Angelo Boemi EATING in SICILY origins, culture and genius
Octaves by Salvatore Camilleri Drawings by Pino Correnti
Boemi
Introduction
Everywhere in the world, human beings need to eat daily to sustain themselves; in doing this, they observe specific traditions which have been handed down from father to son. Moreover, while men generally transmit practices related to the finding and securing of food, women usually deliver information and rites concerning the preparation of dishes. Such traditions are evidently affected by historical events, economic or political circumstances, and “ethnic” or “physical” reasons, such as pacific immigrations or the flight from wars and natural disasters. Human migration implies the acquisition of new habits, and new ways and customs about eating and living, even very different from those that originally marked each people; the new culinary knowledge is assimilated and included into the prior culture by indigenous people as much as by newcomers. 5
The ordinary act of preparing food undergoes several variations, due to the introduction of new techniques and ingredients which replace or, more often, combine, with the former ones, thus making richer the gastronomic culture of each people. The western three-meal model, thou common, is a fairly recent convention. It is not at all a fixed rule; in fact, like everything else, eating is a highly varied matter. Not only in the remote past, and in recent times as well, food was prepared and consumed once a day; it tended to be eaten early, before the dark came, because cooking and tidying up is much easier in daylight. Although the simplest physical needs impose eating at least once a day, for some communities, unfortunately, food preparation is not a habit but a rather exceptional event, even in the Third Millennium. So eating, primary need par excellence, indispensable to life has, much more than other primary needs, such as shelter and clothing, blended and assimilated influences, habits, and experiences peculiar to different human groups. Food is perhaps the very key to the presence of the human race on the Earth. It is a most changeable element, undergone to many transformations and deeply influencing the history of groups and individuals. Food history is a very interesting subject. Since when human life was affected by 6
physical matters only, or when men and women began attempting to explain the origin of natural events, thus bringing rites in their own vital sphere, human evolution has been totally influenced by food procurement and preparation. As time went by, chemical and physical transformations were discovered; such notions were hardly conquered and jealously kept: they were transmitted to new individuals, thus adding to the parents’ practical experience the findings of their descendants. Afterwards, men and women trasferred to food the idea of possession, and the social structure that became predominant was strongly influenced by the production, conservation and defense of foodstuffs. Villages, cities, kingdoms, and empires are born, after all, from the necessity to physically defend the goods owned, thus making life possible, easier, and even wealthy.
7
Eating today In the last 150 years, at the base of Sicilian gastronomy have been the products derived from the island agricultural tradition. Some productions of excellence have emerged on other which are no less valid, but only less known. The development and evaluation of such products today is identified with the territory of origin; this has became progressively a cultural requirement that also has economic aftermaths. That’s the reason of quality products such as the Sicilian provola, the Ragusa caciocavallo, the Etna and Hyblaean Mountains honey, the Ramacca artichoke, the Bronte pistachio, the Maletto strawberry; and of well-known confections such as the torrone, which reaches levels of excellence in the territory of Piazza Armerina, or the Modica chocolate. In some cases, cuisine touches the heights of art: that’s the case of the Frutta Martorana, marzipan 33
sweets in the form of fruits and vegetables, made by the nuns of the convent of the Martorana in Palermo with almonds, honey and eggwhites, said “pasta reale” (royal pastry) because they were made for the first time to replace the fruits, that had already been collected from the trees, for the King visiting. Excellent products as oil or wine, spread throughout Sicily, which organoleptic properties are different according to species and soil, are just some peaks of unparalleled quality. Many are the typical foods that our land can boast: from salt, to fruit (think to prickly pears or sbergiu peach); from clams (the white Plaja donax and the black Messina mussels), to tuma (peppery pecorino cheese at its first stage of maturation) much used in the traditional stuffed pizza called scacciata, and salted ricotta, shining white on the pasta alla Norma. Pigs, the most prodigal, give us sajimi (lard), zuzzu (aspic dish) and sasizza (Italian sausage). Among the desserts, the delicious and richly embellished mustazzola and the simplest viscotta dâ monica (“the nun’s biscuits”, made with aniseed). The difference between the Baron’s table and the poor’s one is not extreme any longer, but it was even a few decades ago. This came with a price, as present richness and variety find explanation in the need of 34
managing, replacing, and transforming, typical of the past. The sweet-and-sour pumpkin has been both appetizer, main course, and dessert for many Sicilians; five or six olives were the only companage for entire vasteddi (huge loaves) of homemade bread. Although oily fish was plentiful and not too much expensive, the pisci d’ovu (“egg-fish�) was a common solution to replace, at least in the form, fish with a simple but tasty omelet. It is surprising, finally, how Sicily has adopted products originating in far apart countries making them, with love and acceptance, legitimate children recognized as such by the general opinion. Aubergines, for example, come from India, while tomatoes, peppers, and potatoes were imported from the Americas. Wild fennel, inimitable on pasta with sardines, is indigenous to the Canary Islands. And we could go on with examples of contamination: think of the maccu, a typical southern Italy dish prepared on the occasion of the feast of Saint Joseph. Dried and shelled broad beans are soaked and cooked with chopped onion and diced tomato. The Sicilian ragu, ideal dressing of homemade macaroni, is made by cooking for hours meatballs, sausages and farsumauru (rolled beef stuffed with mortadella) in tomato sauce. An illegitimate child of Sicilian cuisine is ice cream. In ancient times it was made of the snow of 35
Mount Etna and Peloritani mountains, crammed in large holes dug in the soil and still visible today. In 1693 the great Procopio de’ Coltelli from Palermo (whose grandfather was a native of Acitrezza near Catania) tried sweetening the sorbet of snow (an ancestor of today’s granita) using cane sugar instead of honey: he invented a mixture similar to the one we know today and had a great success in Paris, where he had founded his “Cafe De Procope”, yet existing. The variety and quality of Sicilian agricultural production has helped Sicilian cuisine to win the palates of natives, guests and visitors, and of the number of people throughout the world, who know Sicily only by reputation, thanks to its colorful and scented gastronomic specialities.
