I'd studied several recipes for polpette al limone and was particularly inspired by one which suggested cooking the polpette on a bed of lemon leaves but we can't get lemons with the leaves on at this time of year. [They will come in the autumn.] I wondered for a few days what I could use instead and then it came to me - I would try with fresh bay leaves! In my version, I added pinenuts, for the very good reason that I like them in polpette and I used pane grattugiato [very fine dried breadcrumbs which we can buy in packets in Italy] instead of soaking bread in milk and then squeezing it.
OK, you need:
500 gr minced veal
2 large Sicilian or unwaxed lemons
1 clove garlic, crushed
c. 1 tablesp. chopped parsley
a few cut rosemary needles
about 8 leaves fresh sage, chopped
125 gr pane grattugiato
80 gr grated Ragusano or Parmesan cheese
olive oil
seasalt and black pepper
50 gr pinenuts
2 eggs, beaten
about 20 fresh bay leaves
In a bowl, mix the veal, grated zest of the lemons, garlic, herbs, cheese, pane grattugiato, pinenuts, seasoning and eggs with a fork. Roll the mixture into balls with your hands - it should make about 14.
Lightly oil a small roasting tin and place the bay leaves in the base. Put the polpette on top of the bay leaves, then cut the zested lemons into wedges and put these in the gaps. Drizzle some olive oil over the polpette and scatter a few rosemary sprigs over the top. Cook at 180 C for 25 minutes.
These are also pretty good cold, so would make interesting picnic food.
500 gr sirloin [in Italy just tell your butcher you want to make tagliata]
3 nectarines [not soft ones]
20 datterini or cherry tomatoes
drained contents of a jar of grilled peppers, cut into smaller pieces if necessary
c. 500 gr rocket leaves, torn if they're large
12 mint leaves
Dressing
4 tablesp olive oil
1 tablesp red wine vinegar
1 tablesp runny honey
pinch chilli flakes
seasalt and a twist or two of black pepper
Start preparing this a few hours before you want to serve it:
First, oil the steak lightly on both sides and place on a heated, ridged griddle pan. Cook for about 3 mins each side. Put the steak on a board and, when it has cooled a little, cut it diagonally into strips.
Let the griddle pan cool and wash it.
Next, slice the nectarines [not too thinly], drizzle the slices with olive oil [about 1 tablesp] and cook them on the griddle pan too, until stripes start to form on them. Lift the slices off the pan and leave to cool.
Halve the tomatoes.
When the steak and nectarines have cooled, put them in a large serving bowl with the tomatoes, rocket, peppers and mint leaves. Leave it all in the fridge for at least a couple of hours.
Make the dressing by mixing all the ingredients together with a fork in a small bowl and leave that in the fridge too.
When you are ready to serve, whisk the dressing again with a fork, pour it over the salad, toss it and there you are!
Thank you, Nigella, for the magnificent Tagliata recipe in Nigellissima, a book about which I was, admittedly, cynical at first. I'll eat the tagliata rather than my words!
Hang on a minute, though.... It wasn't till I was looking for a link to the book that I realised that you look rather different on the cover of the Italian edition! Now I wonder why that is....
Oh, yes, Sicilians love chips although they try to pretend that patatine consumption is a British vice. Chips appear here on and prior to pizza, with arancini, as side dishes and with just about everything. People tuck into them using cocktail sticks so that everyone will think they are only having a little taste. As I've said many times before, chip calories don't count when you're out so what could be nicer than a plate of antipasti topped with some of the sinful morsels?
I then had a main course of scaloppine al limone and very good they were, too. My culinary hero, Italy's "sexy chef" Carlo Cracco, would say that the strawberry was out of place as it was not integral to the dish, but I thought it was pretty:
My companion enjoyed this fresh sausage pizza:
Some of you have already seen the gel al limone but here it is again [without chips!]
Giovanna was my first Sicilian friend and it was she who gave me my first Sicilian cooking tip, twenty years ago: "Always put a potato in the pasta water." I have never been able to establish the scientific basis for this but I have been adding that potato ever since! Giovanna is one of the most creative cooks I know and she is not afraid to mix sweet and savoury or to experiment with ideas from afar. Now I'll let you look at the feast she prepared for New Year's Day:
I loved her new idea for presenting antipasti:
There were these as well:
As I can't eat fish, I had to pass on the fried baccalà [salt cod]:
Then we sat down, first to lasagne:
I had to pass again on the shrimp and strawberry risotto but I'm sure it was delicious:
Next there was veal in a carrot and mint sauce for the non-fish eaters
and vitello tonnato for the others:
There were stuffed peppers, too:
Pineapple is popular at this time of year to refresh the palate:
Giovanna's tronco was a work of art:
There was my favourite light dessert, gel al limone:
I'd made and taken along another semifreddo di marrons glacés, as it's light and everybody seems to like it:
And what could be better than a Sicilian cassata with the champagne?
