Tavola Talk

About eating Italian wherever you are

Main navigation

Sicily

Tasting Olive Oil at Its Freshly Pressed Peak

by

In Italy’s olive-growing regions, the festivals begin in November or even earlier in places like Sicily. Everyone’s eager to   taste the olio nuovo at its freshly pressed peak, when flavors are most intense.

That party is over. But here in the U.S., new oil from the 2024-2025 harvest is just making its way into markets. It’s a quiet entry because we don’t make a big deal of it. Recently bottled olive oil just starts to show up on shelves. Or sometimes it doesn’t soon enough–even in reputable Italian specialty stores, I’ve come across olive oil that’s two or three years old.

The new oil worth making a fuss about is what Italians call olio buono from a particular region, with good credentials. A bottle I bought from Gustiamo is certified organic, produced by Spedalotto and carries a DOP designation indicating its origin in the Tondo Iblei region. This oil was pressed a few months back but it’s still delicious, with an aroma redolent of green olives and herbs.

How do I know it’s from the most recent harvest? On the bottle neck is a sticker saying Olio Nuovo 24-25. The back label repeats the harvest years (end of 2024 into beginning of 2025) and gives a best-by date of 12/2026, two years out.

Here’s another oil, from Azienda Agricola Pianogrillo, that I bought for economy’s sake in a five-liter box about six months ago.  The back sticker tells me it’s from the 2023/2024 harvest and the expiration date is August 31, 2025.

Labelling differs from one oil to the next, unfortunately, but you can often find the pertinent information there or by asking the proprietor. Try to buy from a source that knows what they’ll selling. Good olive oil is expensive, so it’s worth making sure you’re getting what you pay for.

If you still can’t tell when the oil was produced but it otherwise looks interesting, buy a small quantity to test out. I’ve never had an olive oil go rancid–perhaps because I use it steadily–but the fresh flavor notes decline.

Tasting the new oil is a simple matter. A Florentine gardener once showed me how to curl thumb around forefinger to make a snail shape, pour a small pool of oil in the crook and suck it off. Similarly, each olive oil entry in a structured tasting is sampled solo, from a glass.

In a Sicilian agriturismo where I once stayed, cubes of toasted semolina bread were routinely offered for breakfast, along with a bottle of oil, sea salt and black or red pepper in a grinder.

Bruschetta, another vehicle for new oil, is made by toasting bread slices and rubbing with garlic cloves, topping with whatever you want or nothing at all, and anointing with oil.

I’m especially enjoying my new oil on salads and on steamed or roasted vegetables.

Another lovely way to savor fresh olive oil is to barely simmer eggs in olive oil over low heat, spooning the oil over them until the whites are done but the yolks are still oozy. Served on toasted bread, or not.

Consider drizzling your freshly pressed oil over bowls of ribollita or another hearty soup. Don’t be stingy–most Italians aren’t.

One final suggestion: Tuscan-style bistecca, cooked rare, tastes even better with a drizzle of good olive oil.

I’m planning to order a bottle of Benza EVOO, a Ligurian oil whose producer says the most recent harvest resulted in superb quality. I expect it to have lighter, more delicate flavors than the Sicilian, Tuscan and Umbrian oils I usually favor. My family loves pasta with pesto, a specialty of Liguria, so I’m looking forward to making it with this oil.

The Muffuletta: From Sicily by Way of New Orleans

by

muffaletta

 

I won’t be in New Orleans for Mardi Gras, but I’m thinking of all the gumbo, jambalaya, crawfish étouffée, king cakes, Sazeracs and Vieux Carres that go down in our most food-centric city. Accompanied by jazz and enthusiastic crowds.

New Orleans is famous for its muffulettas, too, and Fat Tuesday is as good a day as any to enjoy one of these over-the-top sandwiches. They were supposedly “invented” by a local deli owner more than a century ago. He was a Sicilian immigrant, so it’s not surprising that the muffuletta is rooted firmly in that region’s cuisine. The components are the same as a mixed antipasto–cured meats, cheese, olives, bread–and, as the story goes, putting them all together resulted in a speedy lunch for hard-pressed workers.