36
A Year at the Sicilian Table
Su’ addivintati logni li nuttati, lu mmernu arriva e nivichìa di paru, c’è friddu e sunnu ncutti li jilati, chiovi ed ognunu curri a lu riparu. Ma macari ci su’ belli jurnati, cu suli spirlucenti e celu chiaru ca ’n-Sicilia ricordanu la stati… Jinnaru menzu duci e menzu amaru. The nights have become long, it is winter now, and snowing a lot, it is cold and freezing, raining often and everyone hurries to his own shelter. But we have sunny days as well, when bright sun and clear sky remind us of our Sicilian summer... January, bitter but fairy.
One assumes, after New Year’s Eve, that the meals one is going to eat are lighter to get over the nosh-ups, but these are just good intentions, promptly disregarded. In Italy, January means midwinter, that is eating more fat to defend oneself from cold. Our hearty vegetables soup, that gives the illusion of being on a diet, generally contemplates the addition of pasta, short or broken, carefully chosen depending on the size and the type of legume in the soup (be they beans, chick peas, or lentils). Children seem to prefer having them sieved and seasoned with some fragrant olive oil. Pasta – spaghetti, noodles, and homemade maccheroncini obtained by twisting the dough around something thin, as knitting needles – holds an absolutely prominent position: apart from pasta alla Norma in Catania and with sardines in Palermo, it is 41
dressed with sauces made with meat, vegetables and fish, of different colors and scents for fancy matching, (sometimes, daring). What was once the prerogative on Sunday, the “pasta al forno” (baked pasta), today is a tasty and various dish to be prepared almost every day. Fish – masculini (anchovies) most of all – is preferably fried, waiting for more sunny days and a fast barbecue: in the winter, grill and embers are reserved to a few dishes, especially of meat: sausages for example (when it is not cooked in tomato sauce), is often cooked on the fucularu or fucuni (BBQ), followed by roasted artichokes prepared with garlic, parsley, olive oil and abundant black pepper in abundance and half-plunged in the cinders. This way of cooking artichokes (cacocciuli arrustuti) is known with slight variations throughout southern Italy, but in Sicily is especially popular in Catania. Artichokes (Cynara cardunculus L.), a variety of cardoons, are native of the Mediterranean, perhaps just of Sicily. Italy is the main world producer thanks to the fields in the Plains of Catania and Gela. The most well-known and appreciated Sicilian cultivars are the so called “Violetto di Sicilia” also known as “catanese” or “niscemese” (violet, without thorns), and the “Spinoso di Menfi” (violet, with thorns) re42
cently regarded amongst Slow Food Presidia. There are many ways in which artichokes can be cooked: put in batter and fried, mashed in rissoles, or as ingredient in omelettes; they can be cooked to make a sauces for pasta, or pan-fried with garlic and parsley and added to a simple risotto; they can be stewed and stuffed into a meat roast, browned in a pan with other vegetables or, as said, cooked in the embers. As for fruit, queen of winter and emblem of Sicily, here we have orange. In the area of Ribera, Agrigento, the only D.O.P. orange in the world is produced (D.O.P. being the acronym of Protected Designation of Origin, an European certification of quality food products in Italy). The Ribera oranges are “blond” ones, known as “vanilla oranges” for their high sweetness; they are characterized, for the most part, by the presence of the “navel” in the lower part. Tarocco and sanguinella oranges, typical of the provinces of Catania and Siracusa, are “blood” varieties: their flesh is red or dappled and the taste is distinct and sweet. They have gained the status of I.G.P. (acronym of Protected Geographical Status, another EU certification).
43
SUMMARY Introduction.............................................................Pg. 5 Some history: The beginning.............................................................“ 11 Sicanians and Siculians...............................................“ 15 Ancient Greece and Rome .........................................“ 19 Sicilian cuisine in the Middle Ages............................“ 25 The Modern Age ........................................................“ 29 Eating today ...............................................................“ 33 A year at the Sicilian table: January .......................................................................“ 41 February .....................................................................“ 47 March .........................................................................“ 53 April ...........................................................................“ 59 May ............................................................................“ 65 June.............................................................................“ 71 July..............................................................................“ 77 August.........................................................................“ 83 September...................................................................“ 89 October........................................................................“ 95 November....................................................................“ 101 December....................................................................“ 107 Drinking......................................................................“ 113 Salt..............................................................................“ 123 127
July 2013