QUIZ - COULD YOU LIVE IN SICILY?

I've been doing so many daft but enjoyable facebook quizzes lately that I've been inspired to create my own! Click below to do the quiz.

http://www.quibblo.com/quiz/8W9kLLh/COULD-YOU-LIVE-IN-SICILY

ROSA'S POLPETTE

What a nice surprise I had at lunchtime today when Rosa [who cleans my flat, organises me and looks after me like a sister] arrived with a dish of these delicious polpette. Of course I had to sit her down and get her to tell me the recipe and she has given me permission to share it here. It's a kind of Italo-Albanian recipe and Rosa, like many cooks I know, doesn't give precise quantities, so we can all have fun working them out for ourselves!

8 oz [about] finely minced veal or beef
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 or 2 red peppers, chopped
a little rice [no need to parboil first]
pane grattuggiato [fine breadcrumbs]
2 eggs
some homemade tomato sauce
salt and black pepper

Mix everything together well. Form into ball shapes. Put them in a frying pan with about 4 tablesp olive oil and fry till they take on a good colour. Put them all in an ovenproof dish with water to just cover and cook at 200 C. "How long for?" I asked. "Oh, you'll have to test them every now and then and when you judge the rice to be ready, they're done", said Rosa. If you like, sprinkle a little lemon juice over the polpette to serve.

FOR ITALY TONIGHT

I am not, as many of you will know, a religious person; yet this seems the most appropriate item that I can post for this beloved country on this tragic night:

Katherine Jenkins - Dear Lord and Father of Mankind

LUNEDI POETICO

It is my pleasure, this evening, to offer you Professore Antonio Lonardo's Ultimo Saluto, published here with his kind permission, as always, along with my translation:

ULTIMO SALUTO

Hai baciato,
con il tuo ultimo respiro,
una lunga traiettoria di luce,
riflessa in preziosi frammenti
di spazi, persone, sentimenti...

Era con te, la luce,
quando, con coraggio,
varcavi i confini
della tua anima ansiosa,
proiettata nel futuro...

Ti accompagnava, fedele,
quando burrasche improvvise
trattenevano il tempo
con ombre paurose,
indice d'inesplorati abissi...

Ti incoraggiava, felice,
quando la trasmettevi,
con la tua vibrante voce,
costante estasi di cuori,
innalzando inni al cielo...

Ti identificava, sicura,
quando, con ostinata fede,
guidavi i flussi del tuo amore
alle spiagge bagnate
di miraggi superati...

S'è fermata nei tuoi occhi,
quando l'improvvido freddo
del tempo spezzato
ha rotto l'incanto reale,
icona di forti ricordi.

LAST FAREWELL

You kissed,
with your last breath,
a long path of light,
refected in precious fragments
of space, of people, of feelings…

It was with you, the light,
when, bravely,
you crossed the confines
of your anxious heart,
cast into the future…

It went with you, faithfully,
when sudden storms
held back time
with fearful shadows,
sign of unexplored depths…

It encouarged you, happily,
when you echoed it,
with your vibrant voice,
constant raptures of the heart,
rising hymns to heaven…

It knew you, certainly,
when, with unflinching faith,
you led your streams of love
to beaches bathed
in conquered mirages…

It ceased in your eyes,
when the unthinking cold
of severed time
broke the true enchantment
the icon of potent memory.

- From Desiderio di Luce [Modica, 2005].

PEAS, ANYONE?

One of the joys of living in Sicily is seeing seasonal produce tumbled onto vendors' tables like this:

SABATO MUSICALE

Just sit back and be amazed.

Andrea Bocelli / Lang Lang - Io ci sarò

READY FOR EASTER

Time to brighten the place up again so Berto Bunny is guarding the front door of the flat. Rosa was fascinated when I hard-boiled the eggs to put the Lakeland wraps on them and I am very grateful to the friend in the UK who sends me some every year. Simi, of course, wants the chick.

