The almond (mandorla, in Italian) is one of the most characteristic Sicilian fruits, which can be enjoyed all year round, especially in sweets.
In summer, you can drink it in the refreshing almond milk and in granita; and in winter, you can find it in nougat and in the famous dry cookies, pasticcini alla mandorla. And, of course, in the frutta Martorana.
In addition to eating it, in spring you can visit their wonderful flowers in the festival dedicated to it in the Valley of the Temples, in Agrigento, the Sagra del Mandorlo in Fiore.
And if you are not yet in Sicily, you may want to know a little more about this fruit through the stories of two exceptional writers:
The Almond Picker by Simonetta Agnello Hornby
La mennulara, the almond picker in Sicilian and the original title of the novel, is the protagonist of this story that you will read with anxiety and pleasure.
Set in a Sicilian village in the 60's on the day of the death of this mysterious woman, this will be an event that will trigger a surprising and unexpected story that will put the whole village in evidence. An unforgettable character and a novel to be enjoyed with the excitement of a good thriller.
The Almond Picker was the first novel written by Simonetta Agnello Hornby, a Sicilian lawyer living in London, and since its publication in 2002 it has immediately become a bestseller. Since then, Agnello Hornby has not stopped writing stories about Sicily, in which food and women are almost always the main characters.
Bitter Almonds. Recollections and Recipes from a Sicilian Girlhood by Mary Taylor Simeti and Maria Grammatico
Mary Taylor Simeti is a New Yorker by birth and a Sicilian by adoption. In this book Simeti tells the story of Maria Grammatico, the now famous pastry chef of Erice, a hilltop village in the province of Trapani.
Maria Grammatico, along with her sister, were sent to an orphanage, where she learned from the nuns the pastry-making trade and, in particular, many traditional sweets prepared with almonds. At the age of 22 Maria left the orphanage with the only thing she possessed: her skills and knowledge as a pastry chef.
How she came to open her famous pastry shop and some of her recipes is what Taylor Simeti tells in this book with a protagonist as remarkable as La mennulara.