Gela no longer has a central market, but a dispersed one that plays out all over the city, on corners and in laybys, out of front doors, windows and garages. A man and his son occupy the pitch at the end of our street, setting up their makeshift car-boot-and-crate stall on a corner that offers at least some shade from the often blinding sun. They sell one, maybe two things, depending on the season. But for us they are the “tomato two”, as during our long summer visits their corner is pure red, awash with round, deeply fluted tomatoes they call nostrani, which means “ours”.
So used are we to the red that it came as a shock when last week, arriving two weeks earlier than usual, we found the end of our street black and yellow. Yellow being the lozenge-shaped potatoes that really are waxy, and black the early aubergines, each one like a small, shining truncheon. As usual, the father was sitting on a upended crate, the son leaning against the car running his tongue over the tracks of braces on his teeth – which must be ready to come off by now.
“Tomatoes?” I ask.
“Dopo la Madonna,” the father replied. It took me a minute to adjust. Then I did, back to a city and family where so much life is patterned around saint and patron saint days, the most significant of which is Madonna delle Grazie, or Maria Santissima – several days of celebration and veneration that culminates in a procession on 2 July. The tomatoes will come afterwards, he was saying.
We didn’t buy aubergines from the tomato two, walking instead to Rosa’s, whose garage-shop is the place I trust most. Her husband farms land almost exactly where my partner Vincenzo’s grandfather farmed, and in much the same way – what we might call biodynamic, but what he simply thought of as good farming. At Rosa’s we find a sea of green: lettuces, chard and great floppy bunches of tenerumi, which are the shoots, moleskin leaves and tendrils of a wonderfully phallic Sicilian courgette called cucuzza. No tomatoes though, the first having been besieged by uncharacteristic June heat and insects. They will be better after the Madonna, Rosa tells me. She does though, have aubergines, deep purple and shaped like small, slightly squashed pumpkins, which she also refers to as nostrani. “What will you make?” she asks.
Now, I have known Rosa and shopped in her garage with its blue and white striped curtain, blue water tank and freckled floor for three years. I have bought aubergines and talked about caponata many times. However, it seems we will again. Advice about how to prepare and cook certain things is spontaneous with Rosa, and it is all refreshingly unsentimental.
And she is not the only one; spontaneous advice is something I meet again and again in Sicily, and nowhere more than with caponata, the island’s quintessential aubergine and celery stew, whose sweet and savoury, boisterous and concentrated flavours seem the very essence of a Sicilian market. Rosa then goes upstairs to get me some of her caponata. She brings it down in a foil container protected by clingfilm and padded with a great wad of kitchen towel, so I can carry it home.
On the way, though, I stop for granita, which only really makes sense when it is hot, the crystals icy enough to make you catch your breath and cool you from inside. Our local bar has four flavours: a deep-burgundy and lip-staining gelsi (mulberry); an almond that is so luscious and so like cream you wonder if it contains some (it doesn’t); strong coffee; and limone – which is thankfully as sharp as it is sweet. I have lemon. If it was breakfast time, you might do as the Sicilians do and have a sweet, yeasted brioche too, the sort with a top knot that begs to be torn off and eaten with alternating spoonfuls of icy almond granita.
My lips numb, I can walk again, along the narrow grid of back streets, some of which are ruinous, others well-loved, bleached and strung with washing, all of which still have an almost labyrinthine ability to baffle me. I am always relieved to reach Via Buscemi, because I think of the actor Steve, and know I am nearly home.
Caponata
Every morning of the week except Sunday, Vincenzo’s grandmother Sara would wake at five o’clock to put the coffee on. By the time it was ready, her husband, Orazio, would have woken, washed and dressed, as he always did, in black trousers.
He would drink his coffee and eat a piece of bread before picking up a package and going downstairs. Until the early 1960s, the basem*nt was a stable for his mule, Giuseppina, and later – once his eldest son, Totò, learned to drive – a home for the tractor that would take them both to the land they rented on the edge of the province. They would arrive in the field at about 6am and work until 10am, at which point he would open the package, which contained bread, tuna and caponata, that Sara had made, and a litre of his own wine.
Like her grandmother and mother before her, Sara made great quantities of caponata, the quintessential Sicilian stew. It’s a dish that makes absolute sense in Sicily: the abundance of aubergines, the tomato sauce families put asidepreserve each year, plentiful celery, olives and capers, the sweet-and-sour sugar and vinegar – about flavour as well as conserving. Like any dish made to a family recipe shaped by necessity, there are as many versions as cooks.
