The great gender debate that will never end - Arancini

In Italian literature, Inspector Montalbano, the main character of Andrea Camilleri's detective novels, is a well-known lover of arancini – especially those made by Adelina Cirrinciò, his housekeeper and cook. The success of the books and subsequent television adaptation starring Luca Zingaretti has contributed to making this dish increasingly popular outside of Italy. Of course this increase in popularity has tended to gentrify this easily portable and wholesome streetfood so much so that it can be found on the menus of many fine dining establishments.

However, one of the biggest reasons behind the fame of this street food in Sicily, that is normally served at bars or pavement food stalls, simply wrapped in a napkin to take away, is the huge gender dilemma it’s been posing on Sicilians for decades. While those living on the eastern side of the island use the masculine name of arancino (arancini when plural), residents of the western side advocate for the feminine form, arancina (arancine when plural),when referring to the fried delicacy

The ones in Palermo kept the original round shape and preserved their Arab roots by adding saffron to the rice; those in Catania evolved into a cone to represent Mount Etna, the volcano rising above the eastern coast,

The divide became so critical that it even required an intervention by Accademia della Crusca, Italy’s highest institution for the regulation of language. In January 2016, the academy published a special report on the arancino-vs-arancina debate, opting for a politically correct resolution. It claimed that both versions are correct, but that the feminine version is slightly more correct because fruits are generally feminine nouns in the Italian language.

Possibly safer to avoid getting into this debate by diverting to the original Sicilian dialect term "arancinu".

Here in Manchester about the closest you can get to authentic arancini is at T'arricrii a business set up by two Sicilian Brothers, Riccardo and Romeo, lovers of life with an innately strong passion for their native Sicily

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