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.

Sicilian cuccina essentials

If you were to chose a cuisine to teach someone to cook I reckon it would be Italian. It's elemental and instructive, yet non nerve wracking approach will also reinforce to the beginner that they can cook after all. Which is what you want, right? That is, for someone to cook without instruction, for the love of it, time and time again.
The place we are staying in Palermo has a great kitchen set up. All ready to go and it has a dominant piece of cooking equipment; one great, big large non stick frying pan. Almost too big for the stove top. This looked odd to me until I realised what it was used for.
Sicilians love simple pasta. Lots of fresh, seasonal ingredients. I have yet to see a bolognese sauce on any menu at any of the dozen places we have eaten. And creamy sauces are rare, too. What you get is a lot of tomato based sauces with the addition of sardines, anchovies, swordfish or tuna (they love their fish, these Sicilians and all these varieties are caught locally). It sounds odd, but currants and pine nuts feature, too. As too does eggplant or melanzanne, which is also base ingredient in caponata.
But I digress. My point is, and I do have one, that the big frying pan is used here to combine the pasta with the simple, simple sauce. The spaghetti, and it is mostly spaghetti, is cooked, drained and thrown into the large frying pan which has waiting in it some tasty bits and pieces cooked off in lots of olive oil. Too easy? So easy I had my in house beginner cook lunch in a few simple steps.

1. Gently heat lots of olive oil in the large frying pan.

2. Add seasonings to flavour the oil; garlic, chilli even anchovies.

3. Add your vegetables, meat  or fish. You don't need much. Here we used some prosciutto.

4. Cook enough spaghetti for four people. Drain well and add to the big frying pan. Top with parsley and parmesan. 

You don't have to leave home to find love

Firstly, allow me to introduce someone to you. Kersti Hanson has flow in from the big apple to join Roscoe and Timmy for a few days.
Now I was going to do a food posting but it will have to wait. Instead, I would like to say a few words about another subject that has been on our minds. Love.
This posting is for all the single ladies and all the single men out there. But if you are in a relationship, please read on. You, too, might learn something.
Roscoe, Timmy and Kersti. All tall, all thin, all a bit bloody gorgeous and all single, until we travel. But, as they say. what goes on tour. We got talking about this and came to a few conclusions.
How many of us feel that when we travel we are more likely to meet someone, hook up, fall in love etc etc? Frustrating, isn't it? And you think you can only fall in love in Rome, Paris or Tumbuktu? Wrong. You don't have to leave home to fall in love. This is what you have to do.
You wake up in your single bed. Just like any other day. But today you pick a city, any city. Imagine you are there. Pack a bag, just a little one and head out into your suburb, village or home town. You are smiling because everything looks new. You step out into the world with a joie de vive, with a seize the day spring in your step. You say hello to people like you have never met them before. And don't say hello in English. Pick a language or even better yet, make one up. The people you know will think you are fucking crazy but who cares? It's love you are after. Who needs more friends? Pretty soon you will catch someone's eye. In their mind they will be saying - wow I have to get to know that person, wow I love their style, wow I think I love them. You will have people throwing themselves at you. It will be like shooting fish in a barrel. Before the day's end you will be in love.
You may not be tall, thin or gorgeous. But who cares? Atleast you will be in love and you didn't have to leave home to find it...

Arrivederci and buon amore!

Law and Order the Palermo way

Before you read this, and to create the mood, open up another window and cut and paste this  link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS9oNBJEtNU

Roscoe and Timmy. Undercover. Disguised. Staking out. Telescopic cameras and all that. Actually, it was none of any of that.
It was more like this. Rosoce and Timmy. Fancy drinks and fine food at a restaurant on the Piazzo San Franscesco, coincidentally the very same Piazzo where the Antica Focacceria is located.
To get you up to speed, this restaurant in Palermo was the first business to publicly say a big, fat no to the maffia's extortion.  This means the owner's are now under threat, not by words but bullets.
Lucky for us, as we were dining at the place across the road and upstairs we had a great view as the undercover cops pulled up.
Check it out. The big silver sedan on the right has blacked out windows. There is a silver golf on the left with a plain cloths dude leaning on the back of the car. And see the guy, back to camera, next to the motorbikes? He is putting on his bullet proof vest...

Doing Doing!

A quiet moment with my panelle.

