mum's Cassateddi recipe
They’re officially called sweet ravioli of ricotta or in Italian cassatelle. I come from the Ragusa region and we call these cassateddi. My friends from the Messina and Catania region call them Sciauni. These half moon shapes are filled with sweet ricotta filling and then fried. They are best eaten warm and you’ll find it very very difficult to stop at two or three.
Ingredients for the pastry
500 grams of OO flour
150 mls of dry sherry
225 mls of water
Pinch of salt
Two tablespoon of olive oil
Ingredients for the filling
- 400 grams of ricotta
- 200 grams of sugar
- Cinnamon to taste
- Nutmeg to taste
- Orange & lemon rind
- Mix well together
- Set aside 1 cup of caster sugar and cinnamon mixed together to place cassateddi in once they’ve been fried
Free recipe
sheet downloads
Preparation
Combine ingredients well together until smooth. Let dough sit for 1/2 hour.
The dry sherry or Marsala gives the dough a slight sweet taste and golden colour. My personal preference is to use dry sherry.
Cut dough into 4 pieces. Sprinkle flour on bench and with a rolling pin roll dough flat. You can run the dough through a pasta machine going to about the second last setting which is fairly thin. Approximately 2millimetres in thickness.
Place two teaspoons of ricotta mixture on each square of pastry. Fold over making sure you seal down around the ricotta mound really well. Place a fork on pastry to make indents around the edges. Pierce cassateddi with a toothpick a couple of times before placing in oil.
Heat up 1 litre of oil in a deep saucepan. Place cassateddi in hot oil. You want the whole cassateddi submerged in the oil. Once you take them out of the oil quickly blot the excess oil on a paper towel then roll into mixture of caster sugar and cinnamon.
This recipe will make approximately 15–20 cassateddi depending on the size.
This is part of the reason why I began doing food tours, it gives you a chance to learn about all these great traditional recipes or ways of cooking. I founded this tour company to give people access to locations that most tour operators don’t visit or even think of taking people.
