CEDRO, CEDRO....

Cedro, cedro,

on the stall

is the biggest

of them all!

Well, this was the biggest cedro [citron] I had seen for a long time and it was on display outside a greengrocer's on this opening day of our annual ChocoModica festival.  I love cedri, both to eat, with seasalt and to cook with, so the sight of this one really cheered me up.

The chocolate festival, as you might expect, features lots of chocolate stalls, selling bars of all flavours, from banana to chilli to more traditional types and there were all kinds of chocolate products on sale, including liqueurs, cosmetics and even chocolate arancini [rice balls].  During the four days of the festival, there are also exhibitions, talks, tastings and demonstrations though I must say access is a problem to some of them and this needs attention.

You can watch chocolate sculptors and makers at work, though a finished chocolate sculpture would have been nice to see alongside those in production.  Perhaps that is to come.  I was fascinated by the fruit carving below but the highlight for me remains the cedro!

ChocoModica runs until 11th December and the full programme is here.

CHICKEN IN PROSECCO WITH CEDRO

Leafing through an old recipe book the other day, I was reminded of Moroccan preserved lemons. I used to be able to get these in the UK and, indeed, had sometimes made them myself. However, being short of both time and patience, I started to think that, in this land of citrus fruit, there ought to be a quicker way of approaching the taste. Then I started to wonder if I could get anywhere near it if I used cedri [citrons], which Sicilians like to just slice and eat with coarse seasalt. I decided to try and the result was better than I'd expected!  Here's what I did:

Chicken in Prosecco with Grilled Cedro

First, slice one cedro into rounds as you would a lemon. [Sicilian cedri are enormous!]  Halve the slices, put them on a plate and sprinkle with coarse seasalt and about ten grinds of cinnamon from a cinnamon mill.  Leave them for at least an hour, then heat 2 tablesp olive oil on a ridged griddle pan and grill the slices over medium heat for about 1 min. each side.  Stand well back when you put the slices on the griddle and when you turn them.  Put them onto kitchen paper on a plate.

Marinate 6 - 8 chicken drumsticks [skin on ] for about 2 hours in 200 ml Prosecco, 2 tblesp olive oil, 1 tablesp honey, 0.5 tablesp Chinese plum sauce [which I have recently been able to get my hands on again and have missed], about 0.5 tablesp dried herbes de Provence, some sprigs of fresh thyme [lemon thyme if you can get it] and some freshly ground seasalt and black pepper. 

Heat the oven to 180°C.

Lift the chicken out of the marinade with a slotted spoon but keep the marinade. Lay the chicken on a rack in a foil-lined roasting dish and cook for about 45 mins., checking now and then.  When you think it is nearly ready, put the marinade into a pan with the cedro slices and about 20 preserved green olives, drained but still with the accompanying small vegetables that have been used to flavour them. [In Sicily olives are always preserved with slices of sweet Sicilian carrot.]   Heat until the marinade comes to the boil.

Place the chicken on a platter , surround with the cedro slices and olives [removed from the marianade with a slotted spoon] and garnish with some chopped, flat-leaved parsley and some more sprigs of thyme.  Put the marinade in a sauce boat for those who would like some.

Serve with garlic-roasted small potatoes or these from Nigella .

Serves 4.

Buon appetito