream. Add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice to the glaze and spread it over the cassata. Let the glaze set for a few minutes, decorate the cassata with the remaining candied fruit, and chill it for several more hours before serving it.

Note: Purists will shudder, but you can greatly speed the production of a cassata if you use commercially prepared pan di spagna (or pancake if that is what is available where you live) rather than bake the cake as well.

Caponata
Ingredients for 6 people:

Preparation:
Cut into little dices the eggplants and put them in a colander sprinkling it with salt . Leave them resting for an hour so that they lose their bitter liquid. Fry them in hot oil. In the fried oil, that you have poured in a wide frying pan, brown the onions cut fine, the heart of the calories previously boiled and cut it to pieces , peeled tomatoes and made pieces , the olives, the capers without salt and add enough salt to cook this sauce till celery will be cooked. Add the eggplants previously fried and some leaf of basil. After having cooked the sauce for others 10 minutes, add the sugar and the vinegar. Serve your caponata cold.

Polpette of “Nunnata�?
Ingredients for 6 people:

Preparation: take the nunnata , and amalgamate them with eggs, the parsley, the garlic minced.Add salt and pepper. In a frying pan fry the oil and pour with a spoon the obtained paste. They will form the polpette that will be cooked as soon as they will take a gilded color. Serve them warm and garnish the plate with lemon slices.

Sardinians “a beccafico�?
Ingredients for 6 people:

Preparation:
Open the Sardinians from the part of the stomach , remove the head and the central fish-bone. Fairies to toast in a little oil the bread crumb to which you will add the tritato garlic, the sugar, the prezzemolo, the pinoli, the grape sultanina, sufficient salt and pepper, and half glass of olive oil . After having well amalgamated the compound, spread a small amount on the open Sardinians and then roll them up. Put the filled Sardinians in a oiled baking -tin and alternate to every Sardinian one leaf of bay. Complete pouring a mixture of oil and lemon juice, salt and pepper. Put into an oven for 15 minutes in moderate temperature

Falsomagro
Ingredients for 6 people:

Preparation:
In one bowl, mingle the minced meat and the twofresh sausages without bowel. In one frying pan let cook this mixture with one onion cut and the olive oil. Take the meat and spread over the slice of bacon, hard-boiled eggs, pecorino and the minced garlic. In the end, you add the mixture of meat, add salt and pepper. Roll up the slice of meat and tie it with a white thin thread. In frying pan fry an onion and then the filled meat. During the cooking add the red wine that you will make evaporate. Continue the cooking with a liter of broth or the sauce of tomato.

Pasta with Sardinians
Ingredients for 6 people:

Preparation:
Boil in salty water the wild fennels. Drain them in a colander, paying attention that they lose all their liquid. Mince them and put them and their liquid aside. In the olive oil fry two onions, in which you will cook also 4 fillets of anchovies under salt. Remove the fish-bones from the Sardinians, the heads and the tails, cut them to pieces and make them brown in the mixture prepared previously. Joined the fennels, salt and pepper, make cook all for five minutes. Add the grape passolina, 50 gr. of pine-seeds and saffron diluted in water. In the water of the fennels, boil the bucatini, drain them in half cooking and pour them in the frying pan in which you have prepared the sauce, and cook not forgetting to often mingle them. Put in a plate and serve the pasta tepid or cold .

Pasta alla Norm
Ingredients for 6 people:

Preparation:
After having prepared the sauce of tomato aromatized with basil, take three beautiful Sicilian eggplants , let them lose their bitter taste, holding them under salt for approximately an hour in a colander, then fry them in hot oil. Boil 700 gr. of spaghetti, drains them and season them with the tomato sauce. In every portion you add the minced eggplants and over the salty cottage cheese.