I make caponata often, both in Rome and London; it translates well anywhere. Like so much traditional Italian cooking, the key is choosing the right ingredients and to practice: tasting and trying again and again, adjusting the quantities to your taste, until you have a version y`ou really like. It’s important to fry the aubergines in plenty of hot oil (I use extra-virgin olive oil); the cubes should dance around the pan until golden. The finished dish needs to rest for at least an hour – ideally three. It’s even better the next day, and keeps well in the fridge for up to four. Traditionally, it would have been kept for much longer, and thus contained far more vinegar; it was bottled and put aside for the winter, more like a relish or pickle.
In my modern version, inspired by Sara and my friend (and food writer) Fabrizia Lanza, the ingredients are distinct, but united by a sauce rich with, but not overwhelmed by, tomato. I particularly like caponata as part of a picnic-style lunch with tuna, bread and wine. It has an affinity with roast meat, particularly lamb. It’s also good stirred into pasta or as the filling for a savoury tart.
Serves 6
Extra-virgin olive oil, or whatever oil you prefer to fry in
1kg aubergines, cut into 1-2cm cubes
4 celery stalks
75g capers, ideally packed in salt
150g olives (I like black Gaeta olives)
1 large red onion, thickly sliced
200ml tomato sauce or passata
75g raisins (optional)
50g pine nuts (optional)
50g sugar
50–75ml red wine vinegar
A small handful of basil leaves (optional)
1 Heat 5cm of oil in a small, deep, heavy-based frying pan until hot. Fry the diced aubergine in batches – do not crowd the pan – until golden brown, then drain on kitchen paper, sprinkle with salt and set aside. The oil can be strained and used to fry again.
2 Trim the celery stalks of any tough ends or strings and cut in half. Add the celery to a pan of boiling water and cook for about 5 minutes until tender, but still with bite. Drain. Once cool enough to handle, chop the celery into 1cm chunks and set aside. If the capers are salted, soak them for 2 minutes, then drain. If brined or in vinegar, drain and rinse. Pit the olives.
3 In a large, deep frying pan, warm 4 tbsp oil over a medium-low heat, add the onion and cook for 1-2 minutes. Add the tomato sauce and cook for another 2 minutes, then stir in the capers, olives, raisins and pine nuts.
4 Make a well in the middle of the pan and add the sugar and vinegar to it, allowing the sugar to dissolve in the heat. Stir and cook for 1-2 minutes, tasting to see if it needs more sugar or vinegar. Turn off the heat, add the aubergines and the celery and rip the basil into the pan. Stir gently, so the aubergine remains in distinct pieces. Leave to sit for at least 2 hours, or better still several, stirring gently once or twice.
Pasta with aubergine
In Catania, this is called pasta alla Norma in honour of the operatic masterpiece by Catania’s favourite son, Vincenzo Bellini. Others call it spaghetti alla coppola (spaghetti with a hat on). My Vincenzo calls it pasta con le melanzane, so I do too. It is a favourite (along with all the other favourites), especially in the summer, when it is made with vegetables that are full of sun. It can be a winter dish too, with tinned tomatoes and an unseasonal aubergine.
It was a good moment last year when I made this with a jar of tomatoes I had bottled the previous summer. I was aware – a bit embarrassed even – of my meagre output compared with nonna Sara’s extraordinary bottlings. Vincenzo, however, is moved by my efforts. This is his history, taken from one kitchen to another, a single taste that calls up the memory of his grandmother and Gela. Tradition demands spaghetti for Norma, but we often use thick tubes of ridged rigatoni.
Serves 4
2 large aubergines
Olive or groundnut oil, for frying
1kg fresh tomatoes or 500g passata
2 garlic cloves
A small handful of basil
1 tsp sugar (if you need it)
500g pasta, such as spaghetti, rigatoni, casarecce, mezze maniche or penne
200g salted ricotta, grated
Salt
1 Peel strips of skin from the aubergines so they are striped, then cut them into 5mm slices. If you’re going to salt them, do it now; otherwise just dry them with a clean tea towel. Heat about 5cm oil in a frying pan and fry the slices, turning them halfway, until they are golden brown on both sides, then drain on kitchen paper. Set aside, near the stove so they keep warmish.
2 Meanwhile, bring a large pan of water to the boil. If using fresh tomatoes, peel by plunging them into boiling water for 1 minute, then lift them out with a slotted spoon and cool under cold water, at which point the skins should slip away. Keep the hot water for cooking the pasta later. Roughly chop the tomatoes, removing the seeds if you wish (I don’t).
