Made in Sicily
With a pestle and mortar, or using a blender, blend the sun-dried tomatoes with a tablespoon of olive oil until creamy.
To make the bread dressing, mix the breadcrumbs with the lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil and garlic oil. Taste, and if you like a little more sharpness, add the wine vinegar.
Cut the tomatoes into wedges, put them into a bowl, season and toss with the bread dressing and the parsley and garlic.
Bring the cooking liquor for the prawns to the boil, put in the prawns and cook for 3–4 minutes. Lift out and peel them while hot. Add them to the bowl of tomatoes, mixing well.
Spoon the tomatoes and prawns on to plates. Dress the lettuce with Giorgio’s dressing and arrange on top, and drizzle some of the sun-dried tomato dressing around each plate.
Insalata calda di polpo
Warm octopus salad
Serves 4–6
1kg octopus, fresh or frozen (and defrosted), cleaned, with tentacles sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
750g potatoes, cut into 2.5cm cubes
75g whole green and black olives in brine
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, plus a little extra for finishing
1 tablespoon chopped flat-leaf parsley, plus a little extra for finishing juice of 3 lemons
1 chilli pepper, finely chopped (optional)
1 carrot, cut into matchstick pieces
1 celery stalk, chopped
If the octopus is fresh, beat it with a meat hammer to tenderise it and rinse it very well under cold running water, with the help of a clean sponge, to remove any excess saltiness. If it has been frozen, you don’t need to do this, as freezing has the effect of tenderising it.
Bring a large pan of water to the boil and add the octopus, but don’t season it, or it will toughen up. Cover with a lid, turn down the heat and let it simmer gently for about 20–30 minutes, or until tender. Remove, drain and chop into pieces about 2.5cm long.
While the octopus is cooking, bring a pan of salted water to the boil, add the white wine vinegar, add the cubed potatoes and cook until tender, then drain.
Drain the olives and pat dry. With a sharp knife, make three or four cuts in each olive from end to end, then cut each segment away from the stone as carefully as you can.
Pour the extra virgin olive oil into a bowl. Add a good pinch of salt and pepper, the chopped parsley, the lemon juice and the chilli, if using. Mix well, then add the octopus and potatoes.
Finally add the olives, carrot and celery and toss everything together. Finish with a little drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and some more chopped parsley.
Calamari fritti
Fried squid
One day when I was in the kitchen of my friend Vittorio’s restaurant in Porto Palo, he said, ‘Do some calamari fritti for me,’ so I dutifully sliced up the squid, dusted it in flour and put it in the fryer, got some kitchen paper ready in a container, and when the calamari was golden I lifted it out on to the paper to drain off the excess oil, as we always do if we fry anything in Locanda. Vittorio looked at me as if I had landed from another planet:
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m drying them, so the people don’t eat so much oil.’
‘This is not a Michelin-starred restaurant,’ he said. ‘People like oil. That’s why they eat fried fish.’
And then he throws Trapani sea salt, which is a little moist and a bit grey, over the top, literally throws it – fingers into the pot and bang – so you can see the grains. But his food never tastes over-salted, because the quality of the salt is so high; it really makes all the difference to a calamari fritti.
Serves 4
about 400g plain flour
500g calamari, cleaned and cut into rings or strips
vegetable oil for deep-frying
sea salt
finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
Have the flour ready in a shallow plate. Dip the calamari rings into the flour and shake off the excess. Heat the oil in a deep pan, making sure it comes no higher than a third of the way up the pan. It should be 180°C. If you don’t have a thermometer, put in a few breadcrumbs, and if they sizzle straight away the oil is ready. Fry the calamari until golden, and drain, season with salt and scatter with chopped parsley.
Fritto misto alla piazzese
Mixed fried vegetables, with anchovies or sardines
Sicilians love fritto misto, so much so that in the summer people set up stalls or park vans or three-wheelers with gas burners and big pots on the back, and deep-fry vegetables or fish for you there and then.
