(Cassata Gelata)
Serves 12
One 2 cm/¾ inch layer of pan di Spagna
½ recipe pistachio ice cream
½ recipe vanilla ice cream
½ recipe chocolate ice cream
FROZEN CHANTILLY
4 egg whites at room temperature
225 g/8 oz sugar
575 ml/1 pint double cream
Whipped cream
50 g/2 oz plain chocolate
50 g/2 oz diced zuccata or candied citron
125 ml/4 fl oz rum or sweet liqueur
Candied fruit pieces
Chocolate shavings
Prepare the pan di Spagna and cut it across to form a 2 cm/¾ inch layer that is slightly smaller in diameter than the mould that you intend to use for the cassata. (The remaining pan di Spagna will keep in the freezer.) A proper cassata mould is at least 15 cm/6 inches deep, and must be made of aluminium or tin (stainless steel, plastic, and glass do not allow the dessert to freeze rapidly enough). The quantities given in this recipe will fit into a mould that is 23 cm/9 inches in diameter and 15 cm/6 inches deep, or into a cake tin that is 30 cm/12 inches in diameter and 5 cm/2 inches deep.
Prepare the various ice creams, and chill the mould by placing it in the freezer.
Prepare the frozen chantilly: Whip the egg whites until stiff, at the end incorporating one-half of the sugar. Put in the freezer while you whip the cream and the rest of the sugar until soft peaks form. Fold the cream into the beaten whites and place the mixture in the freezer. When the chantilly is well chilled and beginning to stiffen, stir in the chocolate pieces and the zuccata (they will fall to the bottom if you do it sooner).
Cut out a disk of greaseproof paper the same diameter as the mould and place it in the bottom. You must assemble the cassata layer by layer, allowing each kind of ice cream time to soften enough so that you can spread it (the layers need not be even, but every wedge of cassata when you cut it should have at least a taste of each flavour), and then time enough in the freezer to harden again; otherwise it will all melt into a mud-coloured mess.
The proper order is as follows: pistachio at the bottom, then vanilla, then the pan di Spagna sprinkled with the rum, followed by the chantilly and on top the chocolate ice cream. This will not work, however, if you are using the 30 cm/12 inch mould. In that case you should ring the sides of the mould with ice cream, first pistachio and then chocolate, with the vanilla ice cream, the cake, and the chantilly in the centre.
Freeze for 5 or 6 hours. Turn the cassata out onto a cake platter, remove the paper, and decorate with whipped cream, candied fruit, chocolate shavings, and, as the Italians would say, chi più ne ha, più ne metta (whatever your cupboard offers or your fancy suggests). Return to the freezer until 15 minutes before serving.
Unlike the various sorbets and granitas that itinerant vendors used to sell in the streets by the glass, or even—in the same “a penny a lick” economy as that of the candy seller—by the spoonful, the pezzi duri require greater ceremony, ideally a table to sit at and perforce the leisure to allow the “hard piece” to soften a bit, lest it shoot from the plate under the pressure of the spoon. Eating a granita di limone in order to cool off can be a mere expedient: ordering a pezzo duro is an occasion.
When, in honour of the Festino or some other rare occasion, ’a pigghiata di ielati—the “taking of an ice”—was decided upon, no one slept the night before and the hours never passed.
Youth was inevitably destined to a half portion, and this left such an impression on the child that he aspired to adolescence solely in order to acquire the right to a whole piece.
Oreste Lo Valvo, La vita in Palermo 30 e più anni fa, 1907
Even for those who could afford from birth to eat all the ice cream that common sense would allow, the occasion was governed by an elaborate set of rules:
But our favourite ice cream seller was Mommo ai Leoni, located next to the gate of the Park of the Favorita, near the two stone lions that gave the square its name. How many times we stopped there on our way home, to enjoy a delicious strawberry spumone with whipped cream. It wasn’t even necessary to get down from the carriage because the waiter brought them to us on a tray and we ate them in the carriage, while the coachman had his on the box. To descend and go sit at a table on the pavement was unthinkable. The same rule held true on the Marina, but if it was a hired carriage, then it was considered very bad taste not to sit at the tables. Only women of ill repute remained in a hired carriage.
Fulco, Estati felici, 1977
The accelerated tempo of modern life has worked against the pezzi duri. In Palermo in particular there are very few pavement cafés, and the noise and fumes of the city’s chaotic traffic have robbed the survivors of much of their appeal. Sicilians have by no means lost their passion for ice cream, but they prefer it on the run, in a cone or in a brioscia, a small brioche-like roll cut almost in half and filled with a large scoop of ice cream and a ruffle of whipped cream on top. Ice cream in a brioche is summertime breakfast for thousands of Sicilians on their way to work or to the beach.