In Sicily the word muffuletta (also known as muffaletta) refers to a kind of sesame-topped bread. The delicious olive salad that distinguishes the American muffuletta from other sandwiches is reminiscent of the tasty Castelvetrano olives and olive-heavy dishes such as caponata for which Sicily is known.

The American muffuletta consists of several kinds of Italian deli meats–for example, prosciutto, mortadella, capacollo and Genoa salami–layered with sliced provolone or mozzarella, generous quantities of olive salad and lettuce. The olive salad is flexible, depending on what you like. I prefer a salad that is mostly olives, mixed with fresh celery and piquant pickled things like peppadews, peperoncini and pickled garlic.

muffuletta olive salad

Eat the muffuletta as is, at room temperature or warmed. Or, heat up some minestrone  for a soup-and-sandwich combo.

One of my favorite variations on the meaty muffuletta is a tuna version that, as a partner for the olive salad, is very typical of Sicilian ways with a sandwich.

tuna muffaletta

muffaletta
Print
Muffuletta Sandwiches
Prep Time
25 mins
 

These over-the-top sandwiches come to us from Sicily, by way of New Orleans. They are loaded with deli meats, cheeses and olive salad.

Course: Dinner, Lunch, Snack
Cuisine: American, Sicily
Servings: 4 sandwiches
Ingredients
  • 1 cup Mediterranean black or green olives, or a mix pitted and chopped
  • 1 stalk celery diced small
  • ¼ cup firmly packed chopped peppadews or jarred sweet pickled peppers available at supermarket olive bars
  • ¼ cup firmly packed chopped pepperoncini or other hot pickled peppers
  • 3 jarred pickled garlic cloves or 1 garlic clove chopped (optional)
  • 1 tablespoon well-drained capers
  • ½ teaspoon oregano
  • 4 muffuletta, Kaiser or other round sandwich rolls split
  • Extra virgin olive oil as needed
  • 8 ounces thin-sliced deli meats such as ham, prosciutto, mortadella, capacollo and/or salami choose at least two
  • 8 ounces provolone or mozzarella cheese
  • Baby arugula or shredded lettuce
Instructions

  1. Make olive salad: Combine olives, celery, peppadews, pepperoncini, pickled garlic cloves, capers and oregano in a medium bowl. Stir well.

  2. Prepare bread: Pull out soft interior of rolls and save to make bread crumbs.

  3. Make sandwiches: Drizzle cut sides of rolls with olive oil. Spoon olive salad into hollows created by removing bread. Layer deli meats, one slice at a time, on bottom halves. Top with cheese and arugula. Close sandwiches.

  4. To serve: Serve immediately or wrap and serve in a few hours. If you prefer warm sandwiches, wrap in foil and heat briefly in an oven or toaster oven.
Recipe Notes

Tuna Muffulettas: Substitute two cans or jars (10-13 ounces total) good-quality tuna for deli meats and cheese. If tuna is packed in olive oil, use to drizzle sandwich rolls. 

Sfincione: Thick Palermo-Style Pizza

by

 

You can order sfincione by the square in takeout establishments all over Palermo, to be eaten right away or later, but Sicilian cooks make it at home, too.

Palermo-Style PizzaThe crust is thicker than a typical pizza and a bit spongy, but at the same time crisp because the dough contains a generous amount of olive oil. Sfincione (sfinciuni in dialect) is related to focaccia, I suppose, but to me it belongs in a category by itself.

After patting the dough into a half-sheet pan, you add layers of cheese, as many anchovies as you fancy, a tomato-and-onion topping and, finally, a scattering of bread crumbs. I love the fact that the cheeses and anchovies are hidden, ready to surprise with their unique flavors.

