Ciau!

In a single greeting, you can already see that Sicily differs from the rest of Italy. Pre-Corona, I would have been packing for a June visit – walking shoes for Palermo’s cobblestone streets, a bikini for the coastal town of Cefalu, stretchy pants for the culmination of three weeks eating brioche and granita for breakfast – but instead I’ve scoured Melbourne to learn more about the island from those who know it best.Once its borders reopen, Visit Sicily has announced it will cover half the cost of flights and every third night of accommodation to encourage tourism back to the region, so keep an eye on the website. Just last week we visited Iran virtually through Persian cuisine. As I ate my way through the Sicilian menu at Mister Bianco, I once again encountered saffron, cinnamon and flavours from the East. It's amazing how many similarities you notice once you look for them.In this dispatch I visit a 48-year-old pasticceria on Smith Street for the first time, tackle the notion of tradition through cannoli, con chef Joey Vargetto into making me an offal street food sandwich, pick out the best places in Melbourne for a Sicilian feast and consider Saint Agatha’s breasts. Until I see you in person Sicily, ni videmu.

Over to you:

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VIDEO » Pani ca Meusa, Sicily's Spleen Sandwich

After my trip to Sicily was cancelled due to COVIID-19, I enlisted local Melbourne chef Joseph Vargetto from Mister Bianco to make me the Sicilian offal street food sandwich I was desperate to try.

Pani ca Meusa, a street snack from Palermo, is made with veal spleen and lung fried in lard, ricotta and lemon juice – and it tastes a hell of a lot better than it sounds.

READ » Don't you Dare order Chocolate Cannoli

“If you ask for a cannolo in Sicily, they bring you a ricotta cannolo. Some of those flavours, salted caramel or whatever, you try and get those in Sicily and they’ll throw you out the door,” says Tony Cavallaro. “It’d be like asking for a soy mochaccino at Pellegrini's.”

“I decided to follow the family tradition,” he says. “Dad said I was crazy, because people wanted more variety, and I said, ‘alright, let’s do different varieties.’” In 2018, the family opened Cannoli Bar in an old Avondale Heights milk bar. Since opening two years ago, Carlo estimates they’ve created 30 different flavours of cannoli. “My dad’s been doing it since he was 13 years old, so for him it’s really about his art and experience. All I did was put it in the context of modernising the art. We do something different that accommodates everybody, but when it comes to our classico flavour, ricotta, we’re as traditional as going back to my grandfather’s recipe,” says Carlo.

Tony, who is older than Carlo’s dad, also uses his grandfather’s cannolo recipe, which dates back to the late 1880s. Visiting touristy Taormina on Sicily’s east coast, Tony has been somewhat disappointed by the pre-piped, lacklustre cannoli. But in his father’s hometown of Lipari is L'Officina del Cannolo. “They are really good,” gushes Tony. “They have goat’s milk ricotta from the island of Vulcano, which is visually stunning but stinks like crap because it has very high sulphur content. That ricotta is really different from anything I’ve ever tasted. It’s more acidic; it’s very different to cows milk.” In Footscray, Tony is tight-lipped about what makes his cannoli so good, though he reveals that his family uses a blend of two ricottas, one for texture and the other for flavour. According to Tony, a good cannolo shouldn’t be dry, but also shouldn’t feel like biting into a piece of ricotta. Instead, the filling should be smooth and creamy (“not whipped like a lot of people would lead you to believe”), and the shell bubbly, crunchy and light. Most importantly, they should be filled-to-order and eaten within the hour. When T. Cavallaro opened in 1956, Tony estimates that 95 per cent of customers were Italian. As the suburb of Footscray has morphed from mostly European, to mostly Asian, to a little Ethiopian and now is en route to gentrification, the business has remained unchanged. Today, only 60 per cent of Tony’s customers are Italian, but 100 per cent don’t want new-age flavours. “When you’re a business like us, and you’ve got your clientele, and people know what they’re getting, you’ve got to focus on what you do. That’s my modus operandi,” says Tony. “The people that come to us are the kind of people who don’t want that kind of stuff, they want ours.” When Sicilians like Tony visit Cannoli Bar, Carlo doesn’t bother to ask if they’d like the cheesecake, lemon meringue or chocolate-covered, pistachio-studded cannoli. “There is no thing other than a ricotta cannoli. If someone Italian walks in and asks for vanilla or chocolate custard, they’re not Sicilian,” he says. Cannoli Bar’s flavours change with the seasons, annual occasions like Valentine’s Day and Easter, and “what’s fun or trending.” Carlo admits they’ve copped criticism for steering away from tradition, even offering vegan and gluten free options. I’m curious to know how his father feels about what most Sicilians would consider outrageous flavours. “He’s a traditionalist, but he embraces change, but at the end of the day it was me who told him to put on more varieties. If it were up to him he would have said just two flavours of cannoli is not enough,” says Carlo. “Sometimes it’s a bit of a war in the kitchen because mum and dad think of traditional stuff and I think of what I believe people will like, but lately we involve our staff members and customers.” Even so, Carlo estimates that 80 per cent of the products sold at Cannoli Bar are traditional flavours. Given the figures, perhaps Cannoli Bar could have been successful simply sticking to tradition. “If I’m not Italian and I’m just into desserts, I’m not going to travel to Avondale Heights for a cannoli, but I’m going to travel to Avondale Heights for a cannoli if there’s a Ferrero Rocher cannoli, because I love Ferrero Rocher,” says Carlo. “I feel like a lot of people have just been appealing to the Italian crowd and what we’ve done is unite the crowd.” Customers can rely on Cannoli Bar for innovative flavours as much as they can rely on a taste of tradition at T. Cavallaro and Sons. “There are a lot of place popping up now,” says Tony. “Cannoli are not a trend for us because that’s been our trade for the last 65 years, even longer before that in Italy. I know that our cannoli have stood the test of time. Pistachio cannoli or tiramisu cannoli or whatever – whether they’re going to last the test of time, I couldn’t tell you.” The classic ricotta cannoli we eat today can be traced back to the Arab rule of Sicily (829 to 1086). Supposedly, Islamic concubines living in Caltanissetta ­– then called Kalt En Nissa in Arabic or Castle of Women – cooked desserts to please the emir. They were the first to sweeten and flavour ricotta with ingredients from the east: sugar, almonds, honey and cinnamon. Once upon a time, perhaps Sicilians questioned the sweetened ricotta cannoli the same way they do Carlo’s Ferrero Rocher version today.

