The Ongoing Sicilian Food Saga

Usually I can find cookbooks in our local library system but there were two books about Sicilian cooking that I had to order as used books:  Pomp and Sustenance: Twenty-Five Centuries of Sicilian Food by Mary Taylor Simeti (an American who married a Sicilian and moved there in 1962) and Sicilian Food & Wine: The Cognoscente's Guide by Francesca Lombardo and Jacqueline Alio (two Sicilian women who claim to present "the most genuine, candid, unabashed side of Sicilian cuisine. Nothing nouvelle, just the very real thing.").  

Sicilian Food & Wine talks about the food (which I like) without recipes but Pomp and Sustenance also includes recipes.  I'm never sure which kind of cookbook author I prefer:  the native who grew up with the food, or the foreigner who is able to identify which dishes are unique to the region.  A healthy mix of both kinds of cookbooks is probably best.  I must admit that so far I prefer Pomp and Sustenance mainly because it includes the history of the dish and Lord knows Sicily has plenty of history!  It also includes drawings and photos and Sicilian Food & Wine is stark by contrast.  It would have been nice if I could have obtained the Italian version of the latter so at least it would give me some practice reading Italian.

In the meantime I am trying to practice my Italian with YouTube videos.  There's a British subscription called Pasta Grannies that films various older cooks (not all women) cooking special local dishes in Italy.  They offer 17 videos in their Sicily playlist and the advantage to these videos is that most are only 3 to 6 minutes long so you don't have to suffer through any very long preparations.  Today I watched Anna's fish couscous from Sicily (with wonderful tiles in the kitchen) and Nicola's Sicilian pizza called sfincione di Bagheria.   

This is so much easier than reading a cookbook and they do all the work!  Too bad we can't eat the end product.  And sometimes you might not want to eat the end product: next I'm watching Rosetta making pasta with sardines for Father's day!  I swear I will try it when we are in Sicily since it is pretty much the national dish.  The fennel should help.  Or I could opt for pasta con le sarde a mare: pasta with sardines at sea.

More Sicilian Body Parts

Today in an article in Saveur by the National Italian Tourist Board -- Finding the Real Dolce Vita: A Delicious Adventure Into Palermo’s Secret Dessert Scene -- I learned of another Sicilian dessert that I had not heard of before (how could that be? I asked).  It is Fedde del Cancelliere or Chancellor's Buttocks, which have been updated with a shell shape instead of a derriere.  They are made of pistachio paste or marzipan shells filled with blancmange and apricot jam.  We'll have to be on the lookout for them!

The Fedde led me to an article on Santa Lucia's feast day where they mentioned another pastry named after a body part, le Palle del Nonno (grandfather's testicles -- and wouldn't you know it, testicles is feminine...).  These are supposed to be ricotta and chocolate beignets.  That also sounds good but I don't know if I would ask a restaurant if they had any.

Oh, those Islands around the Tyrrehnian Sea

 

It is only natural that when one studies Sicily, one drifts northward and runs into those two other large islands: Sardinia and Corsica.  And one can't but notice how very similar Sardinia and Corsica are to each other, apart from one being French and the other Italian, but also in comparison to Sicily to the south.  Apparently Corsica became part of France in 1768 when Genoa sold it to France, long before Garibaldi could liberate it and join it to Italy.  Unfortunately Corsica had declared itself a Republic in 1755 but France crushed the republic in 1769.  So that is why they speak French in Corsica, although Italian is a regional language.

Both Corsica and Sardinia are islands that look inward towards the mountains rather than out towards the sea, purportedly due to the frequent invasions by the Barbary Pirates (but undoubtedly also by other Europeans).  Thus their cuisine centers on sheep and cheese rather than seafood.  On the other hand, the invaders of Sicily occupied the island, which was larger and contained fertile land as well as mountains and much of the livelihood remained centered on the sea, although in Sicily there is a rivalry between the developers of the land (farmers and pastoralists) and the fishermen (the hunters and gatherers of the sea).  Because of this and because the multiple invaders brought their own cuisine and foodstuffs, the Sicilian cuisine is more varied than that of Sardinia and Corsica.

There's a recently published book on Sardinian cuisine: Bitter Honey, Recipes and Stories from the Island of Sardinia written by a former London chef who moved to Sardinia a few years ago, Letitia Clark.  Many of the recipes are traditional (such as the handmade pasta, malloreddus) but she injects her own spin on things and does include some seafood as now it is more common, especially with the tourists.  And the photographs are lovely.  However, I would have liked it if she had put the food glossary at the front of the book and had expounded a bit more on fregola and pani carasau.  But maybe the English are more familiar with such ingredients than we are here in the United States.  And of course, one needs a video to see how to fill and shape the pasta called culurgioni, a ravioli filled with potatoes, cheese, egg and mint.  Thank goodness for YouTube!

