Pasticceria Natalina 5406 N. Clark 773-989-0662
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When most Italian immigrants were settling along Grand Avenue or Taylor Street, Zarzour’s maternal grandparents left Palermo for Palos Heights, where her grandfather took a job as a hospital lab technician. Like many newcomers, they wanted their children to assimilate, but their isolation kept the family’s food traditions alive. “I think I got to learn more intricate recipes because they weren’t close to the delis and bakeries,” says Zarzour. “They had to make their own because it was so far.”
On her first trip to Sicily, at age 15, Zarzour discovered the immense difference between regional Italian foods and what passed for them in America, where immigrants were forced to make substitutions for original ingredients that never made the trip to the New World. Sicily’s pastry culture was defined and refined over centuries of conquest by and commerce with the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans, and Spanish. “You get a lot of exotic ingredients–pistachios, rose water, and citrus fruits,” she says. “A lot of those earthy, exotic flavors together with classical French techniques, and that’s really what makes Sicilian pastry so magical.”
She thought that once she got in a kitchen with commercial equipment the painstaking, labor-intensive recipes would get easier. They haven’t. Natalie says it takes three days to make the frutti di martorana, hand-painted marzipan figs, plums, prickly pears, oranges, and lemons that look as if they just fell from the tree. Nick can spend an entire afternoon cutting and frying cannoli shells for the weekend.