As Italy freezes and evening temperatures plunge even in Sicily, a comforting stew is called for. I hesitate to mention veal at times, but it is more popular than beef in Italy and that is that. This recipe is based on the Spezzatino di vitello con verdure in Il Cucchiaio d'Argento but as usual, I've added a few of my own touches:
Heat 2 tablesp olive oil with 50 gr butter in a wide pan and soften 1 large, chopped white onion in it. Flour 1 kg cubed veal - in Italy the butchers cut it specially for spezzatino - and add the pieces to the pan. Brown them on all sides, stirring. Add the contents of a 680 gr bottle of passata or the same amount of homemade tomato sauce and season. Stir well and after five minutes or so, add 100 gr carrots cut into thin sticks. Cook for 15 mins more and then add 250 gr mixed mushrooms, 2 sliced ordinary or what I call "hairy courgettes" [zucchine verdi] - the hairy courgettes taste just the same but will give you bigger slices and, of course, you have to peel them! Cover the pan and cook for about an hour, checking and stirring occasionally. Add a little water if the stew seems too dry.
Aidone, a town of 5,176 inhabitants, lies peacefully in the hills of the Province of Enna beyond Piazza Armerina. Nearby is the Greek site of Morgantina, from which not only our "fine lady" but many other precious statues and objects have been stolen over the years. The Venere was returned under an agreement signed by the Aidone and Getty Museums in 2007 and it must be emphasised that the Getty Museum's administrators have always denied acquiring the statue illegally. It was also in 2007 that experts proved that the statue was sculpted from "Ragusa stone".
Museo Archeologico di Aidone
My friend and I expected the little town to be crowded but, despite the presence of a goddess in their midst, life seemed to be going on as usual for the citizens and we were the only people in the specially renovated Museum.
We passed through two rooms of other interesting antiquities before coming upon the Venere and in one of them a pair of smiling Acroliti, representing mother and daughter in Greek mythology, are displayed. Only their faces, hands and feet remain but a mesh frame represents their bodies, they are seated and have been tastefully dressed. These two figures were returned to the Museum from the US in 2009 and I have beside me a booklet which shows their faces as the box in which they travelled to Aidone was opened there. I am sure that, upon their homecoming, they are smiling more than usual.
In the centre of a third room stands the Venere and I must say she is breathtaking: So fluid are her robes, so majestic her pose and so calm her gaze that I have no doubt that this is a very confident goddess. The body is of the famous Ragusan limestone though the exposed flesh is of marble and the lady's hair was probably of bronze. Archaeologists have dated the statue to 420 - 410 BCE.
There are some who believe that she is not Venus but Demeter or her daughter Persephone, who both feature prominently in Greco-Sicilian myth, and there are others who believe she is Hera. But I am sure she is a voluptuous Venus from an era before Botticelli brought misery upon Western women by portraying the goddess as tall, blonde, long-legged and slim.
A reminder of our own era came as I spotted, among the ancient Greek hair ornaments, links from chains and fragments of pottery in one display case, a 100 lire coin from 1978. This was found as illegally excavated land at Morgantina was being refilled. In my opinion the Museum staff have done well to preserve it, for it is likely to be worth far more than all our euros soon!
On to lunch and, on the recommendation of the Museum staff, we repaired to the Vecchia Aidone restaurant:
The zucche must grow well in Aidone!
Would you like some grappa?
I hate ironing but I'm sure I would hate it even more if I had to use this!
There were homemade strozzapreti ["priest-strangling" pasta] with a sausage, wild fennel and tomato sauce
followed by veal stew for my companion
and rabbit braised in white wine with fennel and herbs for me:
Then there was a delicious mousse of fichi d'India [prickly pear] ....
... all of which set us up nicely for our journey through the Enna rains back to Modica. We were quiet as we travelled, thinking of "our" goddess and the tales she could tell. Bentornata, dea.
My friend Irma can always be trusted to create elegant, light new dishes from simple ingredients so it was a pleasure to have lunch with her on Friday and taste these:
For a light pasta sauce for two, brown a garlic clove in 1 tablesp olive oil, then take it out and add about 500 gr unpeeled cherry tomatoes or medium-sized, peeled and chopped vine tomatoes. Season and cook them slowly over a low heat for about 20 mins or until they cook down. Then stir in 1 tablsp Robiola or Philadelphia cheese and cook for about another five mins.
Then there were thin pieces of veal - not quite as thin as scaloppine - cooked in olive oil with rosemary and capers.