Once when I cut sficione in cocktail-sized squares to serve guests–pre-pandemic when we did that sort of thing–a French guest kept coming back for more. It reminded him of pissaladiere, also made with tomatoes, onions and anchovies, typical of his native Provence. The French version usually includes olives and omits cheese, however.

This is a good pizza to share and to reheat by the square in a toaster oven. To me it tastes just as good a couple of days later.

Palermo-Style Pizza
Print
Sfincione: Thick Palermo-Style Pizza
Prep Time
30 mins
Cook Time
45 mins
 

Adapted from my recipe in Seafood alla Siciliana, this pizza reheats well the next day. Just toast however many squares you want in a toaster oven for three or four minutes.

Ingredients
  • Extra virgin olive oil
  • 2-1/2 teaspoons dry yeast 1 envelope
  • Sugar
  • Up to 3 ½ cups all-purpose flour*
  • Sea salt or kosher salt
  • 1 1 can (28 ounces) plum tomatoes with puree, or equivalent quantity of marinara sauce
  • 2 large yellow onions thinly sliced (4 to 5 cups)
  • Freshly ground black pepper to taste
  • 8 to 10 ounces mozzarella, caciocavallo or provolone cheese, or a blend thickly shredded
  • 8 to 10 anchovy fillets cut in small pieces
  • Dried oregano to taste
  • 1/2 cup dried breadcrumbs moistened with olive oil
Instructions
  1. Lightly coat bottom and sides of a large rimmed baking sheet with olive oil.
  2. Combine yeast and 1 teaspoon sugar with 1 cup warm water in a liquid measuring cup. Let stand for a few minutes, until a beige scum forms on top of the water.
  3. Combine 3 cups flour and 1 teaspoon salt in a large bowl. Combine 1/4 cup olive oil with yeast mixture and add to flour. Using a wooden spoon, gradually mix liquid into flour.
  4. Turn dough onto a granite countertop or other smooth surface; knead, adding up to 1/2 cup more flour if necessary, until dough is glossy and no longer sticky, about 10 minutes; shape into a ball. Clean the bowl and drizzle a little oil into it; turn the dough to coat lightly. Cover and let rise in a warm place for a couple of hours until it more or less doubles in size.

  5. Meanwhile, prepare tomato-onion sauce: Place tomatoes with puree in a blender or food processor. Pulse to a chunky consistency.

  6. Stir onions and 1/4 cup olive oil together in a large skillet. Over medium heat, cook until onions soften, adjusting heat as necessary so they do not brown.
  7. Add pureed tomatoes, 1 teaspoon sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt and black pepper to taste (omit seasonings if using prepared marinara sauce). Reduce heat and simmer until mixture thickens, 10 to 20 minutes. Remove from heat and cool.

  8. Gently deflate dough with a fist and press it over the bottom and sides of the prepared pan. Spread mozzarella evenly over dough. Dot with anchovy pieces. Cover with tomato-onion sauce, leaving a 1-inch border. Sprinkle with oregano. Sprinkle breadcrumbs moistened olive oil on top. Let rise for 30 minutes to an hour.

  9. Preheat oven to 425°F. Bake sfincione on a rack in lower third of oven until crust edges turn golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes. Let stand for 5 minutes. Cut into squares.
Recipe Notes

* Semolina flour can be substituted for up to 1 cup of all-purpose flour.

Spaghetti with Anchovies and Toasted Breadcrumbs

by

On a Zoom happy hour recently, I asked what everyone was having for dinner. Four for four, pasta.

No surprise there. Everyone loves spaghetti and other dried pastas, and naturally they’re among the staples we’re stockpiling these days.

Other ingredients I never like to be without: olive oil, bread, anchovies, garlic and hot red pepper.  Conveniently, these are the makings for a classic spaghettata–an anytime pasta feast made in minutes.

I use one or two anchovies for background umami in all kinds of dishes. But for this bring-it-on dish, I toss the hot spaghetti with six glossy fillets for the two of us. Garlic slivers, simmered gently in olive oil until they just begin to color, and hot red pepper flakes add kick, while handfuls of arugula sound a gently bitter note.