TASTE TEST » Mister Bianco's Sicilian Menu

While spleen sandwiches might not be everyone's thing, Mister Bianco's Flavours of the Sicilian Kitchen menu is one of COVID-19's silver linings. I tested it out at home and was totally blown away.

Available from Mister Bianco, 285 High Street, Kew, Melbourne Thu-Sat, pick up between 5-8pm

TITTY TIDBIT » Eat the Boobs of Saint Agatha

When Saint Agatha of Sicily turned down a powerful Roman governor he didn’t take it well. Unable to marry the 15-year-old, who had consecrated her virginity to God, he overreacted, cutting off her breasts and throwing her in prison. You might have spotted poor Agatha in oil paintings and frescos holding a platter of melons.The story goes that a great earthquake was unleashed as she faced the stake, prompting citizens to beg for her release. She wasn’t, and died in prison on February 5 in the year 251. On the anniversary of Agatha’s death, Mount Etna was looking especially fierce. The villagers took the veil from Agatha’s tomb to protect themselves from the lava (what were they thinking?) and, miraculously, it turned red and the eruption was over before it began.Now, every year from February 3 to 5 in Catania, locals celebrate the Festival of Saint Agatha, revered as the saint of wet nurses, breast cancer patients, rape victims and bellfounders (because of the bosom-like shape). Over three days there’s religious ceremony, fireworks, games and a peculiar cake called minne di Sant'Agata or cassateddi di Sant’Aita, shaped like – you guessed it – a tit. Pasticcerie bake trayfuls of these mini versions of cassata, made with sponge soaked in liquor or shortcrust pastry. The semi-sphere is filled with sweetened ricotta or cream and encased in pistachio marzipan. It’s finished in a smooth, white glaze with a candied cherry nipple on top. Just try not to giggle.

Minne di Sant'Agata are cakes that pay homage to poor Saint Agatha, often portrayed in art, who had her bosom amputated for turning down a Roman governor.

ICON » Hidden in plain sight since 1972 Smith’s Cakes & Aquilana Pasticceria

If you frequent Collingwood cafes and restaurants on Smith Street, chances are your pace slows as you pass the window at Smith’s Cakes & Aquilana Pasticceria. The wooden-framed glass is embellished with timeless vinyl lettering and paper doilies displaying Italian cake names in Monotype Corsiva. Faces smoothed with youth and creased with life press up against the cold glass for a closer look. On the other side of the Sicilian baked goods and jars of pastel sugared almonds, Rosa Darro is dressed in a long black skirt, matching vest and white shirt. She's worked in the family business alongside her four brothers since she was an eight year old reaching for the coffee machine on a milk crate.

