What is the taste of the clouds?

Have you ever wondered looking at the sky, perhaps observing one with a particularly round and defined shape? Many think of cotton candy: they relate the ease with which it breaks between the fingers who want to take a piece to an end of a cloud that is cut by the wind.

To me, however, the apparent softness and whiteness of the clouds make me think of "baci panteschi” (wfw “kisses from Pantelleria”).

Baci are a variant of fried cassatella, a typical dessert of Trapani in Sicily.

They are made of two waffles with flour, eggs and milk, usually fried in the shape of a flower or a butterfly (but there may be others of course) and connected by ricotta cream wrought with a sieve and sugar, to make it even softer and delicate.

Baci should be eaten as soon as they are done otherwise the zest will "softened up" due to the sweet contact with the ricotta.

Baci are certainly not among the most famous or elaborate sweets of Sicilian culture (also because they are typical of the island of Pantelleria and not the whole Sicily), but they represent for me a "dish" that makes me feel truly at home.

In my family, “il bacio” is the typical dessert that ends the Pantelleria dinners in July or August with friends, strictly accompanied by a glass of passito, a fortified wine much more famous than the local dessert and exported outside the small island.

Il bacio for me is a symbol of vacation, relaxation and carefree evenings.

And even those who do not want to overdo it and are satisfied after dinner to share a bacio because "a whole is a lot", in the end they have to change their minds and give in to temptation because as a Sicilian would say: “ma che è una vasata a metà? Manco pu prio!* Jurnata rutta rumpila tutta!**” (wfw "what is an half kiss? Neither for the pleasure! Day broke brake it all!").