If you have a choice between a tin of anchovies that costs $2 and a jar of meaty Sicilian anchovies that costs considerably more, go for the second option. And an artisanal kind of spaghetti will likely have better texture.

You could mix in a little grated Parmigiano Reggiano and it wouldn’t be wrong. But I prefer to sprinkle each serving with toasted breadcrumbs, a southern Italian touch. Not the kind that comes in a carton, like panko, but freshly made, toasted breadcrumbs. I learned to make them from a great Sicilian cook, Fiorangela Piccione.

In a skillet with just a smear of olive oil, the fresh crumbs are cooked over medium-high heat while you stir them almost continuously. They color unevenly, but eventually all reach a delectable stage of tender crispness. Off heat, you must continue to tend them, stirring as they cool. Now you have breadcrumbs to please an empress. Enough for your spaghetti and for a pasta dish or salad of the future.

I had wonderful rye bread on hand, so I used that. Fiora would have chosen white or semolina bread, and she would have taken time to trim the crusts. But I don’t think she would disapprove of my unorthodox but delicious crumbs.

Print
Spaghetti with Anchovies and Toasted Breadcrumbs
Prep Time
10 mins
Cook Time
12 mins
 

This is one of my favorite spur-of-the-moment pasta dishes, made with ingredients I almost always have on hand.

Course: Main Dish
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients
  • Sea salt
  • 8 ounces spaghetti or linguine
  • 2 garlic cloves
  • 6 large anchovy fillets
  • ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
  • Hot red pepper flakes
  • 2 cups baby arugula or baby kale if large, cut in ribbons
  • ½ cup freshly made, toasted breadcrumbs (recipe follows)
  • Several grape tomatoes optional
Instructions
  1. Fill a large saucepan two-thirds full of cold water. Bring to a boil. Pour in a small handful of salt. Add spaghetti, pressing with a wooden spoon to submerge it. Stir several times as the water returns to a boil. Cook until al dente, about 10 minutes.
  2. Meanwhile, cut garlic cloves in thin slivers. Reserving 2 anchovy fillets, cut the remaining 4 in three pieces.
  3. Pour olive oil in a small skillet. Over low heat, gently cook garlic until it begins to color but does not brown.
  4. Drain pasta, reserving 1 cup of cooking water. Return pasta to saucepan. Over low heat, stir in anchovies and garlic with oil. Season to taste with sea salt (you may not need any) and hot red pepper. Stir in arugula and heat just until slightly wilted, adding pasta water if needed for a saucy consistency.

  5. Garnish each serving with breadcrumbs, a whole anchovy and, if using, grape tomatoes.

Print
Toasted Fresh Breadcrumbs
Prep Time
2 mins
Cook Time
10 mins
 
I thought I knew how to toast breadcrumbs until I watched Fiorangela Piccione transform fresh breadcrumbs into crusty golden morsels. First of all, the Siracusa cook used pan carré, an ordinary white bread, instead of the semolina bread I was expecting. The only oil was a smear in the bottom of the pan and the heat seemed much too high. But, sure enough, Fiora knew what she was doing. She didn’t want breadcrumbs that were “molle molle” (too soft) and, because they were for a pasta sauce containing oil, she wished to avoid any hint of oiliness in the crumbs. This recipe was originally printed in my cookbook, Seafood alla Siciliana; it is terrific for all kinds of seafood pasta dishes.
Ingredients
  • 2 or 3 slices firm white, semolina, rye or other whole-grain bread
  • 1 to 2 teaspoons olive oil see Note
Instructions
  1. Tear or slice the bread into several pieces, placing them in a food processor bowl. Process until reduced to coarse crumbs (makes about 2 cups).
  2. Smear the bottom of a medium-sized skillet with olive oil. Place the breadcrumbs in the pan and turn the heat to medium high. Heat the crumbs, stirring constantly (don’t even think about walking away!). Over the course of about 5 minutes, the crumbs will begin to change color. Continue stirring until they are golden brown and crisp (some of the crumbs will be browner than others, and that’s okay). If the crumbs start to burn, reduce the heat or temporarily remove the skillet from the heat.
  3. Remove the skillet from the heat and continue stirring for about half a minute, as the crumbs cool.
Recipe Notes

Note: Any toasted breadcrumbs not used immediately can be cooled and held at room temperature for a couple of days, or frozen indefinitely.

