My favorite restaurant in Palermo is not a fancy place, instead it is a warm and homey little family owned place. Run by a husband and wife.

This is Involtini di Vitello alla Siciliana, veal medallions pounded flat and thin and filled with a mixture of tomato conserva, pecorino cheese and bread crumbs, then rolled up. ⁣

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What I like about Trattoria al Cancelletto's interpretation is that they skewer them with bay leaves and onion pieces then bake them with more bread crumbs on top. Lots of places make Involtini di Vitello (with various fillings) but they simply toothpick them and saute them on two sides then finish in the oven. But skewering them all together with the added bay leaf in particular really makes a lot of sense to me. All this for 12,00€ I couldn't be happier!⁣

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This kind of thing shows up under lots of different guises, my family call it 𝘉𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘪𝘰𝘭𝘦 (we incorrectly add an "s" at the end, but the "e" already makes it plural - the old handwritten recipe we use is just written as "𝘉𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘪𝘰𝘭𝘦 𝘥𝘪 𝘊𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘦"). Braciole usually means a bigger cutlet, like in our family we use flank steak but earlier incarnations of the family used veal, while 𝘐𝘯𝘷𝘰𝘭𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘪 is meant to be "little bundles" so just a smaller scale. Then there is the Sicilian dialect word "𝘍𝘢𝘳𝘴𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘳𝘶" which I think is the same thing as a big Braciole. But the fillings for all of these are kind of bound only by the imagination and so I was very delighted to find the blueprint of our families filling in these little Involtini. ⁣

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Trattoria al Cancelletto is a perfectly secluded and cozy, especially on a rainy night such as this. Run by just a husband and wife team, she handles the small dining room and he does all the food. I sat next to an arrangement of black and white photos from the 50's, I noticed the little girl in the pictures looked similar to the matron serving me, I asked with my clipped and clumsy Italian, "sei tu?" and pointed to the pictures and she said "Si!" then in English she pointed to each person in the photos and explained who was who.