Tonight's dessert topic is Cannoli, a great pastry to satisfy the most finicky sweet tooth. Most everyone knows that Cannoli is a famous Italian dessert. The original and traditional version of Cannoli was created in the Italian town of Palermo, the capitol of the island of Sicily. Historically, from my reading I gather the Cannoli is a merging (or collision) of the culinary cultures of both Sicilian and Arabian (Muslim) culture. From the year 827 to the year 902 A.D., Muslims ruled Sicily. And through my internet research I learned that a dessert similar to the Cannoli we know today originated in Arabian cultures. So the Cannoli and its origins are more than a 1000 years old.
There are different stories or legends as to how the Cannoli came to be. I wrote my own story here below creatively adapted from the few “facts” I read, so here is a little story about the creation of the Cannoli:
Over a thousand years ago, there was young woman on the island of Sicily. She is forgotten now; only remembered now by her familiar ghosts gone into what we call history. What remains is the Cannoli we taste today.
The Cannoli is said to have been created for the Sicilian festival of Carnevale. Carnevale is still a worldwide event in some cultures including New Orleans today. Carnevale is a celebration before the fasting in Lent which precedes the Easter holiday.
This young woman in Sicily loved the sunshine and the flowers on the island she was born onto in the year 880 A.D. She loved desserts and would help her aunts and neighbors with desserts for holidays and special meals. She was like any young woman today, she loved sweets. She loved to run barefoot through the green grass of Sicily and would rarely wear the Roman sandals her brother had brought to her from the mainland. Buy she kept them on a shelf for special occasions like the celebration of Carnevale or Easter Sunday. Her name was Antoinette.
Her Uncle Vincenzo owned a wine vineyard on the nearby hill, and she was privileged to be able to see the grapes grow and watch the wine be created by her uncle, his employees and many neighbors. Her life was simple and joyful. But she could sense the lives of her family had become a bit changed and complex by the new government; the Muslims had come from Arabia and had taken over the former Sicilian government. She was a little fearful of the new government, but they allowed her Sicilian relatives and neighbors to continue their celebration of Carnevale. And the neighborhood ladies wanted to create a new special dessert to celebrate Carnevale in order to show the new government how great Sicilian cuisine really was. I’m not sure they used the word cuisine back 1000 years ago, but the ladies had gathered together as group and together they agreed to come up with a new Sicilian dessert that would dominate the food at Carnevale. They wanted to create the best dessert that would be remembered and talked about all over the island.
All the ladies met at Aunt Martina Stewardiorno’s house. They had fried the dough and were making the creamy filling to fill the dough. Aunt Martina said out loud, "We need something else sweet to add the the ricotta." Antoinette shouted, “Wine, wine from my uncle’s vineyard.” All the ladies cheered and Antoinette and two of the other young woman ran up the hill to Uncle Vincenzo’s vineyard. Uncle Vincenzo was happy to give them each a bottle of wine to carry in their hands back to Aunt Martina’s kitchen. And so they added wine and also some almonds and sugar they had bought at the Arab market. The wine was red and gave the filling a beautiful soft pink color. They all sighed at the beauty of their creation. They put the Cannoli carefully packaged in Aunt Martina’s cellar and in the morning they brought it all out at Carnevale. The pink color of the filling caught everyone’s eye, and one by one they began to buy the hundreds of Cannoli the ladies had made. Everyone said it was the most delicious and beautiful dessert they had ever had. So year after year since then, Cannoli has been made for the Carnevale, and all the ladies there on that original creation day passed the recipe down to their grandchildren and their grandchildren’s grandchildren.
So as my story ends, young Antoinette and her Uncle Vincenzo sat up in the vineyard at the end of the day while Carnevale was winding down. Everyone loved the new Sicilian Cannoli, and these two souls were happy and content. Antoinette had saved two of the Cannoli in the cool cellar, and Antoinette and her uncle sat on a flat rock on a hill under an old green Cypress tree. They enjoyed their Cannoli and each other's company, as the sun set over the vineyards as if it were just another day.
And so the stand-out dessert, Cannoli, was invented. I really don't understand why we don't call it the Sicilian Cannoli instead of the Italian Cannoli, but that's for another day.
Sources:
http://cannolikitchen.com/the-cannoli-and-its-rich-history/
https://caragiulos.com/history-of-the-cannoli/
http://www.mazatlanmycity.com/food-stories-and-recipes/59-origins-of-food/1586-the-origin-a-history-of-the-cannoli.html
Written by Roberta Whitman Hoff
