ciao

All good things must come to an end. This is not to say all things that end are good. But, if I may say, I do find it much easier to communicate what I have to say by writing rather than saying it, if that makes sense.
Timmy and I didn't think about this too much. We thought of a topic and put some words down to communicate our experiences (some of them) and to remind us of our experiences (some of them).
But blogging has been fun, in context of what it was about. But it must end now. After all,  Timmy and Roscoe are no longer in Italy.

Without getting all high fallutin' on you I would like, however,  to end with a quote:
'There are more things in heaven and earth... than are dreamt of in your philosophy'.
Never quite knew what this meant until now.
We can't possibly imagine, think or feel what someone else does. But we can try and in trying we can step out of minds,  just for a while, and understand others.
Nothing else does this for me more than travel.
The world is a bloody amazing place. Ciao. xx

purists at heart

If the northern cities are the brains and Rome is the brawn then Sicily must surely be Italy’s heart. We met up with an Australian who has taught English in Palermo for five years. The drawcard for her was the lack of English speakers. Good for her, as this meant more business.  And good for her because she could immerse herself in a raw, undiluted culture. We notice very few toursists and it was peak season in our first week here. The holiday makers seemed to be other Italians and lots of them.

Timmy and I observed a few things many times over. And what we observed mostly concerned food and we were lucky enough to experience it at different levels of society here.

I would guess we ate out forty to fifty times. Sounds like a lot, huh? But think about it. We have been here for seventeen days. So eating out includes coffee and pastry in the morning, something light or otherwise for lunch and then a late dinner, at a restaurant or as guests in private homes.

People eat here and they eat a lot, with little or no deliberation. Eating, remember, is natural. I see none of the tortured relationship with food I encounter more and more in Australia. Certainly none of the disconnected or depersonalised relationship Americans have with food. Here, skinny girl or fat guy alike, if you are hungry, you eat. It is 11pm, you go out for dinner and you eat a pizza to yourself. You don’t share. It's all yours. Try suggesting to a Palermitan they shouldn’t eat carbies after six. It would be like a local saying to their mumma or nonna that they didn’t like their pasta sauce. Mumma mia! It simply wouldn’t happen.

Portions are not huge but dinner is often a multi course affair. The food is filling and there is little variety.

Timmy learnt that antipasto was not a traditional thing in Sicily and only became popular with the influx of tourists over the last ten or fifteen years. At a café, a trattoria (defined here by being less formal than a restaurant and not open at night) or at a restaurant, we noticed repetition.

Eggplant rolls (melanzanne involtini) are a staple. Left over bread is finely crumbed and moistened with tomato passata and finely grated parmesan cheese. This mixture is wrapped in fried eggplant then baked with more tomato sauce on top, then some parmesan and basil leaves. Simple and elegant. We really like this one.

Swordish croquettes (spade crochette) and sardine rolls are on just about every menu. As too is the traditional street sandwich, or muffaletto.

Pasta next. Lots of simple tomato based pasta sauces. Lots of fishy bits, sometimes sweetened with currants and salted with capers, anchovies or bottarga.

Every table has olive oil to serve yourself. Olive oil is the seasoning, like our salt and pepper. We see this everywhere we go and we hear it from the horse’s mouth. We meet Natalia Ravida, of Ravida olive oil, a company which has been producing olive oil for four hundred years. Yes, you read correctly. When Natalia says that olive is used to season food, you better believe it. Olive oil is a 

huge part of life here. And it’s only been in recent years that Sicilian’s are sharing their fine olive oil, and their wine, with other parts of Italy and beyond.

We are lucky enough to spend time eating with someone from one of Sicily’s oldest family run business and go to the their neo classical villa in Trapani. Natalia’s mother is preparing a traditional dinner for some Americans. The dessert is a home made grape jelly. Grated nutmeg is sprinkle over each one. This is in the air before we even get to the kitchen. The pasta is simple tomato and eggplant sauce.

At another dinner party hosted in a 18^th century palazzo in the heart of old  Palermo (so run down, in fact, that the piazza is as it was in 1945) we eat pasta with, yet again, a simple base of tomato and eggplant sauce.

Our cook, Franchy, prepares the eggplant. I generally do not salt eggplant before cooking but I noticed something here that has inspired me to do so from now on. Rather than sprinkling the eggplant with salt and leaving it to bleed, our host put the peeled and diced eggplant in a bowl of salted water for a few minutes. A much quicker and easier process. He drained it well and cooked it all off in a frying pan with lots of good olive oil. He then added some garlic, chopped, fresh tomatoes, basil and lots of salt and pepper. This was very easy and so tasty. Can’t wait to try this at home.

Rich man, poor man. At a café where you pay 5 euro for a bowl of pasta, in a villa or a palace, there is a theme. Sicilians know what they like and they are proud to say it. You don’t even have to ask and they will tell you. They don’t do pretense. They don’t do fusion. It may seem repetitive but there is something re assuring and comforting about this. They love their food, simply and honestly and with a heart felt passion.

Eskimo pie

Eskimo pie - ice cream sandwiched between something cakey. Ever wondered where the concept came from? I think I have the answer.

