Anyone who travels to Italy should be thinking about food. Pasta, pizza, fresh tomatoes, and good wine. Sicily is a bit different. For sure, there is plenty of good food to be had; it just doesn’t all fit into what we think we know about food in Italy.
The food in Sicily reflects the history. The Spanish brought tomatoes, prickly pears and corn. Arabs brought citrus, all kinds of citrus, nuts and couscous. Greeks brought olives and grapes. Add those ingredients to the Roman cuisine and you get Sicilian food.
Of course, there is pasta. In fact, some think Sicily invented dried pasta. And given that Sicily is an island, lots of the pasta comes with seafood (for the record, I’ve been to lots of islands, however, where fish has been fished out and is hardly available). Pasta with sardines is traditional. Pasta misto mare (pasta with mixed seafood) is on most menus. Pasta with mussels or clams tempted us. Pasta Trapenese, a wonderful pesto sauce of almonds, tomatoes, garlic and eggplant, available only on the west coast, wowed us. With breadcrumbs in Erice may have been the best. But most restaurants offer only a handful of Sicilian pasta dishes, heavy on the seafood. The pasta dishes Americans know, Bolognese or traditional pesto, are rare.
Squid came grilled or fried and octopus was often offered as a salad. Couscous with fish reflects the Arab influence on Sicily. And like many of the fish dishes was dominated by the canned sardines or anchovy flavor that doesn’t appeal to every palate. Appetizers or antipasti also lean heavily on fish.
Insalata mista was a staple for us, often the only fresh vegetables we saw on the menu. Usually local lettuce & arugula, cherry tomatoes and corn. Yes, corn. Sicilians apparently put corn kernels in their green salads. And sometimes add mozzarella and/canned tuna. The other vegetable dish we saw on almost every menu was caponata, a mix of sautéed eggplant, tomatoes, zucchini, garlic and olive oil. It ranged from outstanding to very good, and was usually offered as an antipasto, more rarely with meat..
We’re not big into sweets, but generally enjoyed the couple we tried. Heavy on the use pistachios or almonds and lighter on the sugar suited us just fine. And, of course, gelato. Pistachio gelato has a rather unappetizing color, but the taste is divine. Cannoli still on our list to try, but only with riccotta.
As for wines, Etna red wines were the best. We drank the Trapenese simply because we were there. Stick with Etna wines.
Sicily seems to offer fewer farmers’ or peasant markets than we saw in Tuscany, Umbria or Provence. Instead, particularly in the northeast, small trucks sell farm fresh produce. What we saw there surpassed in variety anything we saw in the restaurants. A pale green cauliflower, not romanesco, but shaped like our traditional cauliflower. Several kinds of green beans, including romano. And several kinds of summer squash. But none of these made it into the menus.
Pomegranates are big, particularly in western Sicily. A symbol of fertility and bounty, many small towns had stands set up to squeeze you a fresh glass of juice, sometimes mixed with oranges. That, too, is on our list to try.
BTW, do not miss the arincini, the deep fried rice cakes, often in a cone shape. We met a woman in Rome going through passport control who told us the best arincini are in Taormina. So following her advice we tried them there. And in Cefalu. And in Trapani. Basically they fall into two categories, great and good. Fresher is better. Beware of the places that have them sitting out on display and then heat them up for you in a microwave. They’re just good. We learned to prefer the meat variety – a stuffing of beef, tomatoes and cheese. The other option is ham and cheese which seemed bland. One was often enough for a light lunch.
Espresso! Espresso. Don’t know how the Italians do it, but without a doubt the best coffee we’ve had anywhere. From road side gas stations to uptown restaurants, coffee rocks.
When it come to food, perhaps the best advice is a sign we saw in Marsala:
Chasing the Good Life 