3 Crush the garlic cloves with the back of a knife, so they split, but remain whole. Warm some more oil in a frying pan and add the garlic. Once fragrant and lightly golden, remove from the pan, add the tomatoes (or passata) and cook until they collapse into a sauce. You can pass the tomatoes through a food mill back into the pan or, if you’re happy with the texture, simply tear in most of the basil, add the sugar if you think the sauce is too sharp, and a good pinch of salt.
4 Bring the pan of tomato water back to the boil, add salt, stir well and add the pasta. Cook it until al dente, then drain. Mix the pasta with the sauce and a handful of ricotta. Divide between bowls, top with several slices of aubergine, plus a little more salted ricotta and a couple more basil leaves. Pass around the remaining aubergine slices and cheese, so that people can help themselves.
Carmela’s beef rolls in tomato sauce
Behold – as you slice it – how the shining yellow of each egg yolk appears, set in its halo of white, flanked by the nebulae of lard, surrounded by the little green planets rotating across a milky way of caciocavallo… The Sicilian writer and poet Pino Correnti wrote about falsomagro in his book Il Libro D’Oro Della Cucina e Dei Vini di Sicilia. He considered it the undisputed king of Sicilian meat dishes: a large piece of beef wrapped around a filling of vegetables, chopped meat, cheese and hard-boiled egg, then simmered in tomato sauce. The name translates as “false lean”, possibly because its appearance from the outside promises something lean, but when you cut it open it is clear this is not the case: instead, you discover an almost baroque filling fit for a feast day, religious or otherwise.
Most families have their own version. Nowadays, rather than making one large falsomagro, my mother-in-law, Carmela, makes individual ones that are often called braciole. These are really just involtini, or meat rolls, with an egg inside. They don’t have quite the same “behold” moment as a large single roll, although the yolks still shine. Carmela, and I have made these together on many occasions, most recently in my kitchen, which proved itself to be wholly inadequate. No long tongs or kitchen roll, a knife that needs sharpening, no meat basher or oven glove, my salt too coarse, my pepper grinder too uptight.Realising that my hovering was as annoying as my grinder, I sat at the table and made notes. I noted the ingredients, of course, even though many of them were in qb – quanto basta – which means “however much is enough”, or use your common sense.
Carmela has no idea how amusing she is, especially when she is cross and using a rolling pin instead of a meat mallet. She is very specific about how to bash out the meat and snip away any muscles or fibres that might make it curl, about the arrangement of the carrot and celery and about the tying of the roll, for which she uses cotton that she keeps in her handbag – a tardis of useful things. Like so many stews and braises, braciole are better after a few hours’ rest – better still overnight. Just reheat the rolls gently. In Sicily, the rolls are served alone, with bread for the sauce. I love them with buttery mashed potatoes.
Serves 6
6 beef slices, such as fillet, topside or chuck (about 10 x 15cm and 6mm thick)
6 hard-boiled eggs, peeled
6 thin slices of prosciutto or mortadella
1 red onion, sliced into thin batons
1 celery stalk, sliced into thin batons
1 large carrot, sliced into thin batons
5 tbsp olive oil
1 small white onion, chopped
150ml red wine
700ml smooth tomato sauce or passata
1 Prepare the beef slices, if necessary pounding (or rather gently extending or stretching) them until thin, then nick the edges of each slice to stop them curling in the pan.
2 Make sure your reel of cotton is close to hand and, ideally, enlist the help of another person for the tying. Spread the beef slices out on a clean work surface. Lay the prosciutto on top of the beef, making sure you leave a margin around the edge, and place an egg in the bottom half of the slice. Arrange bundles of carrot, celery and onion around the egg, tucking them in close. Bring the bottom of the slice up and over the egg, then roll it, tucking the sides in as best you can, until you have a neat, plum-like cylinder.
3 Secure the roll with a double piece of cotton as if you were tying a parcel; lengthways first, then the sides. Repeat, so the ends are well sealed.
4 Warm the olive oil in a large, deep frying or saute pan, then fry the white onion until soft and translucent.
5 Add the beef rolls and fry, turning as required, until they are brown. Add the wine and let it sizzle, then add the tomato sauce and a pinch of salt. Reduce the heat and let the rolls simmer, half-covered, turning them every now and then, until they are cooked through, which usually takes about 1 hour. Let them sit for a while, then reheat gently before serving.