The Italians reckon they created ice cream, or gelato, way up north in Florence. The Italians also reckon they invented ice cream machines, way down south in Palermo. 

The French created the brioche. We have to give them something and heaven forbid we make the slightest suggestion that anything foodie with a French name was not created by them. 

But our French purists did not even think of putting something not made by them in the brioche. That's where the Italians came in, food whores they are, and I love them for it.

How to eat ice cream before cones and take away tubs were invented? Scoop it into a brioche, of course.
It's summer in Sicily. Timmy and I notice people, and lots of them, eating these ice cream sandwiches.
They are called brioche con gelato. Chocolate is good. Oh, and hazelnut is pretty good, too. Rockmelon, vanilla, pistachio, walnut. God damn! They got it right again!

i dream in recipes

Last night I had a dream. Timmy and I have been frequenting a local trattoria, a real favourite of ours.
http://www.trattoriaaltritempi.it/index2.htm
It serves what it describes as typical Sicilian food. So typical, in fact, the menu is written in a local dialect. I cannot speak Italian but I can understand basic foodie words. You might recognise that pommodroe means tomato. At this place, the Sicilian for tomato is something else. To my eye, it looks like a fusion of Italian and Transylvanian. Wog vampire speak.
The food is rustic. There is no antipasto section to the menu. Timmy has researched to discover that antipasto was never a traditional part of Sicilian eating. Instead, they offer local dishes; fava beans, fried cauliflower, panelle (chick pea flour fritters). Yum, yum and, yes, yum.
Some people dream in colour, others in black and white. Last night I had a dream in recipes. I was re creating the broad bean dish we had at the local trattoria.
This is how the dream went:
I bought the dried fava beans. I soaked them overnight. I boiled them in water with garlic and bay leaf until they were tender. I seasoned them very well and served them with a sprinkling of dried oregano.




The fritter plate has fried cauliflower (a green variety) and the ubiquitous panelle (chick pea flour fritters).

sounds like Bogata

Do any Australians out there remember Pecks paste, an anchovy spread, whose catch phrase was 'a little bit goes a long way'? Loved this stuff as a kid. Couldn't get enough, in fact. So I disagreed with the good people at Pecks (did they make anything else?) on this part. To me, a little bit was never enough.
So I come to Sicily, home of bottarga but you will see it in other parts of The Mediterranean going by other names. And any visit here worth the effort involves trying bottarga. The seguey here is that bottarga is kind of like anchovy spread, but much, much better. Bottarga sounds like Bogata, which is apt because it is the cocaine of the anchovy spread world.
Bottarga is the dried fish roe (egg pouch) of a few varieties of fish, the best quality coming from tuna. It has the colour of foie gras. It is not fishy at all but really salty and savoury.

There is one of two ways to best enjoy this. We had it very finely sliced, like prosciutto, layed out on a plate, drizzled with olive oil with some bread on the side. Simple and delicious. We had it tossed through spaghetti with olive oil. Simple and delicious.
Often, and unfairly, described as the poor man's caviar. I prefer to say it is the rich guy's Pecks paste.

they get it right

I left the apartment and stepped on out into Palerms. It was about five in the afternoon. Post spaghetti blackout. Spaghetti blackout. This is siesta time, when everything and everyone shuts down. When you cannot even buy spaghetti.
So, Roscoe hit the streets in search of a treat. I had my mind set on gelato. Instead I settled on prosecco and a little plate of gorgeous, small tasty bits, or aperitivo. But I could have had gelato. I could have had cake or pastry. I also could have had coffee. I could have had granita.
Then it got me thinking. God, how right did these Italians get it? I mean, can you think of any other culture that caters to indulgence on this level. Yeah, yeah, I know what you are thinking. Stop making huge cultural generalisations, Roscoe. But isn't life general? The French are pretty good at indulging but they are inflexible purists who take themselves too seriously. The Iberians don't have enough variety for me. Americans have no idea what real food is. Fat people eating fat free treats full of sugar? Uh uh. And Asian treats are just wrong. Corn and red beans in ice and silly-putty rice? No thanks.
So, generally speaking, yeah, I decided that no one does it quite like these guys and if you accuse me of of gross cultural generalisations than I plead guilty. Okay?

dolce buono!

How would you translate the word 'yum'? We use it when we talk about food. But it doesn't just mean good. It's delicious with wow factor. It's eyes rolling in the back of your head. It's an exclamation. It's a one word sentence. It's not easy to communicate its exact meaning.

It's like dolce buono to Italians. On its own it means sweet good. Doesn't give too much away, does it. But to Italians this means so much more and it is said in conjunction with a gesture, like a finger pointing at a tooth through a dimple in your cheek, drilling the finger into the cheek.
Enter cassata, possibly the sweetest thing you can eat here. Cassata is THE dessert of Sicily, more particularly Palermo. This is where it's from and this is where you will see more dolce buono finger pointing than anywhere.
I really, really like this dessert. It is layers of cake, sweetened ricotta, marzipan, chopped dried fruit and flecks of chocolate, topped with a frost like coating of icing. You getting the picture?

Roscoe and Timmy doing the dolce buono grin.