Serves 4
4 baby artichokes
juice of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon salt
1 small cauliflower, cut into florets
500g cardoons, tender heart only
1 apple, peeled and cored
vegetable oil for deep-frying
500g fresh anchovies or small sardines, cleaned
For the pastella:
250g plain flour
150ml water
1 large egg, beaten
10g fresh yeast
Peel the tough outer leaves from the artichokes, stopping when you reach the tender leaves, then cut in quarters vertically. With large artichokes, you need to cut out the hairy choke, but with baby ones, the choke will not have developed properly, so there is not much to remove. Put them into a bowl of water with a little lemon juice squeezed into it, to keep them from discolouring, until you are ready to use them. Drain, and dry.
Bring a pan of water to the boil and add the salt. Put in the cauliflower and cook for a couple of minutes, until just tender, then lift out and drain. Put the cardoons into the same water and cook for about 7–8 minutes, until they too are just tender, but still retain some bite. Drain and keep to one side.
Combine the flour, water, egg and yeast to make a pastella (batter) with a fluid consistency. Slice the apple, and cut the cardoons into strips. Heat several inches of oil in a high-sided pan (make sure it comes no higher than a third of the way up the pan) to 180°C. If you don’t have a thermometer, put in a few breadcrumbs, and if they sizzle the oil is ready.
Immerse the artichokes in the pastella and deep-fry until golden. Lift out and drain on kitchen paper. Repeat with the cardoons, cauliflower and apple, then the anchovies or sardine fillets, and arrange everything together on a warm serving plate.
Polpettine di tonno o pesce spada
Tuna or swordfish balls
As well as putting these out as part of an antipasti, you can also add the tomato sauce (Salsa di pomodoro) and serve them with pasta.
Serves 4
olive oil
400g yellow fin tuna, bonito or swordfish, cut into cubes
50g pine nuts
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon dried oregano
a handful of flat-leaf parsley, chopped
200g breadcrumbs from stale bread
50g pecorino cheese, grated
2 eggs
zest and juice of 1 lemon
a little vegetable oil, to oil the tray
Heat a good couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a large frying pan and add the fish and pine nuts. Season lightly and sauté for a minute or so, until the fish is coloured on all sides and the pine nuts are golden.
Remove from the heat and transfer to a bowl. Leave to cool for 5 minutes, then add the oregano, parsley, breadcrumbs, pecorino, eggs, and the lemon zest and juice. Mix everything together well, then moisten your hands with water and form the mixture into smooth balls, slightly bigger than a golf ball. If the mixture is very sticky, add a few more breadcrumbs.
Lightly oil a baking tray with vegetable oil, lay the fish balls on top, then put into the fridge for an hour to rest and firm up.
Heat a little more olive oil in a clean frying pan. Add the fish balls and fry in batches, shaking the pan to move them around, until they are golden brown all over.
Chiocciole a picchi pacchi
Snails in tomato and chilli sauce
When we go to Castelvetrano in the spring and early summer, we usually see the old guys who sell land snails in the square outside the walls of the old city. The snails come out after the rain, and are best around May, when there is a chance of eating green grass that hasn’t yet been burnt in the heat. Because of the association with rain, there is a belief that if there is an abundance of snails in the spring it will be a good year for crops.
If it has been very wet, the old people will go out and if they are lucky they might collect up to ten kilos of snails, some to cook themselves, and the rest to put into boxes and sell to anyone who wants to buy them. Even if families no longer need to gather and eat snails to survive, they are still a big thing in Sicily, and sometimes you can choose between snails that have just been gathered, and those that have been collected a couple of days earlier and have already been purged for you. Snails always have to be purged, or purified, before cooking, in order to remove any dirt, grit or chemicals that get into their system from the leaves they eat.
