PASTA WITH CAULIFLOWER, PINE NUTS AND RAISINS
CANNELLONI
PASTA RIBBONS WITH PORK RAGÙ
PASTA WITH PRESERVED TUNA
ROOTED IN A
SICILY
This island’s cuisine is a fusion of food traditions, with an imprint of family on every dish. BY REBECCA TREON
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HOLIDAY 2020 | LIVE NATURALLY
lthough Sicilian food shares many things in common with mainland Italian food, it has Greek, Spanish, French and Arab influences as well. “The culinary influences come from the sea, the mountains, the history of the land, religious tradition, and from the evolution of both aristocratic and peasant cuisines over the centuries,” says Melissa Muller, author of Sicily: The Cookbook, Recipes Rooted in Traditions (Rizzoli, 2017). Muller, who ran several successful Sicilian
restaurants in New York City and spent summers on Sicily in her grandmother’s hometown, has now relocated permanently to Sicily, where she runs culinary tours and cooking classes. “Sicilian recipes are multilayered and are combinations of traditions of each time period,” she describes. “The tastes are bold and rich, and full of unique flavors, such as the typical agrodolce [Sicilian sweet and sour], that are only present in Sicilian cuisine.” Recipes are accented with exotic Mediterranean touches: pesto punched up with capers, gelato made with pistachios, pasta laced with saffron and numerous
SARA REMINGTON
Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean and has been a global crossroads of international trade routes for millennia. At times it has been controlled by Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Vandal, Ostrogoth, Byzantine Greek, Islamic, Norman, Aragonese and Spanish governments, each of whom left a mark on Sicilian cuisine.