Why Italians Love to Talk About Food (59 page)

The ancients considered Sicily the birthplace of gastronomy. The Athenians used Sicilian cookbooks. Plato, speaking through Socrates' voice in his
Gorgias
, recalls a certain Mithaecus “who wrote about Sicilian cuisine.”

The works of another Sicilian writer-gastronome, Archestratus of Syracuse, have also come down to us in the compilation of Athenaeus (third century
A.D.
). This sublime master was not fond of excessive condiments and wanted to create an impeccable cuisine, without superfluous substances, without unwarranted fats and sauces:

 

Inopportune and excessive
by far for me are the other additions
of too much cheese, oil and grease,
as if preparing a meal for cats.

 

The recipe in his
Gastronomy
for Sicilian tuna (the fish locally known as
amia
) is elegant and essential:

 

. . .
wrap it in fig-leaves
with a very little marjoram. No cheese,
no nonsense! Just place it
tenderly in fig-leaves
and tie them on top with a string;
then push it under hot ashes,
thinking wisely of the time
when it is done,
and don't burn it!
¹

 

By Alexey Pivovarov

Sicily is an island of contrasts, of sumptuousness and poverty, a crossroads of cultures. Here, everything is carried to excess: the sunlight, unbearable (for a foreigner) without dark glasses; the blue of sky and sea; the green of cultivated estates; the fragrances. Here the immediacy and sensuality of life is almost too intense to take in all at once; Sicily must often be experienced through recollection or from a distance. It is
saturated with the past, a past that imbues the warm flesh of the present. In Agrigento, in the Valley of the Temples, we can spot a shepherd leading his sheep through the Paleochristian necropolis. Lambs fall into tombs hidden by shrubs and the shepherd pulls them out, catching them with the crook of his staff. The staff is a genuine pastoral crozier with a hooked end, just like a bishop's (the shepherd of Christianity). The sky is blue-green, and the background is formed of Greek columns.

Appetizing images of food appear both in daily life and in literature. Just think of
Il Gattopardo
(
The Leopard
) by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, or the novels of Andrea Camilleri (see “
Joy
”). Food metaphors are used constantly in songs, and acts associated with food enrich the local religious tradition, which is wild and riotous to the point of being paganistic. Halloween, for example, was not invented by the Americans: a thousand years before the discovery of America, the eve of November 1, All Souls' Day, was celebrated in Sicily with macabre tricks and eating
ossa dei morti
, bones of the dead, made of almond paste and sugar. On St. Martin's Day (November 11),
muffolette
, fennel rolls with ricotta, were made (and still are). For the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8), special fritters called
sfinci
appear. On December 13, for the feast day of St. Lucy, the martyr's gouged-out eyes, replicated in meringue and candied pumpkin, stare out at customers from all the bakery windows. Sicilian Christmas desserts are legendary:
buccellati
, with figs, almonds, walnuts, pistachios, and grated chocolate;
mustazzoli
, cream puffs filled with fig jam; and
cucciddati
, cookies that represent the sun. Cannoli filled with ricotta cream, chocolate, and candied fruit, sold throughout Italy but created in Sicily, should be prepared and eaten only during Carnival time. On St. Joseph's Day (March 19), complex compositions of breads and desserts are displayed in homes, on altars or tables; these include
la Spera
, bread shaped like a monstrance (which symbolizes the body of Christ);
il Cuore
, a heart (with the initials of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph); and
la Croce
, a cross (symbol of the Passion). The entire arrangement is displayed as an elaborate iconostasis and also includes pastorals with the lily (symbol of purity), breads of Christ with cyclamens, breads of Mary with roses, and a number of other sweets made of sugar, marzipan, and chocolate.

At a time when the ancients still worshipped the Mother Goddess on the shores of the Mediterranean, Sicilians baked ritual votive breads in her honor. Later the coast was colonized by the Greeks. The female cults gave way to Dionysian cults, and wine, wheat bread, and cheese became fully integrated into Sicily's rituals and daily life. The Romans, the new conquerors, raised geese there, saviors of the Roman state, and taught the local inhabitants how to cook them for festive banquets as well.

After the Romans, Sicily was dominated by the Byzantines, who spread the custom of cooking complicated stuffed and sweet-and-sour dishes. The Arabs (from the ninth to the eleventh centuries) were responsible for a true revolution both in everyday life, as well as in the island's food industry. With the Arab conquest, apricots, sugar, citrus fruits, melons, rice, saffron, sultanas, nutmeg, cloves, pepper, cinnamon, fragrant jasmine, figs, and carob—all mainstays of today's cuisine—became part of the islanders' lives.

