La Sicilia II
Sicily is famous all over the world for its pastries, most famous of all are cannoli, which are made with a fried pastry shell, in the shape of a tube, filled with sweetened ricotto. I’ve never had a sweet tooth and I’ve never liked cannoli, but they are a whole different story in Sicily. They are always fresh, filled on the spot so that the pastry shell doesn’t soak up the ricotta and become soggy or stale, and of course the quality of the ingredients that they use is always superior.
These almond and pistachio brittle were my favorite. They aren’t as sweet or as teeth-cracking hard as peanut brittle, but the idea is the same. Pistachios and almonds are grown all over Sicily and as I said in my last post, you can find them in almost everything, sweet and savory. Pistachios are sprinkled on cannoli as well as pasta, which adds such beautiful color and dimension to the flavors.
I should have taken more pictures of the pastry shops.
Cassata is another classic Sicilian pastry, this is really too sweet for my tastes, but luckily my husband ordered it for dessert our last night in Agrigento, so I had a chance to taste it and take a picture! I think that there are a number of different ways to make a cassata, in some versions it is cake-like, but this seemed to be more of a sweet sweet creamy sugary thing. Very pretty to look at though.
This was a very unique dessert, a semifreddo made with basil. It wasn’t very sweet and strongly tasted like basil, I feel like if it was served with shrimp it would have been equally as delicious. I’ve never really understood what a semifreddo was, and I am not a fan of things that are sweet and creamy and always imagined a custard (ew), so I’d never tried it, but couldn’t resist such a bizarre dessert. In the end a semifreddo is like a hard, not so cold ice cream, it is delcious with a nice non-custardy consistency.
Italicious 