A sunny day, a cold beer and a roll with panelle. You can buy them from a street-seller or at a shop, and while the taste of the chickpea flour melds with parsley and spices you can look towards the sea. Or maybe go for a walk in the old town centre of Palermo.

You can even sit down and look at ‘u passìo’, which in dialect refers to people of all ages and social origin strolling around, walking around, talking, anxiously waiting to taste one of the well-known Sicilian dishes. Ansd if you really want to exaggerate, together with panelle you can add potato croquettes, also called crocchè or cazzilli. But what is the secret of this meal, simple and tasty but with an unmistakable flavour? And above all, how do you prepare it? We asked Bartolo Cappello who has worked in a well-know panelle shop in Palermo for the past 15 years.

Cappello explains that not all panelle and crocchè are the same: “We usually put spices in the mixture to make them particular. The secret is found in the quantity of salt and pepper or in the quantity of parsley added to the chickpea flour and the water to make panelle. As far as the crocchè are concerned, we add fresh mint to the basic potato mixture”. Then they are fried in boiling oil and served in the “typical roll, round if possible”, explains Cappello. But one of the preparations is more difficult than the other.

“We use only fresh products and not frozen ones, and crocchè are more difficult to prepare than panelle – continues Cappello – because you must carefully cook potatoes: a few minutes extra and the mixture will go bad”. Finally we just need to know the secret for the perfect cooking of cazzilli. The answer is just one and would seriously disappoint dietologists an nutritionists all around the world: fry them in very hot oil.

Translated by Chiara Nunnari from John Milton Institute