Improvised Cannoli

I have relatives coming to stay and I really like them. We don’t see them often enough. So to celebrate their stay with us. I try and make an effort. Something different for change!

My niece is of Italian heritage and so I choose to make my bastardised version of Cannoli de Sicillianna.

It sounds impressive, but I don’t have any of the ingredients.

The recipe that I use comes from a book about opera by Antonio Carluccio. It is all about foods that are suitable accompaniment for opera.

I remember seeing Rick Stein on the idiot box doing a special on food and opera. I didn’t get it. I thought that he was stretching a long bow.

Anyway, I saw this book by Carluccio in a 2nd hand book shop, maybe 20 years ago and bought it.

It has a recipe for cannoli (P76), but I can’t bring myself to follow it. Apart from the need the make the tubes from scratch and deep fry them in lard!

I don’t even have any of the ingredients except the ricotta.

The recipe calls for ;

500g. ricotta,

100g. super fine sugar

1 tbsp. vanilla sugar

2 tbsp. orange flower water

50g. candied orange peel

50g. candied lemon peel

50g. candied citron

50g. glace cherries

50g. candied angelica

80g.bittersweet dark chocolate

and icing sugar

I can buy ricotta at the local shop, only a 10 km trip, but have to drive the 50km into town and back to buy the glace cherries at the supermarket.

All the other ingredients look pretty exotic.

You get used to living in the country and making do, so I improvise.

I am only making one dozen of these little cakes, so I halve the quantities.

I’m not into deep frying in lard, so instead I make some little tartlet bases and blind bake them for 15 mins.

I use the few dried fruits that I have in the big stoneware jar in the kitchen for making our muesli. Then instead of orange flower water, I decide to use finely grated lemon and lime zest, plus the juice of half the lime. Janine has some vanilla paste in her cooking cupboard. Instead of all the exotic candied fruits, I use my dried fruits muesli mix and instead of bittersweet dark chocolate I substitute half a dozen tiny ‘Aldi’ dark chocolate easter eggs finely sliced. After all, it is Easter.