May 11, 2012
There’s no better way to build anticipation than settling into my airline seat with a book centered on the region I plan to visit. Once I’ve arrived, the reading offers insights or just flows into my experience of that place.
Sicily is on my mind but, oh well, I’m not there. So it’s armchair travel time and I’m pulling favorites from several shelves of books acquired during my research for Seafood alla Siciliana. These include at least a dozen Sicilian cookbooks in English and Italian, and one of these days I’ll share my faves among those.
But, for now, I’ll point you to five books that convey the essence of Sicily and its traditions. They’re all novels, short stories or memoirs. None are new, but it doesn’t matter.
Sicilian Carousel, by Lawrence Durrell, takes us on a fictional tour of Sicily with a narrator who has procrastinated too long about visiting his friend Martine, making the trip only after her death. Careening around the island with colorful and sometimes comical British companions, he broods about mortality while making dead-on observations such as this, alluding to the island’s fertility: “Everything ‘takes” and there is a suitable corner where soil and temperature combine to welcome almost everything.”
For Durrell, Sicily is a sub-continent requiring at least three months to absorb its overlapping cultures and traditions.” He has this to say about a wheat field that the rest of us might say is golden: “It is impossible to describe the degrees of yellow from the most candent cadmium to ochre, from discoloured ivory to lemon bronze.” His opulent but pin-pot precise language shames me into stopping, looking again and sharpening my senses.
The Wine-Dark Sea, by Leonardo Sciascia. In the title story of this Sicilian author’s superb short story collection, a civil engineer from northern Italy takes an interminable train trip to Sicily in the company of a boisterous Sicilian family. When one of the children compares the sea to wine, the rest of the family mocks him. Green or blue, they laugh, but certainly not red like wine. The engineer doesn’t associate the phrase with its source, The Odyssey, but it sounds familiar and he muses over the meaning. By the end we understand that the protagonist is–and may remain–as much a stranger to Sicily as any foreigner.
In another story I love, “The Long Crossing,” would-be immigrants pay a smuggler to take them by boat to what they believe to be New Jersey, with tragicomic results.
Mattanza: The Ancient Sicilian Ritual of Bluefin Tuna Fishing, by Theresa Maggio. In this memoir, this author tells of the year she spent on Favignana, an island off the west coast of Sicily. Slowly she is accepted by the tonnaroti (tuna fishermen) and other locals, and is invited to witness the laying of the traps and bloody killing of enormous bluefin during their spring migration.
In so doing, she bears witness not only to the long history of these traditions but to their disappearance. That the Mediterranean’s bluefin tuna are mostly gone is due not to the ancient method of trapping and killing them one by one, but to a voracious worldwide appetite for bluefin and to technology that makes it easy to scoop them up.
As a bonus, the book contains diverting stories of everyday life on Favignana and a love story of sorts with a tonnaroto.
The Snack Thief, by Andrea Camilleri, is just one among many titles relating the adventures of Inspector Montalbano, a deliciously irascible police official with strong culinary desires and opinions. Here he looks into seemingly separate events that turn out to be connected–the murder of a Tunisian sailor on a Sicilian fishing trawler, an elderly man stabbed in an elevator, a housecleaner/prostitute’s young son who steals other kids’ snacks.
While he lazily but astutely solves crimes, Montalbano eats one vividly described meal after another, almost always involving seafood. Stuffed bass in saffron sauce, roulades in tuna, pasta with crab, to name a few. Eating a hake with anchovy sauce, he declares that one whiff is sufficient to determine that “the hake were crying out for joy at having been cooked the way God meant them to be.”
Montalbano’s girlfriend Livia lives in Liguria and misses most of these meals, so it’s typically others who take the brunt of his wrath when a culinary misstep occurs. When Mimi, a colleague, sprinkles Parmesan on her spaghetti con le vongole, Montalbano heaps it on: “Even a hyena, which being a hyena, feeds on carrion, would have been sickened to see a dish of pasta with clam sauce covered with Parmesan.”
On Persephone’s Island, by Mary Taylor Simeti. Central to this book is the insight that rural Sicily still belongs to Magna Gaecia, with an annual rhythm of harvests and celebrations echoing those of the ancient Greeks. Into this seasonal structure, Simeti weaves a memoir that begins with her arrival in Sicily in 1962, her marriage to a Sicilian and the experience of raising a family in Palermo and her husband’s country estate.