Making this dish of veal and almond polpette gave me a chance to use my truffle flavour spray and the result was, I think, more successful than the veal and almond meatballs I previously tried. The recipe uses Italian panna di cucina which has an entirely different texture from British single cream - it is much lighter. It also uses fondo di vitello but neither the butcher nor I knew what it was! Upon discussion of the recipe, we decided that it must be a fancy northern term for a chunk of veal fat so that is what he gave me. I thought this might make the sauce too fatty but it didn't and imparted a delicious flavour. In this recipe crushed fette biscottate [similar to the French toast biscuits you can get in Britain] rather than breadcrumbs, are used to thicken the polpette mixture. Those aren't pieces of black truffle decorating the polpette, by the way - they are slices of black olives! For those of you in Italy, the recipe is in the July - August 2010 edition of the Conad supermarket chain's magazine, Bene Insieme:
This carnival season I was determined to visit one of Sicily's more unusual celebrations and when I read about what the good folk of Novara di Sicilia get up to at this time of year, I knew I had to go there, so yesterday Rosa, Fulvio and I set out early and headed towards Etna.
First of all here are some views of Etna and the surrounding countryside as we drove along. The Etna snow was the lowest I've ever seen it and weather, visibility and temperature changed dramatically as we neared our destination:
Novara di Sicilia is a very small but proud town about 51 kilometres northwest of Taormina and to get there you have to come off the motorway at Giardini Naxos and follow the signs to Francavilla. Then you climb, following curvy roads through countryside that seems totally isolated - apart, that is, from the sheep and the occasional herd of goats.
Reaching Novara di Sicilia at last, we couldn't figure out where to park Fulvio's car but everyone else had parked right in the main street so we did the same. When Fulvio asked a group of passers-by if it was all right to park there, they laughed and assured us that the vigili don't work on Sundays and this must be true, as, despite the presence of numerous camera crews and the biggest influx of visitors the town gets all year, we did not see one vigile all the time we were there.
As I said, Novara di Sicilia seems a proud little town. It even has a Davide!
And it has lots of the narrowest streets I've ever seen, even in Sicily:
It was also immediately clear that the town's citizens eat well, for the display in a tiny butcher's-cum-salumeria was sumptuous. "Here we make sandwiches with roast suckling pig", said the owner and those sandwiches did look good. But I contented myself with buying a chunk of maiorchino, the local cheese, which is a kind of pecorino. Maiorchino, as you will see, had a big part to play in the day's events.
Next we went in search of a restaurant. There was one, but as you might expect on a day like this, it was fully booked, so we made enquiries in a nearby bar where the kind owner recommended an agriturismo called the Girasole. She found the number for me, I called and yes, they could accommodate three people for lunch - just! The Girasole is only about five minutes from the town by car and we sped there like homing pigeons. There were stunning views from here, too:
Reader, what a lunch we had!
There were arancini and focacce
with broccoli, potatoes and green beans:
Then there was the local speciality of maccheroni in a sauce of sausage and pork
with maiorchino to grate over it:
The main course was beautifully cooked veal and spring vegetables
and my, the bread was good!
For dessert there were these little pastries, filled with hot, sweet ricotta.
Local wine was served throughout and home-made liqueurs were offered at the end - all for €25 per head.
During lunch, I was called upon to explain to an American tourist that the owner was sorry, but as she had not booked she could not eat in the restaurant that day. The poor woman seemed to think that if she waited long enough, she would get a table. That's not how it works in Sicily, honey and it's not how it works in an agriturismo, where everyone eats the set menu and finishes their meal at the same time - between 3 and 4 pm. I do hope this lady went back into the town and got some roast suckling pig sandwiches!
At last, it was our turn to head back into the town too, for the event we had come to see was about to begin. This was the gioco del maiorchino, a contest dating back to the beginning of the seventeenth century and the reason for which is now lost in time and myth. The contest takes place over the last three days of carnival - well, at least the finals do - and it consists of the rolling of a giant maiorchino cheese down a precise route through the narrow streets. Many different teams take part and I can tell you that the game is taken very seriously. It has a lot of strictly observed rules and its own vocabulary of archaisms which are never uttered at any other time of the year.
But wait a minute -what's going on here? In the middle of the square, this gentleman is making ricotta for the evening's communal feast:
Suddenly there is a cheer, as two men carry the chosen mairchino out onto the street and begin to prepare it for the contest. First they scrape the top with knives, then prop it against the wall to dry out a little more:
After that it is taken into a narrow alleyway where the sides are rubbed against the ancient stone wall, presumably to make them smoother:
Then string is tied around the cheese and there are several trial rolls, with stewards shouting to the crowd to please mind their legs, because if the cheese veers off course, you could get a nasty bash!
At last the cheese is deemed ready and the real contest can begin.
The cheese rolls too quickly to get a good shot of it and for us, it was time to leave, as those twisty roads would have been no fun in the fast-approaching darkness. We could hear the enthusiastic shouts of the spectators for a long time as we drove away and, as the contest would last for another four hours, I'm sure everyone had a great time. We certainly did!
I'm a sort-of retired language teacher from Cardiff, Wales, UK, now trying to make a new life in Sicily. I'm not growing vines, making olive oil or restoring a palace stone by stone!