Cherries in syrup with bay leaves
“There is always a chance it will explode,” said my friend Gabriella, her almost-smile suggesting that the possibility of cherries, wine and sugar seeping between the terracotta tiles and dripping through her roof was a risk she was prepared to take. We were in Abruzzo, sitting at her table after a very long, very good dinner at their agriturismo (farmhouse inn) in the hills near Loreto Aprutino. Before us was a small glass of inky-purple liquid: Gabriella’s sour cherry liqueur, made by steeping sour cherries in Montepulciano d’Abruzzo and sugar in a large, teardrop-shaped glass bottle on the roof for 40 days and 40 nights during high summer. As we tried not to slide under the table, I wondered how Gabriella put the bottles on the roof, how she got the steeped cherries out of the bottle and what she did with them, and could I have another glass? One answer came the following morning, when we were served the steeped cherries, wrinkled, dark and boozy, on ricotta.
Nine months later, in Rome, the first of the cherries, some crimson, others deep purple, have splattered the market with colour and we have been eating them greedily by the kilogram, spitting stones into our fists and grabbing another handful in a sort of cherry race. Then, at the small farmers’ market in the old slaughterhouse, I found the first of the sour cherries, paler than usual, sweet as much as sour, reminiscent of almonds and almost the wrong side of perfect ripeness.
Back home, I remembered Gabriella’s roof and followed my instincts. I put them in a pan, along with a few sweet cherries, bay leaves, red wine and some sugar, then let it all bubble into a fragrant, syrupy, shirt-staining stew.
Serves 4
400g pitted cherries, ideally a mixture of sweet and sour
300ml red wine
130g sugar
3 bay leaves
1 Put everything in the pan at the same time, bring slowly to the boil, then reduce to a simmer for about 12 minutes, or until the cherries are completely tender. If the sauce is not thick enough, lift the cherries out and set them aside, reduce until it is the thickness you like, then return the cherries to the pan.
2 Serve with a partner, such as a slice of fresh ricotta; the combination with soft, creamy cheese, the dark red and the white, is stunning. Eat them also with mascarpone, Greek yoghurt or next to a plain cake. They will keep for a week in a sealed jar in the fridge.
Lemon pudding
This is my friend Cinzia’s recipe for sbriciolata alla crema di limoni, the literal translation of which is: “crumbs around a lemon cream”, which really is the best description since none of the other possibilities are quite right. The lemon cream is typically southern Italian, and therefore thickened with a little flour, which gives it an old-fashioned and homely feel, especially if you are used to more elegant, butter-rich lemon curds.
Makes 8–12 slices
4 unwaxed lemons
500ml whole milk
6 egg yolks
150g caster sugar
35g plain flour
35g potato starch or cornflour
For the crumbs
300g plain flour
120g caster sugar
8–10g baking powder
A pinch of salt
100g cold butter, plus extra for greasing
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4. Grease a 28cm shallow cake or tart tin and dust with flour. Pare the zest of 3 lemons in strips. Squeeze the juice and keep for later. Warm the milk and zest in a small pan. Leave to sit for 1 hour, then lift out the zest.
2 Meanwhile, make the crumbs. In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Dice the butter and add it along with the egg, then use cold fingertips to rub the butter and egg into the flour until the mixture resembles fat breadcrumbs. Sprinkle half the crumbs over the base of the prepared tin to make a nice, even layer.
3 Bake on the bottom shelf for a few minutes, or until the crumbs are firm and pale gold. Set aside to cool.
4 In another large bowl, whisk the yolks and sugar to a thick cream, then sift over the flour and starch. Mix until smooth. Whisk in about 150ml lemon juice.
5 Warm the milk a little, then, whisking constantly, add it to the egg and flour mixture in a thin stream. Return the mixture to the pan and cook over a low heat, whisking, for about 15 minutes, until it coats the back of the spoon. Grate the zest of the final lemon into the cream.
6 Spread the cream over the crumb base, leaving a 1cm border. Cover with the rest of the crumbs. Bake for 25 minutes, or until the crumbs are firm and golden. It must be absolutely cool if you want to turn it out. Even then you must do so carefully by inverting it on to a plate, then on to another plate so the golden crust faces up. Serve at room temperature or chilled.
Sweet yeasted buns
A tuppo is a bun, which, as in English, is also the word you use to describe hair when coiled up on your head. So you could describe Sicily’s brioche col tuppo, or sweet yeasted breakfast bread, as a bun with a bun. The buns with buns in our local bar are almost fantastically terrible pale things, suffocating in a plastic wrapper and tasting faintly of banana – yet another reminder of how dislocated industrialisation and convenience is sweeping Sicily.
