Expo Milan 2015 and the tweet about “arancinI”

Traditional Sicilian “Arancina al burro”

From our point of view, and when I say “our” I mean us Western Sicilians and “Palermitans” in particular, this comes as a real unhappy tweet because the classical arancine that you find all year around in bars are two types: alla carne (with mince meat and peas like the top pic) and al burro (ham and cheese, like the pic here on the left.)

As I always try to explain in my blog though, Sicily is a big island, we have 9 provinces and “gastronomically speaking” (please allow me this term), there are lots of differencies and versions for the same dish. In eastern Sicily they put hard-boiled eggs apparently in a lot of dishes, included the poor arancine. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr…

The rest of Sicily stubbornly keeps calling them with the masculine arancinO/arancinI, which makes no sense. To make it worse in the last two decades the writer Andrea Camilleri and the famous tv show Inspector Montalbano, set in the southern province of Ragusa, contributed to spread the word in the masculine genre… and now the tweet from the Official Expo is doing it again. It’s unhappy because it passes off that recipe as the original one, which is obviously NOT. And that’s why the storm, the case, the catastrophe.

Never forget how important is food for us Sicilians!

It’s vital because it’s ONE of the few certainties that we have in life. We know that panelle are flat, cazzili are oval, arancine are golden rounded balls, cannoli are filled with ricotta cream. These are certainties for us. That’s why I am telling you one more time: this debate will never ever end. It is just getting started!!!