Dessert Atlas · Dessert
Cannoli Siciliani
- Advanced
- 2 h
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, acid holding everything up to the light, fading in warm spice.
Ingredients
- Shells: 250g flour, 30g sugar, 30g lard or butter, 1 egg, 60ml Marsala, 1 tbsp vinegar, pinch cocoa and cinnamon
- 500g sheep's-milk ricotta: drained OVERNIGHT in a sieve; this is the entire ballgame
- 120g icing sugar; candied orange peel, chopped; dark chocolate chips
- Metal cannoli tubes; oil or lard for frying
- Pistachios, crushed, for the ends; icing sugar snowfall
Equipment
Thermometer · Piping bag
The skills inside
Deep fryingStraining & passing through a sieve
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg · nuts · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Firm dough with the Marsala and vinegar (the blistering agents); rest 1 h; roll paper-thin. 60 min
- Cut ovals; wrap around tubes, sealing with egg white; fry at 180°C until blistered and bronzed, 90 seconds.
- Cool; slide off tubes gently. Shells keep a week in a tin: this is a make-ahead in disguise.
- Whip the drained ricotta with sugar until silken; fold in peel and chocolate; pipe into shells AT THE MOMENT of serving. Dip ends in pistachio; dust.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Deep frying 96 recipes
- The oil was at temperature before anything went in, measured rather than guessed, and the vessel is no more than two-thirds full.
- Everything went in dry. Surfaces are patted down and any coating is not dripping, because water hitting hot oil erupts and is the one accident this technique actually has.
- The oil recovers between batches. It is back at temperature before the next load goes in rather than falling further with each one.
- A steady vigorous bubbling that slows as it finishes: the bubbles are the food’s own water leaving, so a piece that has gone quiet has stopped drying out and is done.
- Seasoned or finished in the first seconds out of the oil, while the surface is still hot and will hold what lands on it. Anything applied to a cooled crust sits on top and falls off.
Where it goes wrong Too much went in at once and the oil temperature collapsed. The crust forms slowly while the food sits in warm fat absorbing it rather than shedding steam, and it comes out heavy and greasy instead of crisp, which no amount of draining afterwards will fix.
Straining & passing through a sieve 148 recipes
- Nothing solid got through: a finger drawn through what came out finds no fibre, seed, skin, curd, or grit.
- Where the dish wants body it was worked through rather than left to drip, and the solids left in the mesh are spent and dry rather than still holding liquid worth having.
- It is judged on the tongue rather than by eye: smooth, with no residual grain left behind after the mouthful has gone.
- The mesh was fine enough for the job and held its shape, and nothing bypassed it by going over the rim.
- The yield is close to what went in less the spent solids: not half of it abandoned in the sieve because it stopped running and nobody pushed.
Where it goes wrong It was pushed through a mesh too coarse for it, or the sieve was overloaded and slopped at the rim, so the fibres it was meant to remove are in the finished sauce and it reads grainy on the tongue.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Banyuls or Ruby Port
- Also Right
- PX Sherry
- From the Taps
- Imperial stout
- Zero-Proof
- Espresso
Chocolate wants fortified sweetness or roast-bitter contrast: the wine must out-sweet the plate, or oppose it entirely.
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