Many years ago (2007), I was intrigued by another Sardinian cookbook, Sweet Myrtle & Bitter Honey: The Mediterranean Flavors of Sardinia by Efisio Farris.  That's where I first learned about their bitter honey, botarga (the preserved mullet roe), and malloreddus.

But it's always nice to SEE the food and its preparation and that's where, like Sebastian, I could spend my life watching YouTube.  Rick Stein in the BBC's Mediterranean Escapes, visits both Corsica and Sardinia before he continues on to Sicily.  In fact he spends relatively little time in Sicily before he moves on to Puglia.

• Culinary Wonders of Corsica & Sardinia
• Authentic Tastes of Sardinia & Sicily

And if you like Rick Stein, you'll be happy to know there's a Rick Stein's India.  Oh those Brits!

Sicilian Sweets

Mostarda di Mosto

I've already mentioned some of the sweets that are common in Sicily like cannoli and breasts of Saint Agata.  Recently I came across Mostarda di Mosto (Mostarda di Uva) or grape must pudding, which must be from the Greek influence on the island because a search for "grape must pudding" brings up a lot of Greek recipes for Moustalevria, even the Spruce Eats has a recipe for it, and the ingredients are the same: boiled down grape must (juice from pressed grapes), some sort of flour for thickener, walnuts and cinnamon.  To get the Sicilian recipe you need to search the Italian term.  For a very traditional recipe, using the terra cotta molds that you see in the photo above, visit Scorzette.com's recipe for Grape Mustard.  And for more on the terra cotta molds, called formelle, see Mostarda and Cotognata -- Sweets in Molds.  I wouldn't mind picking one up as a souvenir.

Sicilians enjoy a lot of fruits and the prickly pear cactus fruit (fichi d'India -- Indian figs) are especially popular for gelatos and puddings and eating out of hand (they simply swallow all those seeds).  There are particularly large ones called bastardoni, produced by cutting off the first set of flowers so that the second set ripens in the fall and produces a larger fruit when there is more rainfall.  These are a specialty of eastern Sicily.  The earlier crop of smaller fruits are called agostani, because they ripen in August.  You can also make mostarda out of fichi and fichi d'India.

Another Sicilian fruit dessert that I have always found fascinating is the watermelon pudding or gelo di anguria.  They sometimes put the pudding into a pie crust and typically use chocolate bits to mimic the seeds, although now with seedless watermelons there are many more versions without the chocolate.  Sometimes they sprinkle pistachios on top.  You will find pistachios sprinkled on top of lots of things, sweet and savory.  The town of Bronte on the western side of Mt. Etna is famous for pistachios, the only place in Europe that grows them.

And you will find gelatos and granitas made out of both prickly pears and watermelon.

Rosetta Constantino, a Calabrian, has a book out on Southern Italian Desserts, covering Calabria, Campania, Basilicata, Puglia and Sicily.  She has recipes for numerous Sicilian sweets, including the Watermelon pudding, cannoli, gelato and cassata.  You'll find lots of nuts (almonds, pistachios, hazelnuts and sesame seeds) and lots of ricotta in her recipes.  And for those whose ancestors came from Campania, she has a recipe for sfogliatelle, those multilayered pastries filled with ricotta that we used to buy in the Strip District.

More Sicilian Food

I got a just-published book from the library: The Sicily Cookbook by Cettina Vicenzino, a Sicilian author so it should be authentic.  It isn't as traditional as some of the other cookbooks on Sicilian food and does a new take on some old dishes.  For instance, she has a "pasta with ricotta, kumquats and tuna bottarga" and a "Sicilian brioche burger."  Have I cooked from it?  You know I hardly ever cook from cookbooks; I never seem to have the ingredients.  However, I am sure Fernando would love "Double Jerusalem artichoke with black lentils and crispy chicken feet" and "Tripe with black chickpeas".

But I've also been scouring YouTube for more Sicilian food videos -- food videos because I much prefer markets to museums.  There are three short videos (~18 minutes) on Palermo's street food by a New Zealand couple: Sheena and Thomas on their channel, Chasing a Plate, where they document their travels around Asia and Europe.  These videos cover the majority of unique Palermitano street food dishes and a couple of classic restaurant dishes as well.

Palermo Street Food #1 covers the Ballaro food market where they eat frittola (boiled and fried calf innards), boiled octopus, sardines rolled up around a breadcrumb filling (sarde a beccafico) and babbalucci (snails).  Everything seems to be served with a squeeze of lemon and a sprinkle of parsley.  Oh, and of course, olive oil and sea salt.  Then they go to a trattoria for some cuttlefish pasta and swordfish pasta, followed by cassata and torta sette veli (which even shows up on the Greatest British Bake Off) at a pastry shop.

