As luck would have it last night, I stumbled upon the second half of an episode of Andrew Zimmern's Bizarre Foods devoted to Sicilian cooking. Featured on the show was a well-known chef and cooking school owner, Eleonara Consoli, who invited the TV host into her home for a lesson. That home, her website declares, is a "typical 18th Century" Sicilian house, set "in the pleasant atmosphere of the volcano," and surrounded by vineyards, orchards, and lemon and orange groves. As Ms. Consoli poured a little olive oil into a skillet to prepare a dish, Zimmern teased her, "So, is that French oil, Greek?" His hostess fairly glared at him. Of course it was pressed from the olives grown on the fertile hillsides of Etna.
I don't speak Italian, and Ms. Consoli doesn't seem to speak a lot of English (one page of her site proclaims: "Sfizi & Capricci --in this web site section you will find, as soon as possible,
ideas and advices to buy using your fantasy and create through the stoves . . . ") and her books, part of the Sicilian cooking canon, are untranslated if not outright unavailable. But we do have the massive 1200 page "The Silver Spoon" to guide us through some of the more 'bizarre' foods that Zimmern featured on the show. No recipe for cuttlefish eggs, perhaps, but one for cuttlefish au gratin might suffice; also, nothing listed that could replace the Sicilian speciality, tuna sperm -- the testicles of the great fish, which, apparently, tastes like fish or chicken liver. On this, I am willing to take others at their word.
Sicilian cooking varies from Italian in a number of ways, given Spanish, Greek, and Arab influences upon the cuisine. Rice, not the staple of the north, was at one time a dish for invalids; beef is a rarity; rabbit is served as often as chicken. What comes from the sea is highly prized. And nothing is wasted.
Another well-known book of Sicilian cuisine is Wanda and Giovanna Tornabene's "La Cucina Sicilian di Gangivecchio," which also grew out of a cooking school. Lucky for us, a beautifully illustrated English translation is available. It features a simple recipe for cassata, the famous Sicilian cheesecake made with ricotta. These treats, decorated with candied fruits and layered, frequently, with chocolate, are feasts for the eyes and appetites. Our Thanksgiving table will feature one this year.
5 comments:
I was lucky enough to be "adopted" by a Sicilian American family when I was living in Milwaukee, and they certainly expanded my horizons, especially with regard to vegetables. But cuttlefish eggs and tuna genitals we were probably too far inland to get.
Another nice book by the Tornabenes is Sicilian Home Cooking: Family Recipes from Gangivecchio. Then there's Cucina Paradiso: The Heavenly Food of Sicily by Clifford A. Wright. I hereby do solemnly swear that I will one day make il pasticcio di Mohammed ibn ath-Thumna, the chicken pie of Mohammed ibn ath-Thumna, which is a hollowed-out loaf of bread stuffed with a mixture of chicken, almonds, pistachios, lemons, and capers, bound with eggs.
It is great to see you too, Denise. What a scrumptious and mouthwatering blog you're keeping.
I don't know of the Home Cooking book. I'll have to have it now.
Do you ever make little birds? Slices of beef that you stuff with bread, celery, onions, sometimes pine nuts and such? Cooked in the sauce, serve with pasta. My grandmother made those.
Thank you for writing and reading. More soon. I need to do my nails and forget about everything for a few hours.
Yes, but they called them bracciole or bracciolini, which I don't think translates to little birds. They started with round steak that you had to pound really thin (without putting holes in it, which I usually did). Then they put the stuffing in, rolled them up, and tied them up with string. Browned them first, then put them in the sauce. I was always amazed at how the sauce didn't penetrate the meat--the stuffing never got soggy.
I just remembered something--they were called little birds when they were made with veal. (Suddenly, now, it all makes sense.) But this family didn't cook much veal. The grandmother said American veal didn't taste as good as the veal in Sicily, and I think she was concerned about the way it was raised in this country too.
Oh, you are so right! But I always made little 'beef birds' for some reason. Grandmom would make the big bracciole and stuff it with hard cooked eggs, too. I use mushrooms in the little birds. I haven't made them for a long while . . . hmmm.
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