What to Eat in Italy: Typical Italian Food and Specialties | Page 4 of 6
Cannoli: Sicilian Pastry Tubes with Ricotta
Cannoli are crisp fried tubes filled with a cream of sheep's milk ricotta, the best-known sweet of Sicily. The name comes from the reed the dough was once wound around, the history from legends about a harem in Caltanissetta and from convent pastry shops. They are filled only just before they are sold, otherwise the shell goes soft - and that is exactly how you spot a good pastry shop.
Patisserie I Segreti del Chiostro, Palermo
Stigghiola di Vitello: Sicilian Grilled Veal Intestines
Stigghiola di vitello is thin veal intestine wound around a skewer and grilled over charcoal, street food from Palermo that today belongs to all of Sicily. Off the grill it gets cut into pieces, salted, finished with a squeeze of lemon and eaten with your hands, with nothing on the side. The name traces back to the Latin word for a little gut, the history to the "fifth quarter" - everything left at the slaughterhouse for the poor.
Stigghiola: Grilled Intestines
Vucciria Historical Market, Palermo
Cartocci Siciliani: Fried Yeast Tubes Filled with Ricotta
Cartocci siciliani are fried tubes of yeast dough, rolled in sugar and filled with sweetened ricotta studded with chocolate chips. They are cannoli's Palermo cousins, bought in the morning at a bar or a bakery to go with coffee, and in Palermo they also go by the name Macallè - after an Ethiopian town, though nobody knows why. Today you'll find them all over Sicily.
Cornetto: The Italian Answer to the Croissant
The cornetto is the Italian counterpart of the croissant: layered leavened dough shaped into a crescent, with eggs and sugar worked in, softer and sweeter than the French original and almost always filled with custard cream, chocolate, marmalade or pistachio cream. In northern Italy it's a brioche, on a shop shelf a croissant, at the counter a cornetto. You eat it in the morning with a cappuccino, and its family tree goes back to medieval Vienna, not to Paris.
Pardulas: Sardinian Ricotta Pastries
Pardulas are small Sardinian pastries of pinched dough, filled with sheep's milk ricotta flavored with saffron and citrus zest and baked golden. Originally an Easter sweet that children were given on All Souls', they are baked in Sardinia all year round today - and the name and the filling change with every part of the island: in some places they are filled with fresh cheese, in others raisins go in too. What they are named after is still anybody's guess.
Crostata: The Italian Lattice Tart
Crostata is an Italian tart of crumbly pastry with a layer of jam or custard and a lattice of pastry strips on top. At home it's baked on Sundays, in a bar it's served with coffee, and in a bakery you buy it by weight. It is named after the crust, not the filling, and it appears under that name in 15th-century Italian recipe books. Its closest relative is the Austrian Linzer Torte.