Sicilian Tuna, Potato & Caper Salad

by

photo by Tina Rupp

If you’re like me, sometimes you have to step back and just have a salad for dinner.  This one satisfies the yen for fresh greens and vegetables, but the tuna and potatoes add heft, turning what would otherwise be a side salad into a satisfying meal.

When I chose this tuna, potato and caper salad for a cooking demo at the Saturday Morning Market, I realized I could get virtually all the ingredients from the vendors. Organic lettuce and other produce come from Worden Farm, owned and operated by two Ph.D.s in southwest Florida. Olive oil and white wine vinegar from Puglia from Tampa-based V Spicery make a lovely vinaigrette.

A good brand of canned tuna would be fine in this salad,  but I decided instead to use a special technique for poaching fresh tuna in olive oil. Martin Fisher ordered the tuna for me. If you’re not familiar with Fisher’s, his stand, check it out. Any given Saturday Martin can be seen deftly filleting grouper, snapper, mackerel, whatever the catch of the week might be.

Print
Sicilian Tuna, Potato and Caper Salad
Prep Time
15 mins
Cook Time
30 mins
Total Time
45 mins
 
Course: Main Dish, Salad
Cuisine: Italian
Servings: 4 servings
Ingredients
  • 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
  • 1/4 teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt
  • Freshly ground black pepper
  • 2 medium boiling potatoes peeled and cut in small dice
  • 1 large tomato or roasted red bell pepper
  • 1 celery stalk angle cut in thin slices (about 1/2 cup)
  • 1/2 small sweet onion halved pole to pole, cut in slivers
  • 1 to 2 tablespoons capers preferably salt-cured, rinsed
  • 4 cups torn salad greens
  • 7 ounces good-quality canned tuna or fresh tuna poached in olive oil recipe follows
  • Small black olives such as Gaeta
Instructions
  1. Combine the olive oil, vinegar, salt and black pepper to taste in a medium bowl.
  2. Place the potatoes in a small saucepan, cover with water and bring to a boil; reduce the heat and simmer until tender but not mushy, about 10 minutes. Drain and cool under running water. Add to the bowl with the dressing and gently turn the potatoes until coated.
  3. Halve the tomato and scoop out the insides; cut the shell in thin strips. Alternatively, cut a roasted pepper in strips. Add to the potatoes along with the celery, onion and capers.
  4. Line 4 plates with the greens and spoon the salad over them. Arrange the tuna and olives on top. Makes 4 servings.
Recipe Notes

Tuna Poached in Olive Oil: Cut 1 pound of boneless fresh tuna in large chunks and coat with 1 teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt. Pack tightly in a medium saucepan or small skillet. Add1 rosemary sprig, 1 garlic clove, several peppercorns, a bay leaf and olive oil to cover (about 1 cup). Bring to a simmer over low heat and cook very gently until just cooked through, about 10 minutes. Cool. Transfer the pan contents to a ceramic container or glass jar. Refrigerate for up to a week. To use the tuna, break into smaller pieces. When it’s all gone, discard the oil.

 

 

Beach Fare: Maltese Tuna Sandwich

by

It’s spring break time along Florida’s long coastline. Time to head for the beach, and the rest of the country won’t be far behind. So I’m happily packing beach towels and sunblock along with a couple of the Maltese tuna sandwiches I just learned to make.

