'Tutta roba genuina'

• By Corinne Vella

“Per questo lavoro ci deve passione e fantasia,” Giovanni Giordano (pictured left) said with a smile. He should know about passion and fantasy. At 52, he is the oldest and longest-serving pasticciere in San Cataldo, a largish town in the centre of Sicily. His pasticciere’s hands have worked their magic for the last 40 years, turning out heaps of tasty sweets and savouries.

Now employed by G. T. Gel, a confectionery producer on the outskirts of San Cataldo, he is a respected and admired master craftsman, as enthusiastic today as when he was a 12 year-old apprentice. Watching Giordano at work is fascinating. He is as meticulous when firming and patting a handful of rice into a hollow sphere to make an arancina, as he is when filling it with meat sauce made from Sicilian and Italian tomatoes and peas that have been hand-sorted to retain only the best. He weighs each rice ball only just before it is finished, but their weight is only marginally off the standard 200g, a difference made up by rolling each arancina in a final coat of egg and breadcrumbs.

To make miniature cassatelle siciliane, Giordano cuts dozens of circles of homemade marzipan by hand, presses them into individual moulds, adds a dollop of refined ricotta, tops that with a slice of cake, flips the lot over and adds a cherry and a dash of icing, yet each portion receives the same care and attention.

G. T. Gel’s cassatella is truly Sicilian. Except for the sugar, all its ingredients are from Sicilian suppliers. “We have a technical scheme for selecting our ingredients,” explains Gianpiero Vedda, the company’s production and quality director. He too has worked as a pasticciere since he was 12 and often still rolls up his sleeves to take his place at the production tables. “Our products are all semi-artigianati,” he says proudly, waving a hand over trays of arancine, cassatelle, pasta di mandorla, sweet ravioli and cannoli di ricotta, “and I still enjoy eating sweets, even though I work with them all day.”

The same pride in tradition and the art of food can be found up the road and round the corner at Oleificio Diliberto. Giuseppe Diliberto (above right), the current owner, is the grandson of a frantoiano, an olive oil producer who would gather and crush olives by hand. Six years ago, Giuseppe Diliberto’s father set up the company that Giuseppe now runs. It produces bottled sauces and vegetables preserved sott’olio, and some of the finest olive oil to be had anywhere.

Though the company has some olive trees of its own, Diliberto selects olives from producers in the surrounding area, who use biological or organic agricultural methods to care for their trees. Nocellara del belice, tonda iblea and biancotilla, the main types of olives produced around San Cataldo, are gathered by hand from late September to mid-December. Each produces a distinctive oil and there are plans to have the tonda iblea oil designated D.O.P. (Denominazione di Origine Protetta) putting it one rank above the other Diliberto oils and way ahead of the supermarket varieties.

Back at the frantoio the olives are aired, washed, and crushed within 24 hours to preserve their taste. In Giuseppe Diliberto’s grandfather’s time, the olives were crushed by hand. The oils produced were not always of the same standard because ambient temperature was left to nature and the wooden implements used would contaminate the oil. “They used to spread the frangitura, the crushed olive paste, onto stoffa, cloth stretched over wooden containers,” Diliberto says. This was done to separate the liquid oil from the paste by leaving it to drip slowly through the cloth. The oil would absorb the scent and taste of the wood and the cloth, and sometimes it would be contaminated by mould.

Nowadays, Oleificio Diliberto uses stainless steel machinery, which has helped to stabilise the production process. “We use machines to crush the olives and we keep the temperature between 25C and 26C to preserve their taste,” Diliberto explains. The frangitura is churned by machine and the oil is extracted by centrifugal force, rather than by a slow drip method, and stored in vats ready for bottling.

The quality of the oil depends principally on the annual harvest, but it is exposure to light, oxygen and ambient temperature changes that ultimately destroys it. “Once you open a good bottle of oil you have to consume it within 18 months,” Diliberto says. Meanwhile he advises leaving it in a dark bottle in a cool place, preferably with the air sucked out. Oleificio Diliberto bottles its oils on site, using dark glass to conserve its quality. The bottling process is partly done by hand. “Oil that is bottled automatically is not of the best quality,” Diliberto says. “To keep a good quality you need hands not machines.”

Hands are very much in use, too, at the family-owned Caseificio Marina Principe di Ippolito, and not just to drive the machines. The caseificio, a cheese-making house, sits on a hill in Resuttano, a short drive from San Cataldo. It buys the milk for its cheeses from farms in the rolling green countryside that surrounds it. In the stark white pasteurization room, Amato Andoni, the harassed and dedicated casaro, described the cheese-making process, dashing off at intervals to supervise the various stages of production.

Milk is first pasteurized to kill bacteria and food enzymes are added to aid fermentation. The milk is then boiled for 30-45 minutes. When pea-sized grains of cheese begin to form, they are sieved out, hand pressed into baskets and then cooked in the serum left over from ricotta-making to produce pasta filata, the basic cheese paste that is processed into various cheeses. “All cheeses are cooked, except mozzarella. We could use water instead of serum for cooking, but that would affect the taste of the cheese,” Andoni explained, as he scooped up a handful of pasta filata, dipped it into hot liquid and then rolled and twisted it into the pear shape of provolone.

Once fermented and cooked in serum, the baskets of pasta filata are treated with salt to aid acidification and maturation. By varying the type of milk used—sheep’s milk for ricotta and pecorino, cow’s milk for most other cheeses—the temperature and duration of cooking, the amount of salt and the process of maturation, the Caseificio creates the different cheese types sold all the way up Italy and beyond. “Our processes are controlled scientifically,” Andoni explains, “but the eye, the hand and the sense of taste are still important.” He could have been speaking for food lovers everywhere.