I was on time for my meeting with Victoria Granoff, author of Sweet Sicily: The Story of an Island and Her Pastries (Regan Books/Harper Collins). I walked into the Cafe Trieste, in San Francisco's famed Italian neighborhood, North Beach, where we were to meet, and ordered coffee. The woman in front of me, in line, looked familiar. I only had the book jacket picture to go by. I asked, "Are you Victoria?" It was her, and it made me realize, I really like meeting people for this show. We sat at a table outside. It was cool, but sunny. Fall can be so wonderful in San Francisco.
The first thing I noted about her book, Sweet Sicily, was that it is a lot more than just a recipe book. Victoria traveled to Sicily, along with two photographers to visit as many pastry shops on that small island. No mean feat, in that Sciliy is very serious about her pastries. The book, in fact lists over 100 pastry shops! And each page is crafted with beautiful photographs, pleasing stories and wonderful recipes.
The book talks about the history of the island. It's pastry heritage, the cultual influences of the conquering nations in terms of deserts. But what I love about this book is the personality Victoria shows in the people of Sicily. Each recipe is divulged from master bakers and desert makers. And each has a story.
Take the recipe for the cake on the cover, Trionfo di Gola or Triumph of Gluttony. Made by the nuns of the Convent of the Origlione in Palermo, this "cake" is all that and more. Sponge cake and sweet pastry dough; milk pudding and pistaschio preserves; marzipan and candied orange peel and MORE, all layered into this bombe! Wow!
Or, from the town of Noto, meet Corrado Costanzo. A man who is a master of sorbet. For his jasmine sorbet, the master picks the flowers himself, "in the evening, just as they begin to open." You can try to duplicate his tangerine sorbet, but you may just have to dream of chef Corrado's with its true Sicilian tangerines, Sicilian water and Sicilian sun.
And what pastry book would be complete without chocolate? Victoria introduces us to a pastry shop in Modica, Antica Dolceria Bonajuto. Where Franco Ruta and his family continue the tradition of chocolate making using a secret and ancient Aztec recipe. (The cacao beans, of course, originally coming from Mexico.) But even more intriguing is the shops meat and chocolate pastries, made with lean ground sirloin. Amazing.
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