“Our customers change. We get the generational thing happening, you know, the kids become adults and they get married and their kids come and then their kids come. We get to see everyone,” she says. Rosa’s father, a Sicilian pastry chef, opened the pasticceria in 1972 and still makes everything from scratch. Now 72 years young, he moved to Melbourne with Rosa’s mother in the late ‘60s, working for a decade before saving enough to buy the shop. Stepping through the PVC curtains in 2020 is like stepping back in time. A cafeteria-style cafe with dated tables and cabinetry; here it’s what’s on the inside that counts. Wooden cabinets exhibit traditional marzipan sweets, like mini fruits and vegetables called frutta di martorana and agnelli pasquali, Sicilian Easter lambs. Black and white photographs and Italian posters haphazardly decorate the walls, interspersed with typed price lists cut from A4 sheets of paper. There’s even a glass case housing a sizeable Carretto Siciliano model, an ornate donkey-drawn cart introduced to Sicily by the ancient Greeks. It’s a conversation point for customers, who Rosa says are increasingly curious about traditional sweets, too. “Customers ask a lot of questions. Maybe they’ve seen something on the Internet or a cooking show and they’ll walk by the window and say, ‘oh, I saw that, I’ll try it.’ People are becoming more worldly.” That front window is kryptonite for sweet tooths. It’s stocked with chewy florentines, brilliantly-named brutti ma buoni "ugly but good" cookies, Cherry Ripe slices, trays of biscotti and amaretti, orange and almond 'nzuddi biscuits, biscotti di mandorla soft with almond meal and egg whites, brittle ribbons of cinnamon-dusted crostoli, ciambelle Italian doughnuts, ricotta and chocolate-filled cassatelle and more. Gelato, made out the back, is available year-round in cones or brioche, while granita stars when the weather warms. “It’s a trend now to make everything in house, but we’ve always made everything,” says Rosa. Her pick is the classic biscotti, dunked in espresso. “I try a bit of everything,” she tells me. “I’m quality control here – someone’s got to do it.” The pasticceria’s neighbours include a vintage furniture store, fashionable ramen restaurant, organic wholefoods grocer and boutique butcher. Some of the city’s most lauded cafes and restaurants are minutes away on foot. With the shop’s 50th year approaching, I ask Rosa how the business has survived on one of Melbourne’s trendiest streets, unchanged, for so long. “Obviously we can’t please everybody, but we’ve lasted a long time. We keep the prices fair and reasonable,” she says. “These days it’s all about trends, but we’ve kept away from that. We’ve survived because we’ve kept it traditional.”

EAT CURIOUSLY » 10 Sicilian Dishes from Breakfast through Dinner

We might not be able to travel to Sicily for a while, but that doesn’t mean you can’t keep an eye out for the food on home soil, or even cook it yourself.

Brioche and granita is on Small Axe Kitchen's breakfast menu in summer. At the moment they're selling deli good, meal kits and produce boxes in Brunswick.

Culazioni / Breakfast 1. Brioche col tuppo. A sweet bread roll with a small round knob on top (tuppo means topknot in Italian!) served with granita or gelato for breakfast. Street Food Snacks2. Stigghiola. Intestines, usually lamb or goat, wrapped around leek and charred on a grill.3. Pani ca meusa. A sandwich from Palermo where veal spleen and lung are boiled, fried in lard, and then served on a bread roll with fresh ricotta and lemon juice. Try panelle, a chickpea fritter, if you don’t eat offal. 4. Scaccia. Baked, rectangular flatbread from Ragusa made by rolling thin dough with ingredients like cheese, sausage, ricotta and potato so it resembles a savoury babka cake or strudel. Pranzu / Lunch5. Maccu. Thick broad bean soup flavoured with fennel traditionally made to use dried beans from the previous season before spring hits.6. Spaghetti ai ricci. Spaghetti tossed with delicate sea urchin roe (also known as uni), olive oil, garlic and salt. Cena / Dinner7. Falsomagro. A meatloaf that translates to “false lean”. Made mostly with veal, it can also be stuffed with sausage, ham, salami, proscuitto and cheese, but always hard-boiled eggs for a dramatic cross-section. The sauce is also ladled over primi pasta dishes before the main event. 8. Involtini di pesce spada. Thinly sliced swordfish rolled around stuffing made from capers, garlic, lemon zest and breadcrumbs, as well as Arab-influence ingredients like pine nuts and currants. Usually served with salmoriglio (lemon and olive oil-based dressing). Duci / Dessert 9. Cassata Siciliana. This decorative sponge cake traditionally has a crust filled with ricotta and candied fruit in a shell of green marzipan. Look for the gelato version, too.10. Cuccia. Sweetened ricotta and wheat berry porridge, often scattered with cinnamon, dark chocolate and candied fruit. Traditionally eaten for the Feast of Santa Lucia in December.

Want to eat Sicilian at home? Scroll down for five suggestions in Melbourne. This spread is from Mister Bianco in Kew.

#SAVEHOSPO » Eat Sicilian and Support these Melbourne Businesses

Bar Idda for date night at home with cavatelli and cassata132 Lygon Street, Brunswick EastRosa's Canteen for house pasta and sauces to feed the familyCnr Little Bourke & Thomson Street, MelbourneSmall Axe Kitchen & Deli for meal subscriptions & produce boxes281 Victoria Street, BrunswickRocco's Bologna Discoteca for fun Italian fast food, like bone marrow garlic bread and chicken foot cacciatore81-83 Gertrude Street, FitzroyMelbourne Arancini for Sicily's favourite street food, delivered, using a third-generation recipe6/17 Lindaway Place, Tullamarine

Spread curiosity, not coronvirus

If this newsletter transported you somewhere, even just for a moment, please forward it to someone who might like it.And should you find yourself cooking or ordering Sicilian food, remember to share your #EatCuriously snaps and tag @SeasonedTravellerHQ on Instagram.