SICILIAN ICE CREAM

(Gelato Siciliano)

Serves 8

CREMA RINFORZATA BASE

1.1 litres/2 pints milk

4 tablespoons corn flour

225-350 g/8-12 oz sugar

Heat 850 ml/1½ pints of milk to the boiling point. Remove from the heat, and add the remaining milk, in which you have carefully dissolved the 4 tablespoons of corn flour and the sugar. (I like to use vanilla sugar in all these ice creams.) Stir, and return to the heat. Bring once more to the boiling point, stirring constantly, then remove from the heat and allow to cool.

When the crema is at room temperature, add one of the flavourings listed below. Refrigerate, and when well chilled, put in your ice-cream machine and process according to instructions.

ALMOND ICE CREAM

225 g/8 oz almond flour or very finely ground blanched almonds

HAZELNUT ICE CREAM

225 g/8 oz very finely ground toasted and peeled hazelnuts

PISTACHIO ICE CREAM

175 g/6 oz very finely ground pistachios

50 g/2 oz very finely ground almonds

CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM

200 g/7 oz plain chocolate

125 ml/4 fl oz milk

Use only 350 g/12 oz sugar in making the crema. Melt the chocolate in the milk over a very low heat. Add the chocolate to the crema when both have cooled.

VANILLA ICE CREAM

This is an exception; make the crema rinforzata as follows:

225 ml/8 fl oz cup double cream

1 vanilla pod

850 ml/1½ pints milk

350 g/12 oz sugar

4 tablespoons corn flour

1 egg yolk

Heat the cream, the vanilla pod, and 700 ml/1¼ pints of milk to the boiling point. Remove from the heat, then add the sugar and the corn flour dissolved in the remaining cup of milk. Return to the heat and bring once more to the boiling point. Cool, remove the pod, and, if you want a stronger vanilla taste, add a few drops of vanilla extract. Beat in the egg yolk, then chill. Process in your ice-cream machine.

Note: Mr. La Mattina makes his gelati using industrially prepared nut pastes that are milled to complete smoothness. There is no way that I know of to grind nuts that well at home, but with the help of a little patience and a meat grinder or an electric blender one can achieve a fairly fine texture.

Patrick Brydone reports that the eighteenth century also favoured moulded ices. At the magnificent banquet (“We were just thirty at table, but, upon my word, I do not think that we had less than a hundred dishes of meat”) to which he was invited by the Bishop of Agrigento,

The dessert consisted of a great variety of fruits, and a still greater of ices: these were so disguised in the shape of peaches, figs, oranges, nuts, &c., that a person unaccustomed to ices might very easily have been taken in.

Patrick Brydone, A Tour Through Sicily and Malta, 1773

I have never seen anything like that today, but orange and lemon ices are often served in the hollowed-out skins of the fruit.

The eighteenth century also saw the introduction of pezzi duri, “hard pieces,” which generally speaking are multi-flavoured wedges of ice cream sliced from a bombe and served as individual portions. Each town had its own specialities. In Catania the spongato, a name now used to indicate any ice cream served in a cup, was once made of ice cream layered with pan di Spagna, (sponge cakes). Schiumone was also from eastern Sicily, a bombe of one or more layers of ice cream hiding a centre of egg yolks whipped with sugar and rum into a frozen zabaglione. One of Palermo’s classics, almost impossible to find nowadays, was the giardinetto (“little garden”)—layers of lemon, strawberry, and pistachio or peach ice cream in the shape of a brick, which was topped with finely diced multicoloured candied fruit.

The pezzi duri tradition culminated in the cassata gelata, which, since it requires cream, may have been developed as a result of the increased availability of cream from the Crown dairy.