Leonardo the plant-holder has a lighter load than usual:



And these are cheering up my kitchen:



The eggs with ribbons are from the local "Euro Shop" and I think they're quite effective.

But Simi says, "If you think I'm wearing that daft bonnet again you can forget it!" Her wish is my command, as ever.

FOODIE FRIDAY - BLOGGERAID

I created this dish during the week and it's my submission for the BloggerAid Cookbook. [ The deadline for recipe submission was March 31st but as I only joined the group on Sunday I asked for a few days extra.] I'm not allowed to tell you what the dish is or what the ingredients are until the cookbook is published!

All proceeds from the BloggerAid Cookbook will go to the World Food Programme's School Meals Programme and I think it's a great idea. I want to thank Bella Baita for putting me on to it.

Do pay a visit to the BloggerAid site and have a look at all the exciting things that are going on over there!

ANSWER TO YESTERDAY'S "WHAT?"

Yesterday's object was a device for protecting a finger when cutting corn. [I could do with one myself as I think I broke a finger last night forcing open a drawer!] Here's what the friend who owns the object says about it:

"One example of cane protection for fingers - in the plural 'I cannola'. When harvesting the corn, when there was no machinery and they cut the corn with sickles (have never seen scythes here), they put a leather protection on the thumb of the left hand (I suppose rather like a finger stall) and four of these cane protections on the four fingers of the left hand. In this way the left hand was protected from a wrong stroke by the sickle, which might have sliced off a bit of hand as it came from right to left, moving fast in a hurry to get the corn cut!"

And, just so that you can all say "Ahhhh" again, here's a picture of my finger!

WHAT IN SICILY? - 19

Two views of the same object for you tonight.

Answer tomorrow.

YET ANOTHER LUNCH!

Maria and Luca pulled out all the stops, even by Sicilian standards, for lunch on Sunday:

There were homemade arancini [rice balls]

followed by pasta al ragù,



tender pork



and very Sicilian pollo ripieno [chicken filled with a rice mixture].



There was homemade bread, too:



As for desserts, friend Roberta had made a cheesecake [with a base of digestive biscuit crumbs and almonds],



Linda and Chiara had brought along their famous almond biscuits [recipe here],



other friends had brought these dolci,



then Maria brought out her homemade cannoli, filled with homemade ricotta.



And just when we thought it was all over, she appeared with a lemon sorbet!

This time my offering was a decoration I put together. I do think Lakeland's egg wraps are a wonderful invention! [Lakeland is a UK kitchen store.]

We toasted each other with Asti and declared Easter.

SPRINGTIME IN SICILY

Springtime in Sicily means that the borage is out everywhere. I must remember to freeze some of the flowers in ice cubes this year. What's a sure sign of spring where you are?

"MA NON FANNO NIENTE..."

It’s a while since I had a real grump about the post office but I think yesterday’s antics there merit at least a mini-rant. For newer readers, I should explain that, on entering the esteemed edifice, you are supposed to take a numbered ticket for the service you want – postal service, bill payment, the business counter or benefit payment. In addition, the “élite” who have a post office account get their own counter to queue / be served faster at, depending on the clerk or the day.

In my still somewhat somnabulant state at 11 am yesterday, my arm almost automatically stretched itself leftwards to the ticket machine as I walked in, my eyes only popping open as I realised I was not touching metal, but flesh – the flesh of a little elderly man who had taken his flat cap off to scratch his head, to be exact. Crowded around both him and the machine were six other disgruntled customers, all with resigned expressions and all muttering “Pazienza”. I asked what was the matter, to which I got the response, “Ma non fanno niente” [“But they aren’t doing anything”]. “They”, in post office conversations, always refers to the staff. By now I had worked out that what “they” were doing nothing about was the fact that the machine was not working. “Ma lo sanno?” ["Do they know?"], I asked [having caught the Sicilian habit of beginning every question with “ma” = “but” .] “Sì, ma non fanno niente.” My British instinct would be to insist on speaking to the manager but that is a little too straightforward for here and, even if anyone was thinking of doing just that, they would not dream of approaching the gentleman before they had had several rounds of “pazienza”-uttering, rolling their eyes towards heaven and discussing the situation with everybody else. [I’m feeling charitable tonight so I’ve decided it’s a way of being sociable.]