For example, Simeti describes the arduous work of the olive harvest. Most are pressed into oil but some are gathered in October, still green, for table use. After soaking in water, they are combined with oregano and fennel in brine salty enough to float an egg. Once the bitter juices are drained, the olives are glossed with fresh olive oil.
In this world, Greek myths co-exist peaceably with Christian rituals and secular realities. Persephone was queen of the dead and daughter of Demeter, the goddess of wheat and in a more general way of fertility and the harvest. All of these traditions come together in All Souls Day, the most beloved of Sicilian feast days and a time for displays such as sugar peasants bearing baskets of fruit and fish on their heads.
This book is a feast too, beautifully written and as open to Sicily’s flaws as to its beauties. As Simeti writes, “Sicily is a fun-house mirror in which Italy can behold her national traits and faults distorted and exaggerated.”
So that’s my Sicilian reading list and I’ve only grazed the tip of Mount Etna. It’s outrageous to leave out Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s Il Gattopardo (The Leopard), with its unforgettable dinner scene featuring a drum-shaped timballo stuffed with meat, pasta and all manner of other ingredients.
But I had to stop somewhere.
Tags: Andrea Camilleri, books about Sicily, Lawrence Durrell and Sicily, Sicilian reading list
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May 1, 2012
Tampa Cuban sandwich
Giving new meaning to the term “pork barrel politics,” the Tampa City Council threw down the gauntlet with a resolution declaring the Cuban sandwich its signature sandwich. Miami fired back indignantly, insisting that its version is the authentic one.
In an NPR survey, Tampa won handily as the Cuban’s first city, with 57% of the vote compared to 43% for Miami. The hostilities will continue May 26, with a “smack down” between the two cities at a Tampa festival.
Tampa claims that the Cuban sandwich can be traced back to cigar workers in its Ybor City neighborhood at the end of the last century. Familiar with their homeland’s “mixto,” a sandwich of mixed cured meats, they used meats available where they lived. These included marinated roasted pork, ham and a few slices of Genoa salami or mortadella–the last of these contributed by Italian workers (mostly Sicilian) who also worked in the factories.
Somewhere along the way, Swiss cheese got into the picture. Traditionally, the long loaves contain lard and a fresh palmetto leaf creates the signature split down the middle. The Tampa resolution originally laid out some other rules–exactly three pickle slices, for instance–but retreat became necessary because of enforcement issues.
As far as I can tell, Miami’s claim is based on its status–pretty much undeniable–as the center of contemporary Cuban-American culture. I gather that their bread is different, and the idea of putting Genoa on a Cuban makes them crazy.
To see what the excitement was about, I headed for La Segunda Central Bakery in Ybor City. Other customers were ordering the Turkey Cuban (I’m guessing the Miami folks would also consider that an abomination) but I went for a straight-ahead Cuban. My sandwich maker showed me the three-foot loaf before stripping off the palmetto leaf and whacking off my portion.
I chose to have my Cuban pressed and was pleased that the lettuce and tomato were added after the pressing. That lettuce, tomato and the mayo, too, are interlopers apparently not present in the original sandwich. I don’t find that surprising because of the American tendency to embellish ethnic specialties.
For instance, the muffaletta took its lead from Sicilian bread and olive salad, but the pile-up of deli meats and cheese is pure New Orleans. And a typical panino in Italy, the kind you order at a bar, is a simpler affair than our so-called Italian deli sandwich. If it’s prosciutto and cheese, that’s what you get–no lettuce, no tomato, not even the vinaigrette we’re accustomed to here.
Back to the cubano. I enjoyed the sandwich but, honestly? Not a life-changing experience. If memory serves, the Cuban sandwiches I’ve had at no-name places in New York City were better. I know someone’s going to tell me about a better Cuban in Tampa (and maybe a field trip to Miami is in order), but for now my favorite regional sandwich continues to be the grouper sandwich.