In Italian we call snails chioccole or lumache, but in Sicily they are sometimes known as munachedde (after the sisters in a closed convent, who never come out!). The Sicilians also distinguish four different types of snail, and each of them has a string of different names in dialect. Ciocco or vaddareddi are the small, light brown ones. The white ones that have a brown line running around the shells are babbaluci, and these are the ones that are used in this recipe – the smaller ones are often known as picchi pacchi, which is a kind of sweet, kind of rude kids’ expression for ‘little bottoms’. The third type are dark brown, found on the branches of trees, and because the snails always seem to be closed inside the shell they are mainly called ntuppateddi, which means ‘corked’. The fourth category are the wine snails. These are the biggest, with browny-green shells with brown circles on them, and they live near vines. These ones are known throughout Sicily, so they have even more names, but the main ones are barbaniu, crastuni or muntuni.
Traditionally snails would be purged, then blanched in boiling water, then put into a fresh pan of boiling water and simmered for an hour. Then they would be drained and eaten either with zogghiu, a light sauce of garlic, mint, lemon juice and olive oil (zogghiu), or alternatively just with olive oil, parsley and garlic; or olive oil with lemon juice or vinegar, seasoned with sea salt, freshly ground black pepper and a little oregano.
The whole Sicilian pleasure seems to come from sucking the snails from the shells, and licking the greasiness from the shell. I remember when some English people were sitting in Vittorio’s restaurant, delicately trying to eat with toothpicks and forks. Ever the showman, he went over and said, ‘no, you don’t do it like that’. He picked up a snail, cracked a little hole with his teeth on the other side of the snail from the opening, so that the air would come through, then sucked the snail straight out. He was so proud of his trick and everybody loved it. But I did see him behind the restaurant afterwards spitting out bits of shell!
This recipe is originally from Palermo, where snails are the traditional street food served on the feast day of St Rosalia, the patron saint of the city.
Serves 4
a little flour, wheat or oats
900g small edible land snails (Helix aspersa)
4 ripe plum tomatoes
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
a pinch of dried chilli flakes (optional)
2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley or basil
If the snails have not already been purified, put them into a large basket with a net over the top that will let them breathe, but stop them escaping. Put some flour, wheat or oats into the basket. The snails eat this, and if you leave them for 24–36 hours, anything from the ground they have been eating will pass through their systems and they will excrete all the impurities. Wash them carefully, then put them into a pan, cover them with cold water and bring to the boil. Once they have boiled, take the pan off the heat and drain the snails in a colander.
Put the tomatoes into a pan of boiling water for 10 seconds, then drain them under cold water and you should be able to peel them easily. Cut them in half, scoop out the seeds with a teaspoon, and chop the flesh.
Heat the olive oil in a pan and cook the onion gently until soft but not coloured. Add the snails, still in their shells, and stir them around a little, then add the tomatoes, salt, black pepper, chilli flakes if using, and parsley or basil. Stir carefully, cover with a lid and cook for 30 minutes.
Arancini Rice balls
Northern Italians pride themselves on producing the rice that feeds Italy; however, rice was actually introduced to Europe through the Arabs in Sicily and Spain. There were paddy fields around Sambuca and Sciacca, where the river Verdura gave good swampy conditions, until the Spanish transferred the major production to northern Italy where there was more water and the perfect habitat.
The paddy fields are not there any more, and there is very little rice in Sicilian cooking. Risotto, the staple of northern Italy, with its technique of making a base of onions, toasting the rice, adding wine, stirring in the stock ladleful by ladleful, then beating in cheese and butter, doesn’t really figure at all, perhaps because rice cooked in this way is more of a warming food against the colder weather in the north. The only traditional kind of risotto you are likely to see in Sicily is a seafood one (Risotto alla marinara). However, Sicilians love arancini: balls of rice, made golden with saffron, moulded around a filling of fish or meat and peas, and deep-fried. The name, which means ‘little oranges’, comes from their shape and golden colour, and they have that sturdiness and self-contained look of an orange that conceals its beauty inside.
There is an idea that arancini reflect the Arab influence, in that this is the way they would have eaten, taking some rice with their hands, and using it to scoop up some meat or fish, but I can also imagine that as time went on the arancino fulfilled the same function as the Cornish pasty: it was a meal inside a casing, one that was easy to transport with you when you went to work in the fields or on the fishing boats, and it was easy to eat too … so these arancini would have been quite big. However, if you are making them at home, especially as an antipasto, you don’t want to spoil everybody’s dinner, so it is best to make little ones.
