SI C I LY
S SAVOURING SICILY
Nicola Edmonds explores the Mediterranean’s largest island and finds Sicily’s food is much like its people: colourful, often dramatic and unforgettable.
Photography by Nicola Edmonds
icily is just a pebble’s throw from the southern tip of Calabria (the ‘toe’ of Italy’s distinctive boot shape), but this is a very different realm from the rest of Italy – it pulses with a gravitational pull all its own. Amongst gracious city palazzi there are bullet holes in doorways and bomb-blasted alleyways – reminders of a turbulent past. Baroque towns of golden splendour give way to sunparched volcanic landscapes strewn with stone walls and ancient fortresses. To the west, brooding headlands rise up from the glassy waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Sicilian food is equally intriguing and bound intrinsically to the region’s history.
Blessed by the absence of Barbarian invaders – who had their hands full further north – the cuisine of the island was able to develop uninterrupted for more than 2500 years, arguably the oldest continuous cuisine in Europe. By the 5th century BC, the city of Syracuse in Sicily’s southeast was considered the gastronomic capital of the classical world. It was also home to the world’s first school for chefs. The first cookbook was written here by local cook and author, Mithaecus, who gave it the title The Lost Art of Cooking and included simple advice for dealing with fish: discard the head, slice, rinse and add cheese – a controversial accompaniment at the time. Invading Arabs arrived 400 years later with their own highly sophisticated cuisine. They introduced crops such as rice, aubergine and citrus, as well as cane sugar, which created a passion for sweet dishes that remain a favourite among today’s Sicilians. During the 19th century, Sicily’s fashionable elite imported chefs from France to prepare food for them at home. A new class of chef, the monzù (from the French ‘monsieur’) was born. The food for the rich was refined, while the poor simply had to make do with whatever was at hand.
OPPOSITE PAGE:
Lunchtime al fresco in the baroque Sicilian town of Ragusa. THIS PAGE: Taking
a dip in the azure waters of Macari Beach in San Vito Lo Capo; mounds of fresh silver sardines are a common sight in Sicily’s markets.
DISH
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