You Say Pisticci, I Say Pasticci
"Sweet dreams are made of this."
La Dolce Vita
I’m back in Brooklyn and Ed Anderson is at home in Petaluma. While my sleep schedule is a bit off, I’m still digesting our time together in Italy and, inspired by Ed’s striking photos, preparing to dive into transcribing all of my interviews and continue to work on Beviamo Italiano with fervor.
In the name of research I tasted and drank a wide variety of beverages while I was in Italy, but I also tended to my sweet tooth. There were exceptions, but most of the dolci following lunch or dinner was fine, but I would have been happy with just a caffè with a little bit of sugar. I do like to have a stash of chocolate within reach at all times and Autogrill kept me stocked with cardboard 3-packs of Baci that I kept in the glove box of our rental car for power-ups during our long drives (“Baci me, Ed!”). And after we sampled a glass of Cocchi Storico Vermouth di Torino alongside an elegant foil-wrapped piece of Venchi Gianduiotto Gianduia I snuck a few extra pieces of chocolate in my jacket pocket only to find they had melted when we arrived at our next destination.
And as Ed will attest, I rarely passed a bakery or pasticceria where I didn’t stop in. Usually to just stare at the display cases but sometimes departing with a pastry or cookie. We were in Italy during Carnevale so I had to try many of the regionally driven fried treats, like fritelle and castagnole (fried doughnut balls sprinkled with sugar and filled with custard, chocolate, chestnut, or raisins) and chiacchiere (crispy strips of fried dough with a dusting of confectioner’s sugar).
When we were in Modena our first stop was Mercato Albinelli, a historic covered market packed with 65 stalls of vendors selling fruit (I loved seeing all the beautiful late-winter citrus), produce, seafood, cheese, salumi, butcher shops, bakeries, restaurants, and wine bars. My first and favorite stop was a Sicilian-inspired pasticceria owned by a kind woman who put together a little box of her favorite sweets for me to take back to the hotel (she mistakenly thought Ed and I were both Londoners and was surprised when I told her I lived in Brooklyn). She filled it with Cucciddati (sweet Sicilian fig cookies covered in icing and rainbow sprinkles), some chewy cookies dotted with candied cherries, and the best cannolo I have ever had.
When we arrived at our Hotel in the Marche I put the cannolo in the mini-fridge for a midnight snack. And when I made it back to the room after dinner around midnight it was truly transcendent—the most delicate, crispiest shell whose ends had been dipped in chocolate; a bright, lemon-kissed sweet ricotta filling; and an added crunch from fresh pistachios dotting each end of the filling. I will think about this cannolo for as many years I have left to live.