The conquerors from the north—the Normans and Swabians—joined forces with the brilliant Sicilian cooks to create the best meat recipes. The Spanish enriched the island's cuisine, first with a passion for flamboyant color and aesthetics and second with everything they were able to bring from the New World. The Spanish brought cocoa, corn, turkeys, and tomatoes to Sicily. Here and there, the legacy of cooks in the service of the French royal house can also be found, as the Bourbons ruled Sicily in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The French passed on to Sicilians a passion for onions. They also introduced an exuberant, sumptuous cuisine, whose tradition has remained alive, uncontaminated by simpler popular customs. Even today, restaurants in Sicily seem almost Parisian. They are luxurious and exclusive, far from the universally Italian type of simple trattoria, and they love to develop menus in accordance with elitist experimental cuisine.

Nevertheless, an exclusive restaurant on a Sicilian street is surrounded by a sea of stalls and itinerant vendors, there for the joy of a crowd that eats all day long. Street food has some wonderful advantages: unlike restaurants, it offers affordable prices, it does not require too much time, and it is available at any time of the day or night.
Polipari
, boiled octopus vendors, abound on Palermo's seaside promenade. Also typical of the city are the
panellari
, purveyors of bread and
panelle
, thin fried fritters made of chickpea flour, traditionally accompanied by bread. Everywhere you go there are
friggitorie
, or fried food shops. In Messina
focaccerie
, focaccia shops, are popular. In Catania, you encounter vendors of flatbreads on every corner: these
schiacciate
may be filled with cheese, anchovies, onions, and tomatoes (the most common Sicilian version) or with black olives, Tuma cheese, and cauliflower (the local variant). In Syracuse and Ragusa these stuffed focaccias are called
scacce
and they can be sweet as well, in which case the filling consists of ricotta and coffee cream.

In the farmer's markets Piscaria and Fera 'o Luni in Catania, you wonder how nature can generate such an improbable palette of colors. And you wonder if the vibrant color of the local vegetables might be due to Etna's lava, to the particular mineral substances dissolved in the soil. In a quick trip through the market, you can
buy fish and sardine patties with onions, soft crustless bread, parsley, and caciocavallo cheese, floured and fried in hot oil (sardines
beccafico
-style). In the port of Catania, the
friggitoria
Stella has an old-fashioned, unpretentious look, with humble white tiles on the walls. Everything that is sold here is eaten without silverware: crispy fritters with fresh ricotta (
sfinci
), sweet rolls with chocolate and cream (
iris
), rice balls (
arancini
). They also cook veal innards (namely, heart, liver, lungs, kidneys, trachea—
caldume
, or
quadumi
in dialect) at the port and sell pork jelly with lemon (
zuzo
).

Palermo, like Catania, is a paradise for street food. The traditions of the Arabic market are still alive here. At the market and in the streets of Palermo, flat fritters of chickpea flour (
ciciri
) are fried in hot oil, then placed between thin slices of bread. Starting with breakfast in the morning, you can buy the famous
sfincione
, a spicy pizza, spread with anchovies, onion, black olives, and cheese. Later, toward afternoon,
stiggiole
begin to be sold: intestines speared on a stick and cooked on the grill. The same stalls usually offer
frittole
, meatballs made with boiled, seasoned pork rind, sprinkled with lemon juice and wrapped in waxed paper. Spleen sandwich (
panino con la milza
) is a speciality of Palermo that can be found at any time of the day or night. A
focaccina
is called “pure” or “virginal” (
schietta
) if it is seasoned with lemon, and “married” (
maritata
) if it is sprinkled with cheese.

Not to be missed, too, are the wonderful
benedettini
(benedictines), fried rice fingers with honey and sugar. As is evident from its name, this sweet, like so many other recipes that have become a part of life for all laymen in Sicily, was introduced by the Benedictine monks. The crowds along the street eat their fried food in waxed paper, while a select few enjoy foods served on precious porcelain plates and white tablecloths. How different the rich Sicilian cuisine is from the rest of Italy's democratic diet! It is a cuisine of aristocratic families, of abbots and abbesses. In Sicily the second-born, deprived of an inheritance according to the laws of primogeniture, took religious vows, but did not completely renounce life's pleasures as a result of this. Life smiled even more amiably on these younger sons and daughters, relieving them of concerns, ensuring their freedom and leisure, and also ridding them of hassles related to the upkeep of the family estates.

A tradition of sumptuous cuisine was thus developed in the abbeys and monasteries. Nothing could equal the lavishness of the Sicilian Benedictine monasteries. They were the world's richest. The Abbey of San Nicola in Catania was the most important Benedictine monastery in the world after that of Montserrat in Spain.

The Benedictine monks perfected the macaroni timbale described in
Il Gattopardo
by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, replete with veal, prosciutto, chicken gizzards, vegetables, and hard-boiled eggs, in the spirit of the opulent table of ancient Rome. The monks were also the first to make
arancini
, the rice balls that are famous today as a specialty of papal gastronomy, both here and in Rome. Another creation that can be traced back to the monks is that of the breaded, fried olives with a complex stuffing that later, after being made famous by the monasteries in the Marches, entered the encyclopedias as a specialty of Ascoli (
olive ascolane
). The monks also created stuffed cannelloni in sauce, arranged in a baking dish and baked in the oven under a thick layer of béchamel.