Generally ice cream here is still made on the spot, and it is absolutely delicious—far better than any of the industrial products from northern Italy that are also available. The modern specialists exercise their fantasy in inventing new flavours to add to the traditional repertoire: innovations such as kiwi and mango inspirations of questionable worth such as sea urchin or prickly pear, or something that has recently made a hit in Palermo called baci baci, which is essentially Baci Perugina candies made into ice cream, a mixture of chocolate and hazelnut with pieces of peanut and hazelnut strewn in.
The take-home ice cream cakes and rolls that show the influence of industrial products can be excellent but have little to do with the old traditions. These do survive in some places, however: Avola and Acireale, to mention only two, are towns where cafés of renown offer a large selection of traditional pezzi duri together with modern flights of fancy.
Just about the only place in Palermo where one can still find the old pezzi duri is at one of the two ice-cream parlours that still operate at the Foro Italico, on what is known as the Marina. The Marina is one of the tragedies of contemporary Palermo: once the playground of the city, it is celebrated in countless letters and diaries as one of the most beautiful waterfronts in Europe,“whither in summer nights the inhabitants resort to enjoy the fanning breeze, take refreshments, and listen to the serenades that enliven the still hour.” The poor arrived on foot, the gentry by carriage: “a long line of handsome equipages, issuing from every part of the city, completely occupy the road.”
The ring of elegant palaces that formed a backdrop to the Marina was badly damaged by Allied bombs in 1943, and today traffic roars past on a six-lane throughway leading out of the city toward Messina. Between the traffic lanes and the sea a desolate stretch of bare earth is occupied in part by a noisy and gaudy fun fair, in part by rubbish. There are plans to restore it to its former beauty, just as there are plans to save the rest of Palermo’s monuments, but here as elsewhere decay is proceeding faster than bureaucracy.
Yet the trees are still there, a handsome row of eritrina trees, which in the early summer are afire with scarlet blossoms, and on the far side of the road the Mediterranean still glitters. It is possible to sit out at a table, to order a piece of cassata gelata, and to wait for a pause in the traffic, when the soft sea breeze rustles the leaves and brings a whiff of jasmine from the terrace of Palazzo Butera.
The clientele sitting around the tables is mixed. Here a group of upper-middle-class intellectuals chat languidly over their wedges of pistachio and hazelnut. There sit a group of northern tourists from the Jolly Hotel down the road, their pale skin, sunburnt to the colour of their strawberry spongato, glowing painfully under pastel-coloured, drip-dry clothing; next to them a working-class family, dressed up for ’a pigghiata di gelatu and bent on keeping the drips of chocolate ice cream off the clean shirts of the children, and on stopping the smallest child from getting down from his chair and running out into the road. But even he has an entire “piece” all for himself, and his family is not celebrating anything more rare or special than the pleasure of an evening’s outing.
Now Carnival comes every day in Sicily. The terrible hunger that tormented centuries of Sicilians survives only in isolated pockets of the Palermo slums. My children’s contemporaries, the first generation of Sicilians to be raised on powdered formula and homogenised baby foods, tower over me, even though I was once the tallest person on the street.
The enormous class distinctions in the island’s diet have also disappeared in the swell of post-war prosperity, which has blotted out many of the ancient traditions and imposed a lifestyle in the place of a culture. People whose mothers and fathers counted themselves lucky to have lasagne cacate now eat pasta with smoked salmon and caviar on New Year’s Eve, and when my cleaning woman’s elderly aunt, down from their mountain village to have her bronchial tubes examined, wanted to present the doctor with a couple of chickens or a dozen eggs, her niece advised a bottle of Chivas Regal instead.
Most of these changes have taken place during the thirty-five years that I have lived in Sicily. For me, sitting here in this motley crowd, next to the traffic and across from the fun fair, the sight of these children enjoying their ice cream is a small but significant symbol of the island’s progress. Yet at the same time I can taste, as always in Sicily, a faint flavour of regret for all that has been lost.
The bay is silvered over, the mountains stand around in shade like giant sentinels, freshness breathes from the water, perfume is in the air, everything around is steeped in beauty, and the heart and senses open to the tenderest and most contagious emotions. Hour after hour is thus passed away, the spot is abandoned with regret, and it is often midnight before the throng reluctantly separate, and the Marina is deserted until the following evening.
W. O. Bartlett, Pictures from Sicily, 1853