Back at the beach. It seems that the only place where you can get these panelle (sandwiches with deep fried fillings) is here. Restaurants in Palermo will offer all the good things inside the roll (the eggplant, the croquettes, the fried chick pea thingy which I do not know the name of) but it's the whole package I am after, cant you understand that? It's not too much to ask, is it? I am hooked on these things.
Timmy and I hit Mondello again. Timmy has eaten his double rolled, smoked organic fat free fruiche oat breakfast with high fibre fruit. I am more easily pleased. All I want for breakfast is a deep fried sandwich. I haven't eaten and I am hungry.
So I wait for my chance. Timmy hits the water. I know he will be out there for hours pursuing one of his three loves of life. Timmy's holy trinity; to be rich, to be thin and to be brown.

Now's my chance! But wait, holiday season has ended. All the little deep frying vans have packed up and gone, not to be seen for another Vangaboy summer. Damn! And then I remember (being a Mondello local) that there was one guy in an alley behind the main strip of shops. I can smell the oil as I approach. He is there! I fork over the 1 euro (about $1.50) and I watch as the croquettes and chick pea things (can I please find out what that is called?) sizzle in the hot oil, cooking to a golden crispness. He puts the golden goodies onto a buttered roll. He hands it to me. But that is all I can share with you. You will have to excuse me now, I need a private moment with my panelle. Ciao x

four ingredients

Timmy doesn't cook, or does he? A couple of days ago he chopped a few tomatoes, gently softened them in a pan with some good olive oil and garlic and tossed the whole lot with spaghetti and basil.
Before he realised it, he was cooking and in no time some great food was on the table. So I got thinking.
I have probably written over three thousand recipes in my time. Whatever, this isn't about me. But I have picked up a few things on the way and learning more as we speak.
When it comes to cooking food at home, how rarely do we keep it simple? I have to remind myself of this. Do we get anxious when we feel like we won't have enough food and that more is better? Do we think we are not being clever enough? Has something gone wrong if we have time to actually relax?
Three thousand recipes later, and I am starting to get it. We have heard it before. The key is simplicity, on every level of the process, from buying, to preparing to cooking the food. Many cuisines and cooking styles have simple components. Stir frying is often lauded as the thing any bachelor can cook. Wrong. You need fairly decent knife skills, a large wok (those silly little ones just don't cut it), a really hot gas
flame and a pantry of ingredients. Japanese? Life is too short to make your own sushi. Thai and Indian? Requires

lots of ingredients and time. Roasts and barbies?  Good enough but they are seasonal and barbies are not great for apartment living.  Fancy French? Get over yourself. Provincial French? Now we're getting somewhere.
Being here in Italy with a non-cook cook and I have decided this is it. This is the place and this is the food for beginners.
It's seasonal and elemental. It's fresh and approachable.
We found some white peaches at the market. Really, not like any other peach I had seen. Flat, disc shaped, more like a persimmon. So fragrant and so tasty. Next, the buffalo mozzarella. It is made from buffalo milk and if cheese were white velvet, this would be it.
We chopped the peaches. Nothing fancy like. We arranged the peaches on a plate. We simply tear the mozarella with our hands and randomly strew it over the peaches. We scatter over the basil leaves and finish it all off with a generous amount of fine, fruity extra virgin.
Four ingredients later and here was something any beginner can make.

I see dead people part 2 or The plot thickens

But wait, there's more. We hooked up with a local today (seriously, a very well connected local on a Da Vinci Code scale) and he told us more about the Capuchin catacombs.

So, class, if you have been following the blog you will know the influence of the Greeks, Romans and Arabs on this place. It's theorised that the embalming techniques of the Egyptians were used in preserving the bodies in the catacombs. 

But did you know that surviving family members had access to the catacombs to visit dead relatives? Fact. The body was handed over (not to be taken from the catacomb) and you could do whatever you liked to your dead loved one. Lipstick could be applied to dead lips, fingers run through dead hair, rouge put on dead cheeks, shoes polished, belts buckled and flies zipped. 

It just got weird. 

I see dead people

I have been making up for lost time. I am forty four years old, never seen a dead body but today I saw eight thousand.
Seems appropriate that underneath a city obsessed with death lies, well, more death. More and more and more death.

Several hundred years ago the Capuchin monks 'dicovered' that their catacombs were not only a good place to bury the dead, but an excellent place to preserve them.
This place is out of the way, if not slightly dodgy to get to taking you though some of the least desirable parts of Palermo.
Nothing really prepares you for what lies beneath. It's all business as usual and then there you are, in one of the many halls, bodies lining the walls pinned up like butterflies.
There are five hundred years of bodies here so it could get confusing. But to make life easy those monks put great deal of thought into death. They categorised the bodies, making it easier to find, say, a professor, a baby girl, a baby boy, a lady, a not-so lady, a family or, my own personal favourite, a virgin.

The bodies are in varying forms of decay. Some have skin intact, others hair (head, nose and ear) and one three hundred year old dude was sporting a mo. Nice.