You can find grouper sandwiches anywhere along Florida’s Gulf Coast, which means endless arguments over whose is the best. BellaBrava in St. Petersburg makes a mean grouper sandwich, but my favorite place to go is Hurricane, on St. Pete Beach, where I order my grouper grilled with Cajun seasoning. It comes with a beach view that makes every bite taste better.
Tags: grouper sandwich, Italians in Ybor City, Miami Cuban sandwich, Tampa Cuban sandwich
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April 13, 2012
Calzones (or calzoni, if you’re in Italy), stromboli, pizza rolls, Sicilian schiacciata. There’s really no consensus on what these are supposed to be.
By most accounts, calzones are half-moons of pizza dough folded over a filling that usually contains ricotta or other cheese, vegetables and deli meats. Sometimes they’re served with marinara or another sauce. Log-shaped stromboli are an Italian-American invention, wrapped around the usual pizza fillings or a chicken-and-cheese filling. Pizza rolls are a frozen commercial product or a mom’s name for the pizza-like spinoff she makes for her kids. Sicilian schiacciata is made by baking the dough halfway, splitting and filling it, then baking it a second time to create a delicious something that walks the line between pizza and panino.
On Chowhound or Yelp, you could no doubt find differing opinions on everything I just said. There are enough regional variations and vivid memories to counter each and every assertion. Basically, though, I think all of these are born of the same impulse that makes New York pizza eaters fold over a huge, floppy slice and walk off down the street. It’s not only a way of getting the thing into your hand, but of putting all the crust on the outside, for no reason but the pleasure of crunching down into a soft and savory filling.
The other variable about pizza foldovers is size. I was startled to see, on my first visit to Sicily, that one calzone could sprawl across an entire plate. Basically, we’re free to make these any size we want. Recently I experimented with one of my recipes for calzoni, downsizing them to party-size dimensions. They were fine, but fussy to make. So, instead, I patted and stretched the pizza dough to make rectangles for filling and rolling. Cut crosswide, they made great party pick-ups.
What were they? Stromboli? Well, not exactly. Pizza rolls? Maybe–you decide.
Pizza Rolls Filled with Escarole, Smoked Mozzarella and Dried Sausage
(Adapted from Piatto Unico: When One Course Makes a Real Italian Meal)
Makes 20 to 24 hors d’oeuvres
1 head escarole, cored (or substitute spinach or chard)
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, plus more for the pan
1 small onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 ounces cacciatorini or other dried sausage, Genoa salami or soppressata, cut in small squares (about 2/3 cup)
1 pound pizza dough, homemade or purchased
1 to 1 1/2 cups shredded smoked mozzarella, Scamorza or imported provolone
1. Wash the escarole well, changing the water until no grit remains. Cut the leaves in shreds.
2. Fill a large saucepan two-thirds full of cold water and bring to a boil. Cook the escarole until tender, 5 to 10 minutes. Drain well, pressing with a spatula to help eliminate liquid.
3. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Saute the onion until soft and golden; stir in the garlic, cooking just until fragrant. Stir in the drained escarole and sausage, cooking for a few minutes to blend the flavors; cool and mix in the cheese.
4. Preheat the oven to 425°F. Lightly oil a rimmed baking sheet. Divide the pizza dough in 2 pieces. Roll and pat one of them to make a rectangle slightly smaller than the dimensions of the sheet.
5. Spoon half of the filling on the rectangle, leaving a ½-inch border. Starting at one long side, roll the dough around the filling to make a roll. With a sharp knife, slash the dough in a couple of places to allow steam to escape. Repeat with the rest of the dough and filling.
6. Place the rolls side by side on the baking sheet. Bake on the center rack until well browned and some of the filling oozes out the vents, about 20 minutes. Cool slightly and cut each roll crosswise in 2-bite pieces.
Tags: calzones, calzoni, pizza foldovers, pizza rolls, Sicilian schiacciata, stromboli
Baked Goods and Sweets, Italian food, Italian lifestyle, Pizza » 1 Comment
April 3, 2012
For quite a while I’d been eying Katia Amore’s recipe for chocolate and Champagne chicken, a Sicilian Easter dish. Chicken thighs simmered in a sauce of onion, fennel, clove, hot red pepper and, of course, bittersweet chocolate. I knew this dish had interesting roots in Aztec chocolate, Mexican mole and Italy’s Baroque cooking traditions of the 16th and 17th centuries. But chicken and chocolate on the same plate, that just sounded weird.
