Sicilian sweet and sour
“Sicilian cooking embraces contrast, discord, counterpoint, counterpunching, variance and the absence of delicacy … the dishes are as bold and baroque as any flamboyant building.” Matthew Fort
This post comes from my Italian lesson again. I can't quite remember now but somehow or other there came up a description of a dish, which included raisins and which most people did not fancy. Which is interesting in itself. Anyway there was a brief discussion during which I mentioned that the Sicilians, I thought, used them a lot. And we decided it was the Arabic influence there. Anyway I told myself to look into it and I have.
Indeed it is the Arabic influence. Sicily has been occupied by just about everyone over time, (13 conquests) including the Arabs, from North Africa. They occupied Sicily from 827 -1061and fundamentally changed the culture of the country. Today that influence lingers on in the food. They introduced a huge number of new foods including citrus fruits and also dried fruits, as well as beginning the development of dried pasta. Couscous was also introduced, and possibly goats and sheep but I'm not so sure about that. Northern African food often has a sweet and sour touch, and this is quite evident in traditional Sicilian food. This post is just a pointer to some of those dishes - the seed and sour ones, that feature raisins and their ilk (and I'm totally ignoring the huge number of desserts for which Sicily is justly famous).
Of course there were other influences - the Normans were also long-time rulers there, and its position in the middle of the Mediterranean meant that it absorbed culture of every kind from all the nationalities that passed by.
Every dish that I am about to mention most probably deserves a post of its own. Every one is infinitely variable - as I have noted before 'authentic' is just not something you can define when it comes to food. Only two of my Italian cookbooks are actually divided by region - Claudia Roden's The Food of Italy, and my Italy the Beautiful Cookbook, and that one just has a brief bit of information about Sicily in general. The book itself does not divide the recipes by region, although it does note where each one comes from.
So here is a brief list of those dishes that seemed to crop up all the time, and that include raisins or other types of dried fruit
Caponata
The picture is of Felicity Cloake's Perfect Caponata. And if you want to know all about caponata then go no further than her article. It has to be said that lots of recipes I found did not include the raisins or the pine nuts - which seem to be the constant companion of raisins in Sicilian food, but hers does - though she prefers almonds to pine nuts. I did see somewhere else that the raisins were listed as one of the essential ingredients though. Essentially caponata is a stewed eggplant dish that includes tomatoes. You can eat it hot or cold. I guess it's the equivalent of the French ratatouille, but is very different.
Pasta con le Sarde (sardines)
As you can see from these three pictures it doesn't always look the same. Do you keep the sardines whole or cut them in chunks? Lots of tomatoes? None? If you feed 'pasta con le sarde' into Google then you will find lots of recipes from impressive sources - some of which, of course, will not include the raisins. And there are vegetarian variations on this too. Ottolenghi's version looks pretty sublime and features saffron - another Sicily constant from the Arabs and capers - ditto.
But a very common variation includes cauliflower - with the delicious magazine version shown at left perhaps a very typical one.
Le sarde beccafico (stuffed sardines)
Sardines as you can see are a big thing in Sicily - well all of the Mediterranean really, and I don't really know how the sardine fisheries are holding up these days. Not that I am helping as I have them on toast for lunch on a regular basis and I prefer the Mediterranean ones if I can find them.
Anyway the sardines are always stuffed with a mix that includes raisins or currants, and pine nuts, but judging from the pictures they don't always seem to be stuffed in quite the same way. One version looks more like a sandwich to me. Obviously it's also not quite as famous a dish as there were fewer versions available to see. Still plenty of them though. Again if you feed in the name of the dish you will find them. The recipe by Emiko Davies looked the most tempting to me - it's the one on the right below. Mind you this is a dish I don't see myself attempting. Stuffing little fish, that you may have to gut yourself beforehand is a fiddly and tedious process. Stuffing anything is really. And I include turkey in that. It takes more time to make the stuffing than prepare the fish or the meat or the vegetable.
Involtini de pesce sarda (stuffed swordfish)
The Sicilians in general eat a lot of fish and this dish is, in some ways similar to the stuffed sardines. It's just that it's a very different fish I guess. The version on the right is from a website called Our Italian Table and looked pretty nice and a lot less fuss than the sardines.
Couscous salad
Now couscous is very definitely a North African dish, but apparently the west coast of Sicily is famous for its couscous dishes. They don't all include raisins, and I have to say I could not find a fish recipe that did, but the two above are for a side salad and they look pretty yummy. The one on the left from Italian notes included dried apricots too, and the SBS vegan version on the right is more substantial as it includes chick peas.
Coniglio all'agrodolce (sweet and sour rabbit)
This was the first recipe that I found - in Claudia Roden's book - which has actually been made into a Google book so you can find the recipe online. But there are lots of others of course, including the one from SBS which is shown above. And how gorgeous does it look? You can also use chicken instead of course, but like the author of the SBS recipe I think I would prefer chicken.
I've never been to Sicily and now am unlikely to of course. And to tell the truth I have never been that attracted to the idea, although others who have been there tell me I must go. The food is obviously gorgeous and different from that of the rest of Italy - I don't think the Arabs actually conquered Italy, although I could be wrong. But Sicily however beautiful is also the home of the mafia, the vendetta and a massive gulf between the rich and poor. And the poor are very poor, with young males still leaving in their droves because there is no work for them. I imagine they are investing massively in tourism these days, and I gather they are also investing in more vegetable farming. A sweet an sour place with sweet and sour food.
“Sicily is an island lying outside time, where past events endure in an external present, a beach on which the tides of successive civilizations have heaped in disorder their assorted treasure.” Vincent Cronin, The Golden Honeycomb