During this time, four other customers entered, each of whom attempted and failed to use the machine. One of them, a tall, rather imposing fellow, pressed all its buttons twice, first starting at the top and then at the bottom, before assuming the resigned expression and beginning the eye-rolling. As with the other new arrivals, then and only then did the original eight customers, including, I’m ashamed to say, myself, cry in unison, “Non funziona!” [“It’s not working”], a conclusion which he had had ample time to reach unaided. “Why”, you may reasonably enquire, “did you all wait till they had tried to get a ticket?” Ah, dear reader, this is Sicily, so the answer is, “To have the pleasure of giving information, of course!”

Finally, without any of us saying a word about it, it was mutually agreed that there had been enough eye-rolling so a member of our group approached a clerk to inform him of the situation, though the latter could hardly have been unaware of it as he had been watching the pantomime all along. “The numbers are still coming up on the screen so it must be working” he announced. “The screen’s working because there are still people waiting who came in before us”, explained our spokeswoman con pazienza but the clerk just shrugged his shoulders. And then – disaster! The beautiful, gleaming, silver screen, that miracle of modern technology, suddenly darkened and … stopped! There was a deathly silence as the numbers ceased to ping. Customers who had arrived prior to the machine drama gaped at each other in shock. Clerks dropped their pencils . Birds stopped singing outside. Verily, I say unto you, it was the end of the world ... and then, behold! A manager cometh among us and he unblocketh the machine. [Sorry, I got a bit carried away there.]

“Who was first?” asked the manager, now physically blocking the machine. “Io!" shouted a young woman, triumphantly seizing the ticket that the manager proudly held aloft for all to see. One by one, we were allowed to approach the apparatus but I’m always a little slow off the mark on these occasions as somewhere inside me there’s still a Brit who deems queueing a daily duty. So I’m afraid I didn’t use my elbows to push the others out of the way and it was the tall, imposing fellow who got his ticket next. However, I must be getting better at looking as if I might assert myself, for, although I wasn’t the first to get a ticket, I certainly wasn’t the last!

After all that, you’ll be delighted to learn, reader, it took a mere hour to pay my bill, so now I can’t remember why I decided to have a rant in the first place!

LUNEDI POETICO

It's poetry time again and this evening I am delighted to introduce one of my favourite poems by Professore Antonio Lonardo, Ricerca. It appears here with his kind permission as always, along with my translation:

RICERCA

Alla ricerca
di una goccia:
lacrima
del tuo viso,
specchio
della tua anima,
perla
della tua vita,
sulla spiaggia
delle conchiglie.

Alla pesca
di una stella:
ago
del tuo futuro,
riflesso
del tuo cielo,
gioia
della tua curiosità,
nel mare
dei tuoi sogni.

Alla scoperta
di una grotta:
ricordo
di un passato,
forza
delle maree,
letto
delle avventure,
nelle rocce
dell'orizzonte.

Alla visione
di una barca:
libera
nelle onde,
sballottata
dai venti,
diretta
nel sole,
per l'abbraccio
dell'eternità.

SEARCH

Searching
for a drop:
a tear
from your face,
a mirror
of your soul,
a pearl
of your life,
on the beach
of shells.

Fishing
for a star:
a needle
of your future,
a reflection
of your sky,
the joy
of your curiosity,
in the sea
of your dreams.

Finding
a cave:
a memory
of a past,
the intensity
of the tides,
a bed
of adventure,
on the rocks
of the horizon.

Seeing
a boat:
free
on the waves,
tossed
by the winds,
heading
for the sun,
and the embrace
of eternity.

