Featured Locations

Great Articles About Food

by Eddie Lakin

Sitting in an advantageous position in the Mediterranean, Sicily has bseen inhabited at various times by Greeks, Romans, Phoenicians, Moorish Arabs, French Normans, and Spanish Catalans. Today it is part of Italy, but is given special status by the Italian government, which allows it to retain a great deal of autonomy. It has been a historic crossroads of culture for some 6000 years and this is still evident today in the faces of the people who live there, the architecture and, most of all, the food.

Sicilian food is the Mediterranean diet. Anything that grows will flourish in the strong Sicilian sun; the local seafood, capers, and fennel have been accented by the many cultures that have passed through. African conquerors brought citrus trees and planted acres of lemon and orange groves. Greeks cultivated olives, honey, and grape vines and introduced winemaking techniques. Romans planted chestnut trees and exported tons of anchovies for the production of garum, a fermented fish-based condiment. Various exotic spices came from the East with the Phoenicians, and new-world ingredients like potatoes, chilies, eggplants, and tomatoes were incorporated readily. So, what may seem to some a homogenous Italian regional cuisine is, in reality, a giant melting pot of many cultures.

After thousands of years, however, Sicilian cooks have taken these various cultural influences, combined them with local products, and created a cuisine all their own. Largely based on seafood and vegetables, Sicilian food is extremely healthy. Tuna, swordfish, anchovies, sardines, and plentiful shellfish are the most-often seen catches. They are usually prepared very simply, but with bold, bright flavors like capers, olives, sundried tomatoes, and an abundant use of fresh herbs.

Pasta: Before the Arabs came to Sicily, pasta in Italy was made only from white, tender-grained flour and egg and was eaten in the form of gnocchi-like dumplings. Whatever shape the pasta was worked into, it was pasta fresca and had to be eaten fresh. Dried pastas—like spaghetti and macaroni—can be kept for months or even years before they are cooked because they are made from the flour of the harder, gluten-rich durum wheat, triticum durum. Arabs developed the method of working a dough, made from only this durum wheat flour and water, into forms thin enough that thesy could be dried quickly and kept indefinitely. The Arabs brought the durum wheat and this technique to Sicily, and the concept spread quickly since the resulting pasta asciutta was ideal for long voyages.

In Sicily, when you eat pasta, it is almost always pasta asciutta. The richer, egg-based fresh pastas typical of Northern Italy are rarely seen in Sicily, where maccheroni prevails. Maccheroni, incidentally, when in Italy, connotes any short, dried pasta shape, not just the elbow macaroni usually found in American "Mac and Cheese". In northern Italy, southerners are disparagingly referred to as “maccheroni eaters,” which carries about the same meaning as calling someone a “cracker” or a “redneck” in the U.S. Most of the time, when seen on Sicilian menus, it will be called either maccheroni, or just pasta, as in the typical pasta con le sarde.

Capers: There is much debate over where the best capers come from, but the southern Sicilian island of Pantelleria is the most famous source of the world’s high-quality supply. They are a distant cousin to the tiny pungent capers found in supermarkets in the U.S. While regular bottled capers are usually the size of peppercorn, the capperi sold throughout Sicily are larger, maybe the size of a hazelnut or a chickpea, and are packed dry, in salt, as opposed to bottled in a vinegary pickling solution. The difference is like night and day and the Sicilian capers give a fresh, bright, slightly astringent taste, but not the overwhelming salty sourness of the supermarket variety.

Nuts: Because of the North African influence, Sicilian cooks use a lot of almonds, pine nuts, and pistachios. Sicilian sweets like marzipan, torrone, and cannoli typify the use of nuts in desserts, but these nuts also show up in savory dishes, tossed in with pastas, or pulverized into a paste with olive oil, garlic, and capers.

Fish: Go to a fishmarket in Sicily and you will see huge tunas and swordfish so fresh their bodies are still twisted with rigor. As you walk through you’ll see huge piles of cozze, bins of “blue fleshed fish” like sarde and fresh alici, water-filled troughs of vongole that occasionally spit little streams of water out at you, and enormous octopus, squids, and cuttlefish you can tell have just been caught because the ends of their tentacles are still twitching. The abundance of the Mediterranean will be evident as you see prime specimens of gamberi, orata, branzino, triglie, and various insect-like shellfish like canocchie that you never even knew existed.

