On the top floor of a flat in the West End of Aberdeen, pandemonium has broken out.
I’m in the home of Rosa Magri, a Sicilian mother of five who moved to Aberdeen three years ago.
Rosa makes Sicilian pastries in the kitchen of her flat, which a year ago she started selling – with some success – through a Facebook page.
When Rosa first launched, Aberdeen’s Italian community flocked to her door – literally; customers pick up their orders from her Ashvale Place home.
But word spread. Soon, everyone from local students to anyone who’d been to Italy on holiday were showing up. All of them had heard about the authentic cooking coming from Rosa’s kitchen.
This included Sicilian mini-cakes and biscuits like the bulls-eye-shaped occhi di bue spot-filled with Nutella or apricot jam.
Or the rame di Napoli, a chocolate-shelled taste bomb flavoured with cinnamon and cloves. And of course Sicily’s famous cannoli – pastry tubes stuffed with cream cheese and fruit.
But there’s more.
Rosa also makes Sicilian pasta such as the island’s eggplant dish, pasta alla norma. Then there’s Sicily’s answer to the calzone – scacciata siciliana – which hides olives and mozzarella inside a folded-over tomato base.
An espresso-bar-style discussion on Sicilian cooking
For Rosa, the dishes are the best examples of Sicilian cooking, which as far as she is concerned sits head and shoulders above the rest of Italy because of the creativity of the island’s chefs.
Or at least I think that’s what she says. It’s when I ask her about the differences between Sicilian and Italian cooking that the pandemonium breaks out.
Opposite me, Rosa, whose English is still in its early stages, turns to her translator, 14-year-old daughter Luna.
The two start a discussion in Italian, one that is soon joined by the rest of Rosa’s family crammed onto the living room couch.
My colleague Giada, who is from Italy and came down to lend language support, is sitting on the other side of Rosa chipping in with some Italian of her own.
Suddenly I’m no longer in a tenement flat in central Aberdeen – I’m in the middle of a full-throated Italian espresso-bar-style discussion on the merits of Sicilian food.
“It’s just better,” says Rosa of her home island’s cooking. She launches into an explanation of how imaginative Sicilian chefs are.
Beside her, Giada looks ready to argue. Her grandmother is Sicilian but she’s from the Italian north. She’s pretty sure chefs there can cook, too.
I sit back and let the discussion flow over me.
Bringing Sicily’s world-class cuisine to Aberdeen
What is undeniable is that Sicilian cooking is some of the best in the world.
I vividly remember a gastronomy tour I took a few years ago in Sicily’s beautiful and downbeat capital Palermo that blew my mind.
Meaty arancino balls, creamy gelato, cannoli.
I even managed to wolf down a pani ca meusa – boiled veal lung and spleen fried in pork fat and stuffed into a roll. The snack was invented to keep the island’s many fishermen full while out on the boats, so think of it as a Sicilian buttery.
It’s this culinary tradition that Rosa has transposed to Aberdeen.
She tells me she has always loved cooking, but it was only after moving to Aberdeen so the family could put the children through school – Luna and her siblings are at Aberdeen Grammar School – that she tried to make a business out of it.
Indeed, she says it is because she is in Aberdeen that she is able to do so. Back in Catania, her home town, there’s just too much competition.
Turning Sicilian pastries into Halloween treats
Being in Aberdeen also allows Rosa to be more creative with her food.
Halloween is a big celebration in Italy, but to take advantage of the event here Rosa has tweaked some of her traditional autumn pastries. So, right now, Rosa is cooking up batches of Halloween-themed rame di Napoli and occhi di bue.
She’s also turned the deep-fried and ricotta-stuffed pastries known as cassatelle into little pumpkins, coated in orange icing instead of green.
She offers a couple to me and Giada. My favourite is the occhi di bue with apricot jam – Sicilian pastries are not as sweet as Scotland’s sugar-laden ones, and it goes down a treat.
The children are excited to see others try their mum’s cooking. Luna tells me she’s always getting told off for hanging around the kitchen trying to sneak away with some food.
“Mum tells me, ‘Those are for the customers!’”
Not today, Luna. Today they are for me.
To order from Rosa, visit her Facebook page at Rosa’s Sicilian Food and Pastries. Orders must be picked up from Rosa’s home. For details, contact Rosa through the Facebook page.
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