My recent post about Katia renewed my curiosity about her chocolate chicken, which she recommends serving for an Easter lunch. Then our neighbors Joe and Lynn, who (lucky them) own a home in Modica, brought me a bar of that southeast Sicilian city’s distinctive chocolate.
Chocolate originally made its way to Sicily from Mexico via the Spaniards who conquered both lands. As Katia explains, Modica artisans make it from cocoa beans, following a low-heat method similar to that of the Aztecs, and it retains nuances of flavor lost in conventional ways of making chocolate. With no added cocoa butter, the chocolate has a gritty texture because it never gets hot enough to melt the sugar. This is not a nibbling chocolate but one that turns rich and creamy when dissolved in a hot liquid.
So, with Easter on the way, I finally made chocolate chicken. Which, as it turns out, tastes quite good. Like that of a well-made mole, the sauce is a harmonious blend that hits every taste marker. It fits in with the Sicilian tradition of agrodolce (sweet and sour) but with added complexity contributed by the chocolate and a mild hit of heat at the end. No need to analyze this way while eating–just enjoy the chicken with its dark, luxuriously rich sauce.
I’ve made this Sicilian-Aztec novelty dish a couple of times, and my version of Katia’s recipe includes a bit of tinkering as well as conversion to American measurements. I found that white wine works as a substitute for the prosecco and that any bittersweet chocolate is fine in the likely event that you don’t have Modica chocolate on hand. Katia serves her chocolate chicken with “potato puré,” equivalent to but more elegant sounding than mashed potatoes, and rice is also good.
Katia’s Chocolate and Champagne Chicken
Makes 4 to 6 servings
8 bone-in chicken thighs (3 to 3 ½ pounds)
1 cup (or more) prosecco, Champagne or white wine
1 tablespoon fennel seeds
Sea salt or kosher salt
Extra virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1 ounce bittersweet chocolate (preferably from Modica), grated
1 tablespoon sugar
1/8 teaspoon ground clove
Ground hot red pepper, to taste
Fresh oregano or marjoram leaves (optional)
1. Arrange the chicken in a single layer in a nonreactive dish (such as Pyrex). Pour 1/2 cup prosecco over the thighs, turning them to moisten. Marinate, refrigerated, for several hours or overnight.
2. In a mini-processor or using a mortar and pestle, grind the fennel seeds to a coarse consistency.
3. Drain the chicken, discarding the liquid, and blot dry with paper towels. Salt on both sides. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium-high heat in a large skillet. Cook on both sides until golden brown. Transfer the chicken to a platter.
4. Add a little more oil to the skillet if needed (or, if the chicken generated a lot of fat, pour off all but enough to coat the bottom of the skillet). Over medium heat, cook the onion until soft and golden. Reduce the heat to low and stir in the vinegar, chocolate, sugar, fennel, clove and a light sprinkling of red pepper (about 1/8 teaspoon). Stir until dissolved.
5. Return the chicken thighs to the skillet, spooning the sauce over them. Add 1/2 cup prosecco and simmer, partly covered, over medium-low heat until the thighs are tender and the sauce is fairly thick, about 25 minutes. If the sauce thickens too much, add a splash of prosecco or water.
6. Taste the sauce and add more salt or hot red pepper as needed. Garnish with oregano leaves, if using, and serve with mashed potatoes or rice. This dish reheats very well.
Tags: chocolate chicken, Modica chocolate recipes, savory Italian chocolate dishes, Sicilian Easter dishes, Sicilian-Aztec dishes
Italian food, Italian lifestyle, Meat » 1 Comment
March 21, 2012
Katia Amore was beyond busy when I visited her a few years ago in the beautiful Baroque city of Modica, She had launched a culinary vacation and cooking school called Love Sicily, while caring for a new baby and renovating her grandparents’ home (stone by stone) as a permanent home for the school.