I’ve never visited Malta, a tiny group of islands off the southern coast of Sicily. But a private demo in the kitchen of Mary Perry, a long-time Tampa Bay resident who came from Malta, was the next best thing.

“Everyone in Malta knows this beach sandwich,” she said, while spreading bread slices with tomato paste. She pressed them into a pool of olive oil and red wine vinegar, dotted with capers. Then came layers of onion, hard-cooked egg, fresh basil, tuna and cucumber.

Biting into the sandwich, I could taste the same Mediterranean flavors as in Sicily’s beach sandwiches (sometimes made with sardines or eggplant, but often tuna) or southern France’s pan bagnat. But put together in a whole different way.

Later Mary emailed the name of the sandwich: hobz biz-zejt u tadam. Okay, THAT’S a mouthful. If you want to try to say it, know that the z’s have a dot hovering over them (which my blog platform refuses to honor), altering the pronunciation in a way that Mary explained but I completely failed to comprehend. Clearly I won’t be taking up the study of the Maltese language, based on an Arab dialect that developed in Sicily and Malta between the 9th and 12th centuries A.D.

The sandwich name (hobz and so on) refers to crusty bread with olive oil and tomato.  So everything else, including the tuna, is sort of optional. But I’d rather load it all on. You can eat the sandwich right away but I’m thinking it will taste better mixed with salt breezes and a little sand.

Print
Maltese Tuna Sandwich
Prep Time
15 mins
Total Time
15 mins
 
Servings: 2 servings
Ingredients
  • ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
  • 1 heaping tablespoon capers rinsed
  • Mrs. Dash seasoning
  • 2 to 3 tablespoons tomato paste
  • 4 large slices white or wholewheat bread
  • Several slices sweet red or white onion
  • 2 hard-boiled eggs sliced
  • Leaves from 2 basil sprigs
  • 1 can tuna, 7 ounces drained
  • 1/2 small cucumber thinly sliced
Instructions
  1. Pour the olive oil on a dinner plate. Sprinkle with the vinegar and scatter the capers over the surface. Sprinkle with Mrs. Dash seasoning. Spread the tomato paste over one side of the bread slices.
  2. Press the tomato paste side of bread slices into the olive oil mixture. If any capers fail to stick, distribute them manually over the surfaces.
  3. On the dressed side of two bread slices, layer the onion slices, eggs, basil leaves, tuna and cucumber. Top with the remaining bread slices.

Crab and Potato Salad Called Insalata Pantesca

by

I’m a fan of Sarah Grueneberg from way back, so when I heard she was going to teach a cooking class near my home, I had to be at the table.

Other students knew her as the finalist on Bravo’s Top Chef show who had the whole city of Chicago rooting for her (a New York City interloper won the contest but just barely).

I knew Sarah as a chef I could count on for a well-informed interview on Italian ingredients or cooking. Sarah is from the Texas Gulf Coast, so I’d also collected some of her killer sports-watching snacks for a magazine piece.

But all of that was on the phone. I’d never laid eyes on Sarah and was startled, arriving at Rolling Pin Cooking Emporium, to see how young she is–just 31 years old. By her own description, Sarah chafed at the tedium of high-school classes and jumped for the culinary life at the earliest opportunity. By age 22, she was the youngest-ever sous chef of Brennan’s and from there moved up the ranks at Spiaggia, Chicago’s only four-star Italian restaurant, to become executive chef.

insalata pantesca

We were here to watch Chef Sarah power through a menu that started with insalata pantesca–named for Pantelleria, a Sicilian island known for its capers as well as for black lava landscapes and dome-roofed dammusi. In Sarah’s version, layers of potatoes are lavished with an herb-caper pesto, crabmeat and heirloom tomatoes.

Next she launched into slow-roasted pork rib roast drizzled with a fine balsamic vinegar and served with Barolo risotto. And to finish, honey panna cotta with honey salted caramel.