As always all over the island you will find variations in the filling. Mostly you would just use whatever you had, such as chopped leftover roast meat and vegetables, but traditionally in Catania they like to use ragù, with peas and a little cheese – my favourite. In Enna, arancini might be filled with chicken livers in a white wine and tomato sauce, and in Ragusa they mix some tomato sauce into the rice, and then put cheese and peas inside – these are known as arancini rossi.
In my region of Italy, Lombardy, we have adopted arancini, but we make them with leftover saffron risotto, whereas the Sicilian way is to boil the rice in water with saffron added. It is just a different way of arriving at a similar result. When you make a risotto, you are constantly moving the grains of rice around the pan and by doing this you scratch the surface and help to release the surface starch, known as amylopectin, which makes the rice creamy and can sometimes change the shape of the grains. The way the Sicilians do it, the starch stays inside a bit more, and the rice retains its ‘soul’, its inner shape, but by boiling it in the right quantity of stock or water it will absorb all the liquid as it cools down gently, and by the time it is completely cold it will be very sticky – it is a similar idea to Thai sticky rice, made with jasmine rice.
The ‘due zie’, the two aunties in the Planeta family (our friends at the wine and olive oil estate), who are in charge of the cooking for big events, and are really accomplished, very knowledgeable and academic cooks, insist that it takes two days to make good arancini. You must cook the rice and the meat one day, and the rice must cool down naturally and rest for at least twelve hours so that it becomes glutinous.
One time when I was at Planeta I asked one of the aunties: ‘What is the right ratio of water to rice?’ She took down the big pan that is always used for arancini and, pointing at it, she said, ‘This much rice, and this much water.’ ‘But have you never tried to weigh it, so you know how much water you need?’ ‘No, why would I?’ she asked. ‘This is the only pan we ever use.’ What is more, sometimes they cook for 600 people when they are entertaining at Planeta, and if they are making arancini, do they use lots of pots? No, the same one, about twenty-five times!
Note: The Sicilian way is to dip the arancini into pastella (batter) before dusting them with breadcrumbs, which gives them a really crunchy outside once they are deep-fried. I know a kilo of breadcrumbs for coating the arancini seems a lot, and you won’t use them all, but you really need a big mound of them in order to roll the arancini in them and get them properly encrusted.
Arancini al sapore di mare
Seafood rice balls
Makes about 10
It’s best to cook the rice the day before you want to use it – once it has cooled, keep it in the fridge.
1.6 litres fish stock or water
500g arborio rice
5g salt
a pinch of good-quality saffron threads (about 15)
60g pecorino cheese, grated
about 1kg fine breadcrumbs
vegetable oil for deep-frying
For the filling:
5 plum tomatoes
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
½ medium onion, finely chopped
225g mixture of small pieces of white fish (swordfish, if you can find it, otherwise cod or haddock), pieces of cleaned squid or cuttlefish, and small prawns (or chopped larger ones)
120ml dry white wine
For the pastella:
350g plain flour
1 egg
Bring the stock or water to the boil in a pan, add the rice, salt and saffron, bring back to the boil and cook very slowly for at least 15 minutes, until the rice is tender and the liquid has been absorbed. Remove from the heat, leave to rest for a minute, then quickly beat in the pecorino. Set aside to cool completely.
Prepare the filling: put the tomatoes into a pan of boiling water for 10 seconds, then drain them under cold water and you should be able to peel them easily. Cut them in half, scoop out the seeds with a teaspoon, and chop the flesh.
Heat the olive oil in a large pan and cook the garlic and onion gently, until softened but not coloured. Add the seafood – the pieces of fish first, then the squid and lastly the prawns. Stir until the prawns change colour. Pour in the white wine and bubble up to let the alcohol evaporate, then add the tomatoes and cook for about 5 minutes. The mixture should be soft but not soupy. If it is a bit too liquid, cook for a little longer, to reduce and thicken it. Remove from the heat, then crush the fish lightly with a fork. Leave to cool.