Palermo Street Food #2 again begins at the market where the first dish is that famous spleen sandwich, pani ca meusa.  If you don't like offal you can opt for chickpea and potato croquettes on a roll (pane e panella e crocche).  This is followed by something we should all like: gelato in a brioche.  Palermo also has its own version of pizza: sfincione which is supposed to be best from a food cart but they can only find it at a bakery.  Then it's off to the Vucciría market for more offal: stigghiola, grilled lamb intestines on a skewer.  It's good they are from New Zealand and like lamb.

Palermo Street Food #3 finally showcases the famous Sicilian arancini, stuffed rice balls.  Then they go to another Trattoria for the also famous pasta con le sarde (pasta with sardines) spiced with raisins and pine nuts.  The other recommended dish was pasta alla grassa, which I hadn't heard of before but which is supposed to be quite Sicilian.  Like the classic Genoese pasta with green beans and potatoes,  pasta alla grassa includes potatoes as well as pieces of meat and sometimes peas.  It must be little known in the English-speaking world because all the Google search results were in Italian.  After the pasta course they have caponata and fried mackerel.  Oily fish like sardines, mackerel and anchovies are very common and popular and need to be followed by their next stop at a granita shop.

Finally, there is another BBC series: Rick Stein's Mediterranean Escapes, that has two hour-long episodes covering Sicily: Authentic Tastes of Sardinia and Sicily and Rustic Dishes from Sicily & Puglia.  He loves markets and handling the merchandise.  The vendors must have been appalled...

Sicily Unpacked

BBC Two produces an "UnPacked" series about Italy, including 3 videos on Sicily.  They are hosted by an art historian, Andrew Graham-Dixon, and an Italian chef (cook he calls himself), Giorgio Locatelli.  You can find them on YouTube and they are well worth watching.

• Episode 1 -- Palermo -- begins at the fishing town of Sciacca on the southern coast which Giorgio visits each time he goes to Italy for the seafood.  But most of the episode is in Palermo where they view some very elaborate stucco art, attend one of the famous Sicilian puppet shows, and visit the Vucciria market.  They also discuss the Mafia.
• Episode 2 -- The Spanish Occupations -- covers Noto and the Val di Noto in southeastern Sicily, gelato, Good Friday celebration in Enna, Easter Sunday in Modica and the oldest Sicilian chocolate factory (Bonajuto) in Modica.
• Episode 3 -- Modern Sicily -- also covers ancient Sicily with a visit to Mt. Etna and one of her vineyards, Pachino and its tomatoes, red shrimp at Mazaro del Vallo, and a take on a tuna burger at a modern gastronomic restaurant.  They also visit the Archaeological Museum of Aidone where a statue of Demeter had been returned to Sicily from the Getty Museum in LA.

One thing I was struck by in this series was the dearth of women in the interviews.  I don't know if it is because the hosts are male or whether there is still a separation of sexes in Sicily.  Few women vendors in the markets.  No women fishermen or fish buyers. Andrew and Giogio do mention that at the Easter Sunday dinner in Modica, the men made the ricotta (shepherds) while the women baked the bread (a household task).  Maybe a holdover from the Arabs.

Hollywood in Sicily

Currently I have 3 cookbooks on Sicily because nowadays library books are automatically renewed and evidently nobody else has a trip planned to Italy.  They are:

• La Cucina Siciliana de Gangivecchio by Wanda and Giovanna Tornabene (they have two other cookbooks)
• Cucina Siciliana by Clarissa Hyman
• Sicily from the Silver Spoon Kitchen, published by Phaidon (which means it is heavy)

But even better than cookbooks are videos and yesterday I lucked out and ran across a series on YouTube by Paul Hollywood (of The Great British Baking Show) from Tonic called "City Bakes".  In one episode he visits Palermo and tries many of the classic Sicilian dishes, like arrancine (rice balls), sfincione (Sicilian pizza), cannoli, cassata (an elaborately decorated cake), and gelato in a brioche (he wasn't impressed).  He visits the Mercato Vucciria and his Sicilian friend tries to get him to eat the famous innards but he declines (I wonder if he eats eels, pie and mash).  He does omit a few dishes like the spleen sandwich (pane con le milza), the chickpea fritter sandwich (panino con le panelle), and pasta with sardines (pasta con le sarde) and he never goes to a sit-down restaurant but he still covers a lot in 45 minutes.  He really enjoys himself and so should you!