Gagliano, the owner, apologises for his brioche; once there was a bakery in Gela that made them fresh, but now he buys them from a factory. As if to make up for the buns, the almond granita he makes and serves with the brioche is some of the best I have ever tasted: a pale, icy cream with bits of whole almond served in a wide glass on a saucer. It is a ritual so fine that I am happy to forget the brioche, almost.
In our regular bar in Catania, the brioche are comely and burnished. I wouldn’t think of making brioche if I lived nearby. But I don’t; instead I dream of eating them, which prompts me to make them from time to time. Brioche need an eight-hour rise, the thought of which makes my heart sink a little, but – like jumping in the water or going for a brisk walk – that doubt disappears as soon as you begin, and is replaced by the smell of yeast, then the dough. I tend to make brioche in winter – so, not for serving with granita, but with milky coffee and a real newspaper.
Makes 10–12
100ml milk
5g dried yeast or 15g fresh yeast
500g plain flour or soft wheat OO-flour
140g sugar
5 eggs, lightly beaten
150g soft lard or butter, at room temperature
Sugar, for glazing
Salt
1 Warm the milk until tepid, then dissolve the yeast in it. Sift the flour into a bowl, stir in the sugar and a pinch of salt. Add the milk-yeast mixture and 4 of the eggs. Mix. Add the lard or butter and work until the mixture is consistent. Knead firmly for 5 minutes, pausing, if you like, to lift and then throw the dough on to the work surface, which apparently helps with elasticity. Put the dough in a bowl, cover it with clingfilm and chill in the fridge for 8–10 hours.
2 Line a baking tray with parchment. Split the dough into 10 equal parts. Pull off a small piece of each part and roll it into a smaller ball. Shape the larger piece into a round, slightly flat ball and make an indent in the top. Press the small ball into the indent. Transfer the brioche to the baking tray. Repeat with the remaining dough.
3 Whisk the last egg with a little sugar, then brush on to the brioche. Leave to rise in a warm, non-draughty spot for another 75 minutes, by which time they should have doubled in size.
4 Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4. Before baking, brush the brioche with more of the egg-sugar mixture. Bake for 15–20 minutes, or until the brioche are golden.
Ricotta, honey and pistachios
This is an excellent breakfast, and without the toast it makes a lovely pudding too, possibly with fruit – pears and figs go particularly well.
Serves 1
Ricotta
A little milk
Slices of toast
Pistachios, lightly crushed
Honey
1 Whip the ricotta with a little milk to make it softer and more spoonable.
2 Spoon it on to a slice of toast, sprinkle with pistachios and drizzle with honey.
Lemon granita
Writing this in February has me wondering who on earth is going to bother with the palaver of it all, the grating and sliding the plastic box in and out of the freezer?
We will, of course, once the heat has us moving slowly around the kitchen, our bare feet enjoying the cold tiles and faces welcoming the wave of cold air that comes from the open freezer door. One summer in Umbria, my brother Ben and I spent entire afternoons between the pool and the freezer, waiting for the moment when the granita was perfect, the glassy sweet-sharp crystals like snow. Lemon granita is best served in a little glass.
When I make sugar syrup I usually make a large quantity in a 2:1 ratio of sugar to water. Warm the water in a pan over a low heat – it must not boil or even get to a lively simmer – add half the sugar and stir until it dissolves, then add the other half and stir until there are no granules left. I usually make more than I need and keep the rest in a bottle in the fridge. A dash of vodka helps it last longer.
Serves 4–6
4 unwaxed lemons
80ml sugar syrup (see above)
1 To make the granita, grate the zest from 2 lemons, then squeeze the juice from all four. Measure the juice and top up to 900ml with water, then add the sugar syrup and zest.
2 If you have an ice-cream machine, pour the mixture in and follow the instructions for granita. Otherwise, tip the mixture into a shallow, plastic freezerproof container and slide into the freezer. After 1 hour, as the mixture is starting to freeze, stir it with a fork and slide it back in. Repeat this every 30 minutes, stirring and scraping the mixture down from the sides with a fork as it starts to get harder. The idea is to end up with an icy slush, which takes about 4 hours. If the granita freezes over completely, you can blitz it into glassy crystals in a food processor.
- Rachel Roddy’s new book, Two Kitchens: Family Recipes from Sicily and Rome, is published by Headline Home
