ROYAL OR ALMOND PASTE

(Pasta Reale)

Makes about 900 g/2 lb

450 g/1 lb shelled and blanched almonds

450 g/1 lb sugar

225 ml/8 fl oz water

1-2 tablespoons icing sugar

Grind the almonds to as fine a texture as you can achieve by passing them 3 or 4 times through a meat grinder. If it is available, you may substitute 450 g/1 lb of almond flour for almonds. Almond flour is sold in pastry-supply shops in Sicily, and supposedly gives a much smoother texture than anything one can achieve at home, but it does so at the expense of flavour and moisture.

Heat the sugar and water in a saucepan over a high heat, boiling until the syrup reaches the soft-ball stage (113-118C/235-240F) on a sugar thermometer). Remove it from the heat at once and stir in the ground almonds, blending well. Sprinkle a marble or wooden surface with a little icing sugar, and pour the almond mixture out onto it to cool. When it is cool enough to work, knead the paste as if it were a dough until it becomes smooth and elastic.

Mold the paste into the desired shapes, allow to dry, then paint with food colours. The frutta di Martorana is usually brushed with a gum-arabic solution to give it a shine.

Well-wrapped in plastic, almond paste will keep in the refrigerator for several months.

We must make a stop at the Convent of the Stigmata, since no book on Sicilian cooking could fail to mention sfinci. Sfinci supposedly comes from an Arabic word, sfang, which means a fried pastry, and is in fact a sort of hole-less doughnut. These sfinci, which are rich enough to begin with, are sometimes filled with an egg-custard cream, in which case they are called sfinci fradici (“thoroughly soaked sfinci”), or on Saint Joseph’s Day with a ricotta cream, thus becoming sfinci di San Giuseppe, heavy enough to undo even the most devout. The sisters of the Stigmata did well to limit themselves to honey.

There are any number of sfinci recipes to choose from, including the potato-based ones from Monreale. The one that follows is traditional, and may be similar to the one the nuns used.