I loved tasting Sarah’s food at last and, along the way, savoring the opinions and chef’s tips she tossed out. A sampling, in Sarah’s words:

  • Tarragon is my new favorite herb. And balsamic vinegar…it’s the next steak sauce. Whatever you do, don’t cheat on the quality of ingredients like balsamic and olive oil.
  • It’s a brave person who dared eat an artichoke for the first time.
  • For a deeply flavored broth, roast the bones. Once the liquid comes to a boil, drop in ice cubes to lock in the proteins and avoid skimming so much.
  • Cut roasted meat too soon and it will definitely freak out.
  • Roasting vegetables in the pan juices of the meat you’re serving–that’s going to be a winner every time.
  • For virtually seed-free lemons: Cut wedges off the lemon at right angles, leaving most of the seeds in the core at the center.
  • As an Italian chef told me, properly made panna cotta should jiggle like a woman’s breast.
  • Where’s my honey? (probably referring to the Tupelo honey used in the panna cotta but possibly to Sarah’s cute fiance Jaime Canete, sous chef for the evening)

Okay, back to to Sarah’s insalata pantesca. For more of her cooking, think about making your way to Chicago for a meal at Spiaggia.

Print
Crab and Potato Salad with Herb-Caper Pesto (Insalata Pantesca)
Prep Time
40 mins
Cook Time
15 mins
Total Time
55 mins
 
(adapted from Chef Sarah Grueneberg's recipe)
Course: Appetizer, Main Dish, Salad
Cuisine: Italian
Servings: 6 servings
Ingredients
  • 1 pound Yukon Gold or other boiling potatoes peeled
  • Sea salt
  • ½ cup loosely packed basil leaves plus more to garnish
  • ¼ cup fresh tarragon leaves
  • ¼ cup flat-leaf parsley leaves
  • ½ cup almonds toasted, plus more to garnish
  • ¼ cup salt-cured capers rinsed, plus more to garnish
  • Good-quality extra virgin olive oil
  • Freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 pound pasteurized crab meat picked through
  • 1 pint cherry tomatoes preferably heirloom, halved or quartered
  • Juice of 1 lemon
  • ½ pitted Castelvetrano or other Mediterranean olives halved
Instructions
  1. Place the potatoes in a medium saucepan and season with 1 tablespoon sea salt. Add cold water to cover by one inch.
  2. Over medium heat, bring the water to a simmer and cook the potatoes until just tender (avoid overcooking; they should have a bit of resistance). Remove potatoes, cool and slice in wedges or half-inch rounds.
  3. In a blender bowl, combine the basil, tarragon, parsley, almonds and capers with 1/3 cup olive oil. Blend until pureed but a bit chunky. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
  4. Toss the crab and tomatoes with the lemon juice, 2 tablespoons olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste.
  5. Mix the potatoes with the pesto. Arrange on a platter or individual plates. Spoon the dressed crab and tomatoes on top. Garnish with basil leaves, olives, almonds, capers fried in olive oil and a few grindings of black pepper.

 

What’s Different about Italians (Still)

by

It’s harder than ever, visiting Italy, to get that delicious jolt of something foreign to American habits and tastes. Partly because we’ve gotten to know them and vice versa (I once ran into a busload of Italian tourists in a remote New Mexico town). And also because we’ve appropriated so many aspects of Italian food, fashion and culture into American life (I met those Italians in an espresso bar).

A few things, however, remain distinctly Italian (and endearingly so, for the most part).

Men in scarves. Out for a spin in his convertible, our friend Luciano flings a voluminous scarf around his neck. Now that’s a look not often seen in the U.S., except for a few urban fashionistas. His behavior touches on Italian notions about health as well–the desire to protect against maladies of the throat. That same preoccupation with chills and drafts explains why the signora in the house where my daughter Kate stayed during a semester abroad tucked a cashmere-lined hot water bottle into her bed each night and argued strenuously against going to bed with wet hair.

