Edible Sicily - part two

Although the (fairly indistinct) tan on my face is starting to fade after our trip ended two weeks ago my appreciation of the food we ate in Sicily just continues to grow. 


Traveling around the island in Winter and looking at the markets shows just how much respect Sicilian cooks have for dried vegetables, fruits, nuts, herbs, legumes and fish. They show up on market stalls and in shops, proudly displayed, and trade is brisk. From wind-dried sardines to sundried tomatoes, bunches of mountain herbs, heaps of beans and pulses, candied fruits, piles of Bronte pistachios, seasoning blends of herbs and garlic or onion, spices and dried fruit. For me it's wonderful to see how obviously dried foods fit in to this cuisine. British cooks and food manufacturers by contrast prefer to disguise their presence if they use them at all. Do you agree?


One of Sicily's most famous dishes relies on two dried ingredients; pine nuts and currants. Pasta con le Sarde is an aniseedy, sweet and fishy sauce for spaghetti or bucatini. It blends those pine nuts and raisins together with Sicilians' much-loved wild fennel (finocchio selvatico) sardines, anchovies, a little saffron and onion. This sauce may be an acquired taste but I fell in love with its distinctive flavour when I first visited Palermo almost 25 years ago and struggled home with tin after tin of the mixture in my luggage. For me part of its distinction is the way in which it naturally blends fresh with dried ingredients. Of course they're no ordinary ingredients. The pine nuts must be the long, ivory, waxy kind and the currants can't be ordinary currants. Instead Sicilians demand uve passolini; tiny, intensely sweet raisins found, as far as I can see, only in Sicily. Naturally I've brought some home to cook with in the hope that I can somehow recreate that wonderful flavour that is the essence of Sicily's diverse culinary heritage embracing Arab, Spanish and Italian and using ingredients of the land - fresh and dried.


There are many recipes for Pasta con le Sarde on the internet - browse and choose and you'll find many that recommend slightly different ingredients and suggest substitutes for those that are hard to find.


Last but not least the dish is usually finished off with toasted breadcrumbs; either a substitute for or an alternative to the ubiquitous grated Parmesan. It was Sicilians' use of breadcrumbs to add texture to cooked pasta that inspired Nicoise and Toscanino in Gustosecco's Garni range.


Next time: Pasta sauce with almonds, pizza with breadcrumbs, dried tuna roe, arancini, delicious antipasti in an unlikely setting. 


Spellings: having been a copy editor for many years I know the difference between a typo(graphical error) and a mistake. Apologies: the Ceres Stone at Enna mentioned in my last blog is of course the Rocca di Cerere. If I've made any mistakes with my Italian in this blog - let me know!