PIGNOCCATA

Makes 12 to 15

350 g/12 oz flour (see note)

2 tablespoons grated orange rind (optional)

Vegetable oil for frying

125 g/4 oz sugar

Pinch of salt

4 large eggs

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

350 g/12 oz honey

Mix the flour and salt in a bowl or on a pastry board. Add the eggs one by one, mixing well and kneading until the dough has a uniform consistency. Let it stand for 30 minutes.

Take the dough, one small piece at a time, and roll it between the palms of your hands into thin pencil-like strips. With a sharp knife cut the strips into 6 mm/¼ inch pieces. Each piece should be about the size of a pea.

Fry the bits of dough in vegetable oil 2.5 cm/1 inch deep. It is essential that the oil be warm (about 100C/200F) but not hot when you put the bits of dough in to fry, and that you fry them slowly over medium heat, otherwise they will not puff up as they should.

When the balls of dough reach a rich golden colour, lift them from the oil, put them on kitchen paper to drain, and remove the pan from the heat to cool the oil down again before adding the next batch of dough.

Heat the honey, sugar, and orange rind to the boiling point, and cook for about 1 minute, until it becomes syrupy. Remove from the heat, add the balls of fried dough, stir to coat them well, and with the help of a large spoon, arrange them in small heaps on a sheet of greaseproof paper or aluminium foil. Sprinkle with cinnamon and allow to cool.

Note: Messina has its own version of pignoccata, made at Christmastime. The little balls, made of a more elaborate dough, are baked rather than fried, and then heaped into one large pyramid, which is then iced, with chocolate on one side and a white sugar glaze on the other.

But the king of Carnival is the cannolo, which in its plural form, cannoli, is now common here.

Beddi cannola di carnalivari,

megghiu vuccuni a lu munnu non c’è.

Sù biniditti spisi li dinari,

ogni cannola è scettru di re!

Lovely cannoli of Carnival weekend,

no better morsel exists in the world!

Blessèd the money spent for to buy them,

every cannolo’s the sceptre of a king!

To be good, cannoli have to be very fresh (the best coffee houses and bars in Palermo offer cannoli espresso—filled while you wait), so if you are a cannoli fan and you can get good ricotta, it is worth the effort to make them at home. Actually it takes experience rather than effort to knead the cannoli dough just long enough so that the bubbles that the wine produces in the crust are small; if big bubbles form, the cannoli will unroll as they fry. If you know any expert cannoli makers, you can avail yourself of their experience; otherwise you will have to acquire your own by trial and error. You will also have to acquire cannoli tubes, either the ready-made metal ones, or 15 cm/5 inch pieces of cane. Using a pasta machine helps in the kneading and rolling out of the dough.