Italian men in the streetStreet watching as a major life activity. Italian men (usually but not always oldish) typically do this in groups, sitting on benches or chairs outside a store front–or maybe playing scopa at a club with one side open to the street. They chat or doze for hours, content to be part of the changing street scene.

For women, street watching tends to be a solo activity. They peer at the street through a living room window or from a chair on the front stoop. Staying a few days in a Sicilian town called Scopello, I kept an eye on one such street watcher. Except for breaks to eat, nap or fetch water from the village fountain, she relied on piazza life to entertain her all day long.

Paying bills at the P.O. Along with just about any dealings in an Italian bank, the system of paying bills and taxes at the post office has always perplexed me. These days a lot of business takes place by electronic transfer from one party’s account to another, but the P.O. is still the place for many transactions. When I showed up to pay taxes owed by a couple for whom we were housesitting, the postal worker sent me away.”Come back when I’m not soold Italian woman in street busy–this is going to take a lot of time,” she complained irritably.

When I returned later that morning, nothing had changed–the line was the same length. She sighed and began to fill out the forms, page after page. Meanwhile, I held my breath–I wouldn’t know the exact amount until she had done the calculations and only hoped I had brought enough euros. This system I find utterly without charm but it does qualify as alien. (Of course, I don’t imagine an Italian would enjoy a visit to our DMV.)

Doily know-how. Using doilies as a child to make paper Valentines–that’s the last time I did something purposeful with these lacy circles. But every Italian with a well-equipped household seems to have a quantity of doilies, crocheted by someone in the family. If you come for coffee in the afternoon, they’ll slip one between the cup and the saucer. They have paper doilies, too, to line a dessert platter. Doilies provide a genteel touch that I love but would feel ridiculous emulating myself.

cuttlefish

cuttlefish in an Italian market

Rooster heads and other exotic fare. At a street fair–a sort of progressive dinner– in a small Tuscan town called Bucine, my husband was delighted to discover a local home cook serving up stuffed rooster heads. That was an easy challenge–we just ate the stuffing and left the heads behind. I’ve also tried donkey and can confirm that octopus, cuttlefish and even lattume (tuna semen sac, a Sicilian delicacy served in spring) are delicious if strange looking. But I can only down a bite or two of tripe, and find it mystifying why some Italians have a taste for lungs and nerves in the age of mad cow disease.

The weirdest of all, for me, is the maggot-ridden pecorino called casu marzu. These vermin, introduced deliberately into the cheese, chew and excrete their way through the cheese, giving it a soft texture that is prized. I bought one of these cheeses by mistake, discovering its nature only after I proudly carried it to the dinner table. I’ll generally try anything once, but ewwww!  I tossed the cheese into the freezer–anything to make the maggots stop writhing–and then into the garbage.

A lot has been published on the mammismo that keeps men living with and being fed by their mothers into middle age. Women aren’t immune, either. A Wall Street Journal story talked about a delivery service that delivered a southern Italian mama’s eggplant parmigiano to her working daughter in Rome.

But perhaps those differences between our cultures are narrowing. After all, we have “helicopter parents” who lavish attention on their children to the point of following them to college. And the Italian emphasis on multi-generational households starts to make sense in an age as economically stressful as this.

Italians are soccer crazy, but so is the rest of the world. Americans just need to catch up, and our kids, who have grown up playing soccer over the past quarter century, will make that happen.

Politics? These days, it’s hard to feel smug about the dyfunctional nature of Italian politics. Looking at how the U.S. Congress operates, I’m thinking we can’t be outdone.

Besides, there are other things to think about–like what is that musical instrument and why are the grapes propped on top?

 

Five Books that Take You to Sicily

by

reading list for Sicily

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.

 

Chocolate Chicken for Sicilian Easter Dinner

by

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.

Print
Chocolate and Champagne Chicken
Prep Time
25 mins
Cook Time
45 mins
Total Time
1 hr 10 mins
 
Course: Main Dish
Cuisine: Italian
Servings: 4 to 6 servings
Ingredients
  • 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
Instructions
  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.