The best cook of the 2010 comes from Collesano. Her name is Lina D’Agostino. She won with a typical dish from the Sicilian tradition: sweet-and-sour tongue. She gained this title yesterday night, during the Taste Theatre event, organized by the cultural Association Golisano Village, in the Madonite town.

It was a real show, that involved eight Sicilian cooks. They were already selected between forty people, all of them admitted on the competition because of the special way of cooking and choosing ingredients. The eight “star for a night” interchanged on the stage. They cooked in a French kitchen, with a particular design and a long history (300 years).They cooked their testy dishes live, and the exceptional cooks Aldo Paciulli (from the Metrò restaurant of Catania) and Salvatore Baggese (from Romitaggio restaurant of Castelbuono) followed them. This was the Leit motiv of the dishes in competition: they had to be typical and all made by local ingredients, preferably from SlowFood presidium.

The jury was composed by journalists, experts, people from the SlowFood association and also from the Mayor of Collesano, Giovanni Meli, and Castelbuono, Mario Cicero. They chose the winner dish between a rich menu: two starters combined with a dry Zibibbo wine, two first courses and a second course with a Nero D’Avola, and three sweets with a Passito of Pantelleria.

The sfincione of Domenica D’Angelo was the first dish prepared, and also the only one presented on the competition, together with the aubergine pie of Mariangela Gargano. Santina Grisanti expressed her best on the stage with her noodles with tomato and Badda beans from Polizzi Generosa. The “pasta incaciata” of Adriana Ilarda was a taste triumph. It was prepared with a “grandma” meat sauce, with frayed meat of pork, veal and lamb. Anyway the most appreciated dish from the jury was the sweet-and-sour tongue. This is a well cooked fillet, in a sweet-and-sour sauce of celery, with white olives in brine, pine nuts and chocolate, a “rain” of soaked raisins, and candied citrons. Dulcis in fundo, at the end of the menu, there were the buccellato of Maria Iacuzzi, the almonds cookies of Rosa Costa and the Saint Giuseppe sfinci of Mariangela Gargano.