Wild Fennel: Huge fennel plants grow wild all over Sicily. As you drive, on the side of the road you can see 3-foot high stalks rising up with great canopies of yellow flowers and lacy fennel fronds. Sicilian cuisine utilizes many parts of the plant, so you may find the stalks sliced thin and served crunchy and raw, the seeds used to season sausages or condiments, the yellow pollen dusted over a dish as a garnish, or the frilly fronds chopped up and used as a fresh herb.

Herbs: Fresh herbs are absolutely essential in Sicilian cuisine. Oregano, mint, basil, thyme, and parsley were found growing wild and long ago were well incorporated into the cooking. Parsley is always the Italian-style “flatleaf” variety—the watery, tasteless “curly” parsley found as the ubiquitous garnish in the U.S. is unheard-of in Italy. Oregano grows wild and is picked in great, dense bunches which are dried and sold whole, then broken off by the cook for use. The mint that grows wild is referred to as neputedda or mentuccia silvatica and has a sharp, almost spicy flavor that lends itself to savory rather than sweet dishes.

Malvasia, Zibibbo, Moscato—Sweet dessert wines are a Sicilian specialty. Not unlike French Sauternes, these wines are made with local grapes which are harvested late, often after the grapes have begun to shrivel like raisins. Much less juice comes from the grapes when they’re picked late, but result is an incredibly sweet juice since the natural sugars of the grape have been allowed to develop and concentrate on the vine. Some makers of vin santo, which is what dessert wines are generally called in Italy, will pick the grapes late, leaving them in bunches, and then hang them in a dry place—often the attic is used—to allow them to dry and shrivel even further. The names of the individual wines refer to the variety of grape that is used. Malvasia is a specialty of the Aeolian Islands north of Sicily, and Zibibbo is more commonly found further south, but all three are widely found all over Sicily. You could pay more than $50 for a prestigious, rare bottle of a specific variety in a wine shop, or you could just buy one of the unlabelled bottles that farmers sell at roadside stands out in the country alongside bottles of their own olive oil and prepared condiments. This one would probably set you back less than five dollars. Served cold, they will both taste amazingly sweet and refreshing after a Sicilian meal.

Cheeses: Cheese in Sicily is either so fresh that it’s soft and watery, like ricotta, or so aged and hard that it’s only served grated, like pecorino. Ricotta is more often used in sweet preparations like cannoli or cassata, but is also found as ricotta salata, which is salted and aged and then grated like parmeggiano over pasta.

Bottarga: Sicilian bottarga is tuna roe, which is kept in its sacs and preserved by salting, drying, and pressing so that the end result is a dense, hard reddish-brown brick that is grated or shaved like parmesan cheese. At the restaurant where I work, we grate it over bruschetta topped with cherry tomatoes and arugula, or over a plate of spaghetti con cozze cooked with white wine and garlic.

Condiments and Pastes: If you can dry it in the sun, salt-cure it, preserve it under oil, or pulverize it with a mortar and pestle, you can find it in a bottle in Sicily. The shelves of alimentazione (little grocery stores or specialty shops) are crammed with bottles of capers, olives, pomodorini secchi sott‘olio, spicy little peperoncini, cured fish, preserved, dried, or jellied fruit, and an endless variety of local combinations of any and all of these mashed up into a paste and named after the town where they first mashed it up like that.

Pasta con le sarde — Fresh sardines, sautéed in extra-virgin olive oil, deglazed with white wine, dressed with golden raisins, pine nuts and/or almonds, and lots of chopped finocchietto, then tossed with pasta. Spaghetti is often used, but more commonly seen is a larger, hollow long pasta that is sometimes called bucatini, but in Sicily is referred to as either mezza ziti or just plain maccheroni. The finished dish is garnished with a dusting of toasted breadcrumbs, which, in poorer days, were used as a cheaper alternative to grated cheese, but today are preferred for pastas featuring fish. Pasta con le sarde embodies all that is Sicilian cooking—sweet, sour, salty, the intense herby flavors from the wild fennel tops, the slight tangy fishiness from the sardines and acciughe, the rich nutty flavors—and it also is typically Mediterranean in its lightness and healthiness. “Blue-fleshed fish,” as sardines, anchovies, mackerel, and others are often called, are very high in beneficial omega-3 fatty acids. Low cholesterol fats that are good for you. Add this to the high-quality local extra-virgin olive oil and the result is a dish that is rich-tasting and satisfying, but at the same time very light and healthy.