But Katia took time to help me with the cookbook that became Seafood alla Siciliana. We stayed in touch and now I value her not only as a Sicilian food authority but as a friend. Katia could be your friend, too–all you have to do is go cook with her in Modica! But first, listen in on our Q&A…
Toni: You and your husband met while doing advanced degrees in the UK and pursued research careers there. Anything you admire about the cuisine?
Katia: We watched Chef Rick Stein’s show Food Heroes and always looked for local products. That’s how I fell in love with top-quality cheddar cheese, great bacon and other fantastic foods. I know this could sound as cliched as saying that you eat pizza when visiting Italy, but I love going to a tea house for a proper cup of tea with scones, jam, clotted cream and cucumber sandwiches.
Toni: What inspired you to return to Sicily?
Katia: Our wedding in Sicily took place during April, when the air is filled with the smell of orange blossoms and you can go for walks on warm deserted beaches. That was when we started thinking we wanted that beauty to be part of our daily life and not just a week-long holiday. Food and cooking were always a passion of mine…I cooked for my friends in the UK, taught them Sicilian recipes and, when they came to visit me in Sicily, took them to the best wineries, pastry shops and restaurants. I thought this was the right time to turn a dream into a reality and start my own cooking school. My surname, Amore, means “love” so the name of the school came easily and Love Sicily was born.
View from Love Sicily's terrace
Toni: What was it like, renovating your grandparents’ hillside house to house the school?
Katia: The biggest challenge was definitely the 80 steps leading up to the house because all the building materials had to be carried by hand or with a special machine only a few companies have. But I say to people that the wonderful view of Modica made it all worthwhile. And, when we cleared the house before the project began, I found my grandmother’s handwritten recipe books in a dusty chest of drawers. My mother remembered they existed but had never managed to find them. They include not only recipes but tips on plating food and organizing the table for dinner parties.
Toni: What did you learn from your grandmother and mother about cooking?
Katia: The most important lesson is keeping an open mind about food, to respect tradition but at the same time be creative and experiment. In the 1930s and 1940s my grandmother used to buy the first recipe books about food from other Italian regions, which at the time was equivalent to my mother buying books about French cuisine in the 1970s and 1980s and me getting books about Asian or Mexican cuisine today. If we are talking about techniques, the most important thing I learned from them is kneading dough. I realized when I started teaching that it is not as natural and simple for many people as for me. My mother and grandmother gave me dough to play with before I could even say my first word, so I guess they made it easy for me!
Toni: What surprises students about Sicilian cooking?
Katia: That there is much more to Sicilian cuisine that what I call the three C’s: caponata, cassata and cannoli! Organic and biodynamic wines, award-winning olive oils, great cheeses, almonds, pistachios and chocolate are great gifts of our land that are now often managed by very modern and efficient companies run by talented Sicilians who care about their island. For many people this is a nice surprise.
Toni: As a mother, what are your views on feeding children and teaching them about nutrition?
Katia: Cooking is fun! It is creative, you use your hands, get messy, play with colors and tastes, turn into a little chemist, plus you can even enjoy the fruit of your playtime in the end. My daughter loves cooking and I often involve her when I run cooking classes for other children. We need to prepare good fresh meals for our kids but food is not something we should get them too stressed about. If they are naturally pointed in the right direction, they do not need to become nutrition experts and start counting calories. Also, we should accept that even children have different likes and dislikes and that their taste will naturally evolve. Of course, they should try everything, but we should also respect the fact that they might not like it. And remember that, like with everything else, they learn by example!
Toni: What’s in season now that you’re enjoying?
Katia: At the moment I am cooking a lot with Sicilian oranges and lemons, which are fantastic. I am making liters of freshly squeezed orange juice, turning them into great marmalade and preparing orange-based cakes and biscuits. I also use citrus in savory dishes such as salads, pasta sauces, fish and even meat-based recipes.
Next post: I’ll report on making Katia’s pastieri di pasqua, an Easter dish consisting of lamb-filled pastries. Or maybe I’ll share her recipe for chocolate chicken thighs, strange sounding but surprisingly good.
Tags: cooking classes in Sicily, cooking vacations in Sicily, Katia Amore, Love Sicily, Modica, Sicilian cooking, Sicilian oranges
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Toni Lydecker writes on food wherever she is, which could be Italy, New York or her new hometown, St. Petersburg, Florida. 