Sicily: wine and food itinerary Vol.1
What To Eat in Sicily
Sicily has an enviable gastronomic complexity, with dishes that change from province to province. Is not that difficult to left this region with 5 kilos more, you are going to eat divinely there. When you will get off the ferry boat you will feel like invaded by the scent of the “arancine” cooking, the first dish that you can not miss! Many of these dishes don’t go beyond the boundaries of a little village, so can be tried only on-the-spot. With this article we want to suggest you a series of plates that the island has in store for you; a sort of map in different steps for an ideal culinary tour of Sicily. Hope it can be useful, so try to follow it and bon appetit!
What To Eat in Trapani
The first step of our culinary travel takes place in Trapani, on the north-west coast of Sicily. In trapanese cooking stand out many red tuna dishes, one of the most catched fish in the area, along with groupers, mullets etc. Among the pasta first courses we have to mention the busiata, homemade macaroni shaped with the buso, a traditional sicilian tool, used to knitting. This plate is dressed with fresh tomato sauce, fried zucchini and aubergines, or fish. But the most representative dish is without a doubt the couscous, an ancient middle-east recipe of semolina cooked by steaming, that shows the close ties between Sicily and North-Africa. We have to remember the couscous festival of San Vito lo Capo and Marsala (famous for the dessert wine).
What To Eat in Agrigento
This province perfectly represents Sicily styles contamination. The whole island gastronomy reflects the populations that in past inhabited it during centuries: greeks, spanish, berber people and so on. All this populations left a deep mark in the cooking and it is even more marked in Agrigento. Here there is a clear difference between the coastal villages and the internal ones, where traditions were better preserved, in fact we can find dishes that date back to prehistory. One of the cultivations at the base of many plates are fava beans, with which they use to prepare the macco, a dish that dates back to ancient Romans, a legumes cream with chards and olive oil. In Montevago council you can find pasta with fava beans and ricotta, while in Castrofilippo there is the pitaggiu, a stew made of fava beans, peas and artichokes. All poor plates, but good and nourishing. Sea locations are plentiful of fish dishes of course. We can mention Licata’s sarde meatballs.
What To Eat in Caltanissetta
The cooking of this province is highly variegated as regards as pasta and meat dishes. Nissana chicken, is one of the most typical dishes, made with many traditional ingredients, among which grated caciocavallo. A typical sea dish instead is pasta with sarde and fuate (a flower that grows in the area). In the close village of Campofranco they use to cook the ‘mbriulate, a puff pastry filled with minced pork meat. “Of pigs nothing goes to waste” they say, indeed its fat liquefied on the burner is used to make the frittuli. Regarding sweets we have to remember the torrone nisseno that is prepared with local products as almonds, pistachio or honey. Other delicious sweets are the virciddrati, short crust pastry biscuits with dried figs, orange peel, tangerine, cinnamon and candy sweets. The meal can be concluded with the Averna bitter, the famous spirit produced in the factory of the city.
What To Eat in Enna
Enna is an up-country province, hence its cooking is based on a more agricultural-farming tradition. Among its numerous products stand out the dairy ones, like the piacentinu cheese, flavored by saffron. Typical are the baked products, like the vastedda cu sammucu, a savory focaccia bread that has its origins in Middle Ages. It is cooked with durum wheat, brewer’s yeast, water, salt, lard, eggs and milk. It is stuffed with slices of tuma (a sheep cheese at its first aging), salami and cubes of fried bacon. The whole thing is dressed with elderflower, from which derives the sicilian name of focaccia bread. Pretty nutritious, isn’t it! The extraordinary variety of sweet products makes very difficult to write a complete list, but we want to mention the sweet couscous, a variation of the trapanese dish, made with chocolate, pistachio, sugar and cinnamon.