To make the pastella, beat the flour, egg and water in a bowl. Have ready the breadcrumbs in a separate shallow bowl. Wet your hands to stop the rice from sticking, then take a tangerine-sized ball of rice mixture and press your thumb in the centre to make a hollow. Spoon in a little of the seafood filling, then close the rice around it and form it into a ball. Dip each one into the pastella and then into the breadcrumbs, making sure they are completely covered in crumbs and pressing them lightly, to make sure the crumbs cling.
Heat around 8cm of vegetable oil in a large pan, making sure the oil doesn’t come any higher than a third of the way up the pan. The oil must be hot, but not smoking, before you add the arancini (if you have a thermometer it should be around 170°C, otherwise test it by putting in a few breadcrumbs – if they sizzle gently the oil is ready). Working in batches (being careful not to crowd the pan or you will lower the temperature of the oil), fry the arancini for about 4–5 minutes, moving them around until they are golden all over. Drain well on kitchen paper and serve hot.
Arancini di carne
Rice balls with meat and peas
If you have any kind of leftover minced beef or pork in sauce, you can use it as a filling, rather than making it from scratch as in the recipe below.
Makes about 10
1.6 litres chicken stock or water
500g arborio rice
5g salt
a pinch of good-quality saffron threads (about 15)
60g pecorino cheese, grated
about 1kg fine breadcrumbs
vegetable oil for deep-frying
For the filling:
olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 carrot, finely chopped
1 celery stalk, finely chopped
400g minced beef (not extra lean) or pork
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
120ml red wine
1 x 400g tin of chopped tomatoes
50g cooked peas
100g tuma (Sicilian unsalted sheep’s milk cheese) or mozzarella, cut into small cubes
For the pastella:
350g plain flour
1 egg
Bring the stock or water to the boil in a pan, add the rice, salt and saffron, bring back to the boil and cook for about 15 minutes, until the rice is tender and the liquid has been absorbed. Remove from the heat, leave to rest for a minute, then quickly beat in the pecorino. Set aside to cool completely.
While the rice cools, prepare the filling. Heat a little olive oil in a pan, add the onion, carrot and celery and cook gently until soft, but not coloured. Add the meat, season with salt and pepper, cook for few minutes, then add the wine and bubble up to evaporate the alcohol. Add the tinned tomatoes and cook gently for 1 hour. You need the sauce around the meat to be quite thick. Set aside to cool down, then stir in the peas and the cubes of cheese.
To make the pastella, beat the flour, egg and water in a bowl. Have ready the breadcrumbs, in a separate, shallow bowl. Wet your hands to stop the rice from sticking, then take a tangerine-sized ball of rice mixture and press your thumb in the centre to make a hollow. Spoon in a little of the meat filling, then close the rice around it and form it into a ball. Dip each one into the pastella and then into the breadcrumbs, making sure they are completely covered in crumbs and pressing them lightly, to make sure the crumbs cling.
Heat around 8cm of vegetable oil in a large pan, making sure the oil doesn’t come any higher than a third of the way up the pan. The oil must be hot, but not smoking, before you add the arancini (if you have a thermometer it should be around 170°C, otherwise test it by putting in a few breadcrumbs – if they sizzle gently the oil is ready). Working in batches (being careful not to crowd the pan or you will lower the temperature of the oil), fry the arancini for about 4–5 minutes, moving them around until they are golden all over. Drain well on kitchen paper and serve hot.
Pane Bread
‘Bread is life’
You cannot overestimate the importance of bread to Sicilian life; bread is life, it is right at the heart of society. There is an old proverb, ‘chi mi da il pane mi é padre’, which means, ‘who gives me bread is my father’. Even if the money that your father makes is blood money, he is still your father because he gives you bread. And bread is the most important thing. When I was staying near Mount Etna, where bread was so revered and so essential to the old diet of the mountain people, I heard a story about a brigand in the time of the Bourbons who was put in prison for contrabanding wheat, but there was a woman who set him free – this woman was described as very beautiful, but ‘a little overproved’, so even in describing the beauty of a woman a little past her youth, they use the terminology of bread.