How often do you find yourself looking for the best recipe to a traditional Italian meal and you can’t find two recipes that match together. Most often leaving you thinking well, what the hell is the right recipe anyways. I love that about Italian food. The recipe just gives you a heads up and guidelines to what the finished result should look like, and all the rest is up to you to improvise. Of course, if you don’t post it online and be greeted with temperamental locals to whose food you’re replicating, but that’s all the beauty of it.
Leave the gun, take the cannoli!
As they leave, Peter Clemenza delivers one of the most quoted lines in movie history. Critics have long debated the meaning of “Leave the gun, take the cannoli”. Some say it refers to keeping violence and negativity in the past — take only the “sweet” things with you into the future. And really I couldn’t help but agree more to the background of the story. But to take this sweet pastry delight into the future you’re going to need the recipe, so let’s get down to business.
Cannoli shells:
Wandering the internet for the most traditional cannoli recipe ever might drive you slightly mad. There is really so many different ones but they all go down on the same scheme. So, basically the shell is made of a sweetened dough enriched with fat (lard/butter) and acidity (most commonly marsala wine/vinegar). The dough is then submerged into very hot lard or oil for very short time.
Before we continue to the recipe.
I need to inform you that cannoli shells are inevitable to making cannoli. You should be able to find them in any decent equipped pastry store. Besides the shells you’ll need some kind of round 9-11 cm cutter and a rolling pin or pasta machine for rolling out the dough.
Cannoli filling:
Cannoli are traditionally filled with sugar enriched ricotta cheese. They are then typically dipped into crushed nuts or candied fruits on both end. Today, cannoli are filled with a much wider variety of creams from lemon curds, creme patissiere, chocolate, etc. I kind of like the old school ricotta filling the most. The light and creamy texture really complements the rough crusty shell. If you wish to make your own ricotta cheese which I do encourage you to here’s the full recipe to that: http://meza-blog.com/recipe/ricotta/