When Pino Cuttaia advises young, ambitious Sicilian chefs to follow his example and work abroad to experience new techniques and unfamiliar foods he is not necessarily pointing them towards London or New York. The overseas destinations he has in mind are on mainland Italy and in particular the north, where you find such curiosities as polenta and, stranger still, butter. Butter, for the uninitiated, is a dairy product made by churning milk or cream and is often used in place of olive oil.
But, as Cuttaia and Italian food journalist Roberta Corradin made clear to Londoners at his informal Galleria Illy talk and tasting  (see video), a chef with Michelin stars in his eyes no longer needs to leave his native Sicily for good to pursue them. With the island only recently gaining recognition for its culinary aspirations and new regionalism, Agrigento, Caltanissetta, Catania, Enna, Messina, Palermo, Ragusa, Siracusa and Trapani are no longer just the provinces of cucina di nonna – grandmother’s kitchen. Forget the trattoria image: One highly rated restaurant, for example, Cuttaia’s La Madia, can turn a small, nondescript seaside town, such as Licata, into a destination for diners and chefs travelling from abroad, this time meaning Tuscany AND London.
It might have been his wife’s homesickness, more than his own, that ultimately lured Cuttaia back south to Licata from Piedmont in 2000. But the two-Michelin-starred chef clearly missed the flavours of his youth. His is a cutting-edge cuisine focused, paradoxically, on the past, filtering cherished memories of childhood through modern techniques. At Galleria Illy it wasn’t merely the memory of melanzane alla parmigiana Cuttaia wished to evoke. It was the still sweeter recollection of del giorno dopo (“the day after”) aubergine Parmesan. On summer afternoons young Sicilian boys love to dig into the chilled leftovers when their mothers either aren’t looking – or, more likely, pretending not to notice.
For the Galleria audience Cuttaia cleverly presented his del giorno dopo in small tasting glasses as a layered parfait of fried baby aubergine topped with a purée of aubergine, egg yolk and ricotta, a foam of Parmigiano-Reggiano and the Sicilian cheese Caciocavallo Ragusano and a chopped tomato and olive oil garnish. This may not have resembled anyone’s grandmother’s aubergine Parmesan, but the flavours were true to memory – Cuttaia’s guiding principle – and the custard-smooth textures transformed an old standard in Sicily as well as other regions of Italy into a new and guilty pleasure. This was dessert to start a meal, a small boy stealing something cool and creamy from the fridge after his mother stepped out of the kitchen.
Cuttaia closed the show with bags of ricotta cream – the only thing that a Sicilian kid likes better in a cone than gelato. He piped this cannoli filling into pastry horns in the traditional manner, dipping them in crushed pistachios (Sicilian, naturally), adorning them with orange peel and powdering them with icing sugar. Then he took what was left of all the ingredients and improvised a deconstructed cannoli, crushing the pastry with his fingers and using the small pieces as the crunchy foundation for a cannoli parfait.
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So how was Cuttaia’s deconstructed cannoli parfait? Let’s just say I waited for the moment when he was looking the other way – or pretending to do so – and stole a second serving.
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