Welcome to HowToCookThat I'm Ann Reardon and week 2 of our travel series ...
and we have arrived at Sicily in Italy 🇮🇹 While Dave, Jedd and James explored the
sights, Matt and I went on an hour's drive up the hill to Taorimina which is
where cannoli comes from. Cannoli is actually one of my favorite sweet treats
but only when it's nice and fresh and crunchy. If it's soggy it is not very nice.
So we had a local chef Stefano teach us how to make it properly at home. He makes
hundreds of these every day for the restaurant. The first thing you need to
do is tip the flour on to the counter, make a well in the centre or as chef
Stefano said 'make a volcano' and then add the egg into the center like
the lava and I'll put all these recipe quantities on the howtocookthat.net
website for you and there's a link to that below. Then add the cinnamon and the
sugar. Now mix that together using your hands he was very specific about not
using a mixer to do this dough because you might over mix it which will mean it
won't have any bubbles on the cannoli when it's cooked. Keep rubbing it
together and then add in the slightly melted butter and again use your hands
to mix it in until it's evenly distributed. Add in a little red wine at
a time to moisten it so that it can form a dough. Traditionally you'd use masala
for this but red wine works just as well if you can't get hold of masala. Keep
pressing and folding and knead your dough for a few minutes until it's
smooth and even. We got to try so many desserts while we were traveling through
Italy like gelato of course, Cassata, Torrone which we call nougat here ...
sfogliatella which I've never had before but the layers in that were amazing and of
course Tiramisu. I feel like Australia doesn't have dessert recipe inventions
of our own that we can claim ... we have things like Pavlova and even
Lamingtons but both of those have now been claimed by
New Zealand, they said they made them both first! Australia did invent lawnmowers
and Wi-Fi ... Wi-Fi is pretty important to people all over the world so that's a
big one. For sweet food though we can lay claim to Tim Tams and that's a good one
that's a very popular chocolate biscuit here which I think most of you should be
able to get all around the world now and you could have it as a dessert if you
have it as a Tim Tam Slam. If you haven't had a Tim Tam Slam before what you do is
bite off the opposite corners of the Tim Tam and then use it like a straw for a
hot drink like hot chocolate or coffee or you can use cold drink but I find it
work it's better with hot ... and quickly slam it in your mouth before it drops
into your drink!
The whole thing just liquifies. It does, that's a good way to describe it.
It's like a liquid Tim Tam, the whole thing just
becomes melted in your mouth. Melted chocolate soft biscuit the melted
filling. It just implodes, you have to shove it in fast hence the name the
Tim Tam Slam. Matthew can do a double Tim Tam slam where he has two Tim
Tams and slams them both of once, I can't do that. I'd love to see if any of you
can do a triple slab but if you haven't tried it before try it with one Tim Tam
first it might be a bit much otherwise. Video it upload it and tag it share the
slam so I'll be able to see it. Back to our cannoli once your dough looks even
you want to wrap it and put that in the fridge overnight. Again chef Stefano
insisted that if you don't rest your dough you won't have bubbles on the
outside of your cannoli when you fry it and bubbles are a sign of good cannoli.
We're gonna make two different fillings and the first one you need five egg
yolks and you mix with that a little bit of milk and 140 grams of
sugar and whisk that together really well. Add a little bit of grated lime
rind ... Matty's doing a great job there. And the rind of a whole orange.
Then push a hole in the orange and squeeze it really hard to get most of
the juice out then whisk through the semolina flour a little at a time until
it's all incorporated. Put the rest of the milk in a frying pan on medium heat
until it just starts to boil then pour in the egg yolk mixture into the center
and wait until you see bubbles again and then mix it and keep stirring it don't
stop stirring it until it's thick and even all the way through. You can taste
it to check if it's good which it was, very good 😁 then tip that into a bowl and
cool it in the fridge. For the second filling you just whisk together ricotta
and sugar and then add in candied fruits and mix them through. Now back to our
cannoli ... take your rested cannoli dough and roll
it out on some semolina flour you want it fairly thin and then cut out a circle
of the dough and roll it even thinner. Turn it as you roll it so you try and
keep it fairly circular. Keep rolling until it's thin enough that you can see
the silhouette of your fingers through the dough. Then wrap the dough around a
cannoli tube and seal it at the join using a little bit of egg then you just
need to fry them in oil. If you're using metal cannoli tubes they're going to
sink to the bottom so you need to hold them off the bottom so that they don't
burn just using your drainer and give it a little bit of a wriggle as they cook.
once they're ready make sure you tip it before you take it off the pan to let
the oil that's inside the tubes drain out otherwise you're going to get oil
everywhere and then just put that on some paper
towel to drain off the excess oil. See how the cannoli shells have bubbles all
over them as I said that is apparently the sign of a good cannoli. Wait for them
to cool off and then just slide the tube out of the middle. Check the inside to
make sure it's cooked all the way through if not you can just fry them for
a couple more seconds but these ones look good.
You can use a spoon to fill them but it is much easier with a piping bag then
dip each end and pistachio nuts or almonds or chocolate chips or whatever
you like really and then you just serve them on a plate
and it's important that you eat them within three hours of filling them
because otherwise they go soggy and they're not good. You want that cannoli
to be crunchy. So you can store the shells in an airtight container and fill
them just before serving.
What did you think of that Matt. That was a good class he was very nice. He was lovely.
it was so amazing to make it with someone who makes
a hundred of these every day there teaching you and telling you all the secrets.
Especially the secret that they use the scraps to make ... little biscuits for the staff
because you can't re-roll it because it then has a
mixture of the semolina flour so they pour hot Nutella over the top and make
little biscuits. Tastes really good. Hmm tastes amazing.
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when we upload a new video. Click here to watch the first week of our trip and
here for more videos. Make it a great week and I'll see you on Friday 💕