In The Talisman of Happiness, a Sicilian cookbook published in 1932, author Ada Boni remarks that: “these apparent dissonances come together to make a first-rate harmony. Pasta con le sarde is a kind of mosaic in which each little piece finds its reason for being there in the final result. It would thus be an error for anyone to want, as many do, to make personal modifications out of a taste for simplification or variation without first having tried the true recipe.”

Maccheroni alla Norma — Widely found all over Sicily, this dish, named for a famous opera singer who took to it, consists of slowly-cooked eggplant chunks tossed into a basic sugo di pomodori with thyme, dried oregano, and grated pecorino, then tossed with some kind of maccheroni and garnished with grated ricotta salata.

Involtini di Pesce Spada — Swordfish get tough when cooked, so making involtini (little rolls), and often stuffing them with pine nuts, raisins, breadcrumbs, and grated pecorino, ensures that the fish will cook through without it becoming too dried out.

Caponata — Derived from the traditional fisherman and sailor dish caponata alla marinara, the dish most often referred to as caponata today usually contains only vegetables and is usually seen as a contorni and not a main dish. A slow-cooked ratatouille-like mix of eggplant, onions, tomato, olives, pine nuts, and gleaming gold extra-virgin olive oil, caponata is usually served cold or room temperature. Author Peter Robb waxes philosophic about caponata in his book about Sicily. “It was the colour that struck me first. The colour of darkness. A heap of cubes of that unmistakably luminescent dark, dark purply-reddish goldy richness, glimmerings from a baroque canvas, that comes from eggplant, black olives, tomato, and olive oil densely cooked together, long and gently. The colour of southern Italian cooking. Caponata was one of the world’s great sweet and sour dishes, sweet, sour, and savory. The eggplant was the heart of caponata. The celery hearts were the most striking component: essential and surprising. Pieces of each were fried separately in olive oil until they were a fine golden colour and then added to a sauce made by cooking tomato, sugar, and vinegar with a golden chopped onion in oil and adding Sicilian olives, capers, and bottarga.” He goes on to quote from antique cookbooks, which add everything but the kitchen sink to the mix. “...after the baby octopuses, the lobster, and the swordfish slices were added to the pot, the St. Bernard sauce had to be prepared. This contained almonds, anchovies, orange juice, and grated chocolate among more mundane ingredients, and had to be spread over the caponata after it had cooled completely and was arranged on a dish in the form of a cupola. All that then remained was to garnish the caponata with pieces of hard-boiled egg, shrimps, and lobster claws.” It is clearly a dish with a long, rich history, but today’s version is a far cry from this baroque concoction.

Spaghetti alla Siracusana — Fresh anchovies sautéed with garlic and peperoncini in olive oil, deglazed with white wine, then tossed with spaghetti, diced cherry tomatoes and lots of chopped parsley, and topped with toasted bread crumbs.

Sarde alla Beccafico — Whole fresh sardines rolled around a stuffing of pine nuts, raisins, capers, and parsley all mashed together into a paste and then mixed with breadcrumbs and olive oil. Street vendors will roll literally hundreds of little sardines, packing them closely together onto a large baking sheet, then roasting the whole thing in the oven and selling them by the piece, at room temperature, as a snack.

Tonno e Spada Affumicata — Tuna and swordfish can be cured and smoked in the same way as salmon. The huge smoked chunks are then put on a deli slicer and shaved paper thin, and layered onto a plate. These can be accented with things like shaved fennel and oranges, or olives and sun-dried tomatoes, or can be served simply with just a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and some good crusty bread.

Cassata — The typical Sicilian dessert. A looser, lighter version of cheesecake that is made with fresh ricotta, which is sweetened, and mixed with egg yolks which are cooked with sugar, and beaten egg whites. Diced candied fruit and chocolate chips are added to this mixture, which is allowed to set, sometimes sitting on a base of sponge cake or meringue, and then the cake is frosted with jaw-lockingly sweet bright green icing. There is an etymological debate over whether cassata is derived from the Latin casata or casiata—dishes containing eggs and cheese dating back to the twelfth century—as was once believed, or if the word is Arabic in origin, coming from the word qas’a or qas’at, which means literally a big, deep bowl, in this case referring to the bowl which would have been lined with pieces of sponge cake and then filled with the ricotta cream.

http://www.yumfood.net/articles/sicily/sicilian_dishes.html

Culinary Schools

Culinary Articles