The beauty of Italian food is that it is varied and there is not a unique cooking, but many.
This Italian characteristic is due to the fact that different populations have been living here for centuries, and consequently have left traces of their food cultures. Often, all these are linked by a common denominator, religion. In fact, many regional cuisines are related to the festivities because many sweets were invented by the nuns of the convents and then spread also outside.
Today we want to tell you the story of the most traditional desserts from southern Italy.
Puglia
During the past centuries, when the standard of living was different, and the tables were not as lavish as today, nuns used to make cakes only for a particular celebration, with simple ingredients that the land could offer. In 1745, exactly during the feast of St. Paul, in the Ascalone’s family bakery, born pasticciotto. According to legend, the cake was born from the waste of another cake made of puff pastry filled with custard, and put together without any criteria. The result of this mess was great and from that day, pasticciotto became the typical dessert of Salento. It’s typical habit to eat this cake freshly baked and still warm during the early hours of the day for breakfast. An Easter cake, in the province of Foggia is the scarcella, the dialect term for “ciambella” (donut); called in this way because of its donut shape. According to tradition, this shape symbolizes the rebirth of life after the winter. For this reason, it also is a symbol of the defeat of death that Easter represents. Made from flour, sugar, milk and eggs, nowadays they are also modeled in the shape of doves or baskets. Before the baking, two pasta stripes are put on the sweet to wrap a boiled egg. Then the scarcella is decorated with small colored sprinkles.
Sicily
The period of Arab domination of the island is the most profitable for the confectionery tradition, especially the symbol of Sicily, cassata. The Arabs imported cane sugar, lemon, cedar and almond.
All these new ingredients, combined with ricotta, gave birth to the first recipe, which over time became even richer including other ingredients introduced by the Spaniards, such as chocolate, sponge cake and candied fruit, that date back to the Baroque period. Thanks to the nuns of the convent of Martorana, was invented “pasta reale”, a paste made of almonds, sugar and colored with herbal extracts that became the “cover” for the cassata. Using the same pasta reale, the nuns gave birth to another sweet tied up to the festivities of All Souls’Day, the Frutta Martorana. According to tradition, Martorana Fruit was born during the visit of the Bishop arrived there to see the famous covent garden. Since the visit fell in the winter and the garden was not lush, the sisters decided to replace the fruits of their garden with those made of almond and sugar. Since then the tradition is that on the night between 1nd and 2nd November, when the dead return to earth to visit their loved ones, they leave this gift to the children.