- From Desiderio di Luce [Modica,2005].

CANAZZU

I came across this in Matthew Fort's Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons . The Sicilian friends I asked about it had not heard of it so I looked it up and, as I suspected, it is described as a basic kind of caponata, though this version contains no sugar or vinegar - or capers, for that matter.

Naturally, I adapted Fort's recipe a little: Firstly, instead of using aubergines I used the bases of biete da taglio but only because I had them in the fridge. You clean them as you would a leek [well, that's what I did] and cut them into bite-sized pieces. When cooked they have the texture of softened celery and a mild, pleasant taste which balances well with the zingy flavour of the peppers. A Sicilian would be horrified as I will not peel potatoes, as most of you know. The one British food maxim that I have stubbornly imported is, "most of the goodness is in their skins". I'll confess that I didn't bother peeling and seeding the tomato either, but I would have had there been company! Fort tells you to use 200 ml olive oil but I find ml measurements a nuisance where oil is concerned. I say, bung in 3 tblesp of the stuff and hope for the best! And I would suggest using half the amount of vegetable stock given in his recipe. Anyway, it is a triumph! Like caponata, this can be eaten at room temperature or cold.

All you do is chop a large, white onion and soften it in the oil, then add 2 aubergines or 2 biete da taglio bases, cut into chunks, and stir it all around a bit. Then add 1 or 2 sliced tomatoes, 3 - 4 large potatoes, cut into chunks, and 2 sliced peppers of whatever colour you like. Stir it all around for a few minutes, then chuck in a glass [when I say "a glass", I always mean a large one!] of white wine and let it bubble up for a minute or 2. Add about 200 ml vegetable stock [yes, a cube is fine] season with coarse seasalt [please!] and freshly ground black pepper, throw in some torn leaves of basil, plonk the lid on and cook for 25 mins over a low flame. Add some more basil to serve.

SABATO MUSICALE

I love this:

Tiziano Ferro - Il Regalo più Grande

FOODIE FRIDAY

This week I found this truffle cheese from Urbino. It has quite a delicate taste.

It is time, I think, for a food post which includes a recipe, so here it is - sort of:

I adapted this from April's Good Housekeeping [UK edition, to which I have a subscription] to ingredients available here - not that I would have followed the recipe to the letter anyway. For pork steaks, I asked the butcher to cut 6 slices of lonza [loin] more thickly than usual. I couldn't get any red onions, so browned a nice, large white one, chopped, in 2 tablesp.olive oil. [When it comes to olive oil, I simply cannot be fooling around with dinky little measures such as 1 teasp.] Then I added the pork and , turning the slices several times, cooked them until they had taken on a fair bit of colour. Then I chucked in some chunks of potato [which, regular readers will know, I refuse to peel]. Next the recipe calls for redcurrant jelly, which we can't find here, but I did have some mulberry jelly, so added a goodly dollop of that. I do have my own chicken stock in the freezer but I dislike using it in non-chicken dishes, so I just added 250 ml water and then 150 ml or a dash more of red wine. Seasoned it, let it bubble up, plonked the lid on and cooked on a low flame for 45 minutes.

ANSWER TO YESTERDAY'S "WHAT...?"

If I show you the other side of the object, I'm sure you will guess that it's a very secure Sicilian money box. The only way you could get the money out would be to smash it to smithereens - exactly the sort of money box I should have!

WHAT IN SICILY? - 18

Answer tomorrow.

A LEISURELY LUNCH

This was the lovely meal I partook of on Sunday, when I received an impromptu invitation from friends Giovanna and Marco. [I always marvel at the calm way in which Giovanna prepares all this food for her husband, herself, four strapping lads, their two grannies plus guests - I'd be tearing my hair out!]

First, cavatelli al forno con salsiccia,

then farsumagru [ rolled, stuffed roast of veal, a typical Sicilian dish] with potatoes



and finally a mousse of forest fruits, for which Giovanna had used a German recipe.