Sicily Scene

Well, here we are in September, a melancholy month in some ways - not quite the end of summer but not quite autumn either. At least here in ...

It is supposed to have been a Sicilian who said, "A l mattino le arance sono d'oro, a pranzo d'argento e alla sera di piombo....

Summer has officially ended and, whilst I am not a beachy person and rejoice in everything at last being open again, I will be sorry to see...

My friend Carol King, who has recently returned to Sicily, and I decided to celebrate Ferragosto a day late this year, so I kind of cooked...

This week I wanted to do something different with the pizzaiola steak cut and I decided that a pistacchio and mushroom sauce would do the t...

Suddenly, in Sicily, the roadside lorries teem with different kinds of fruit, most of which you can purchase by the crate. The little Et...

I nearly called this "Pizza not-what-it-seems" as all the Italians I have shown the photo to are convinced it's topped w...

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...

In a few days' time, this blog will be ten years old,  Between now and the "blog birthday", and with your indulgence, I am go...

Just back [details coming later in the week] and I find that Sicily can still surprise me, for I had never seen these on sale before: ...

Real: Not real but a pretty display in the greengrocer's:

" Una busta, cinque euro; un assaggio, non si paga! - Five euros a bag and you don't have to pay for a taste! " calls the...

I started making chicken with cotognata [quince paste] some years ago and this autumn, I decided the dish needed an update.  After some th...

It is no secret to regular readers that my favourite summer fruits are the little pesche tabacchiere or "snuffbox" peaches but t...

Leafing through some British magazines yesterday, I realised it had been years since I'd made a summer pudding , so I decided to put th...

The cherry harvest continues and the other day, I decided I wanted to experiment by using some with a tagliata [the sirloin cut]. I know al...

I'm always cheered by the arrival of these mini-pears and I'm rather sentimentally attached to them because they were the main Sici...

It was putting out the Sicilian crib, with both Sicilian and more traditional figurines, which I was given some years ago that did it: ...

I don't hear the term "fusion cooking" much any more but then, I do live in a place where most people just do not want to try...

It's that time of year again and here come the prickly pears!  In their honour, I invented this recipe at the weekend. The idea of ...