Rosanna on Sicily

Once again, our first dinner of the second round featured the regional cooking and wine of Sicily. Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean and located off the south-western coast of the 'boot'. A bad meal in Sicily is a rarity. The island's rich agricultural bounty includes almonds, lemons, pistachios, the sweetest tomatoes in the world, capers, olives and olive oil and over 20 varieties of oranges.....I could go on.

I decided to focus on the city of Siracusa this round and plan my menu around the dishes commonly found on this south-eastern coastal city.

Appetizers

Panelle con fave freshe
Tortino di spaghetti al pomodoro e melenzane

Primo

Garganelle con ricotta e spinaci

Secondo

Frittata con zucchini bianche, patate novelle e cipolle al forno

Dolce

Gelato ai pistacchi e torta di manna

The meal, a vegetarian meal, included some classics of Sicilian cooking. In Sicily, if you don't eat fish, eggplant is next on offer. The appetizer course of panelle con fave fresche is a typical Sicilian street food. Panelle is a deep-fried chick pea fritter made with chick pea flour and water, cooked as you would a polenta and then cooled in a shallow pan and cut into rectangles before deep-frying. Fresh parsley and salt is typically how it's served, but I added fresh fava beans crushed with olive oil and pecorino given that they were in season.

The tortino di spaghetti with tomatoes and fried eggplant cubes was made in advance. The spaghetti was cooked, tossed with a simple tomato basil sauce and fried eggplant and ricotta salata and then placed in a small ramekin, baked just before and inverted onto a plate and garnished with fresh basil and ricotta salata.

Fresh pasta in the south is usually made with water and hard semolina flour. I cut the homemade pasta into squares and then shaped them into garganelle (similar to penne) using a chopstick. After cooking, they were tossed with salt, pepper, ricotta, cooked spinach, olive oil and a small amount of cooking water.

The fritatta was a simple to make and other than salt and pepper I added thinly sliced white zucchini and a side of new potatoes and onions which were both baked.

Finally the dessert included homemade pistachio ice-cream, manna and almond cake sweetened with manna. The manna and manna cake were both flown in from Sicily that very week thanks to Mary Anne who spent 2 weeks there this spring recovering from pneumonia. Manna is made from tree sap which is collected by cutting the bark of the Frassino tree and letting the sap run and dry in the sun. The dried sap is harvested in August and eaten raw or used as a sweetener in desserts.

Sicily, although not considered the best wine region in Italy, does make some excellent reds. Nero d'avola is perhaps the most common grape in Sicily, but they also make Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc. The dessert wine we had was delicious and from Pantelleria, a tiny island off the south coast closer to Tunisia than to Sicily. And difficult to get to (not Sicily, but Pantelleria). Sicily itself is thankfully easy to get to and after 3 trips to Sicily, I look forward to many more. One thing I find particularly interesting about this project is the research and discovering things you may have missed savouring and seeing the first time, but anticipating a return and making a point not to miss these details a second time.

-Rosanna.