GLADDENING THE HEART

Sadly, the palm trees that used to grace the courtyard of the Sacro Cuore Church fell victim to the attentions of the punteruolo rosso three years ago and the yard looks a little forlorn without them.  Someone, however, has had the idea of planting these stelle di Natale where they used to be, a sight to gladden the heart, if only for a little while.  I was especially cheered by them on a cold, rainy Saturday.

SABATO MUSICALE

When I was a child, I danced to this tune every Christmas at Miss Daisy Luxton's School of Dancing in Bristol, UK. Now Claudio Baglioni has got me dancing again to this version:

Claudio Baglioni - Il paese bianco di magia [Winter Wonderland]

SORRY, NASA, IT WASN'T US!

www.nasa.gov

I love NASA's  new "Black Marble" images of the earth at night, especially those of Italy. Milan is the brightest city shown in the images but I'm sorry to say that Modica was not responsible for the lights showing in this little corner of Sicily!

Yesterday my hairdresser told me that the shopkeepers on via Sacro Cuore had each chipped in €30 so that the street could have some Christmas lights. He nearly fell over laughing at my British naivety when I said I had thought the city council had put them up.

PIZZA FOR ONE

If you order takeaway pizza here, you order a whole pizza for each person, not one to slice and share as we do in Britain. I can never get through a whole pizza, so I was interested to explore the new pizzeria that has opened near my home; it's the first time I've seen "pizza for one person" advertised here.

I was fascinated by the mozzarella, creamed pumpkin, smoked provola, mushroom and rocket pizza on the ample menu and here is what constitutes a "portion for one" in Sicily: 

It was seriously good and anyone walking past my apartment door as I ate it - OK, most of it - might have been forgiven for imagining I was having a session with Mr Christian Grey in one of his jollier moods. I was also reminded of this:

Eat, Pray, Love - Pizza in Napoli scene

A SPOT OF LIFE EXTENSION

Carni e pisci, a vita ti crisci - Meat and fish prolong your life.

- Sicilian proverb

If the above proverb has any truth in it, my friend Carol and I did a little life-prolonging when we had a meal at Bar Cicara on Saturday night:

First, this generous plate of antipasti came with our drinks:

When we ordered our meal we were asked if we wanted another platter of antipasti but we passed on that.  It was just as well that we did as they don't believe in small portions when it comes to the main course, either.  We both had steak:

And talking of long life, Corriere della Sera today reported that the oldest living person in the world is now 115-year-old Dina Manfredini of Iowa, USA. Born in Modena [Emilia-Romagna] in 1897, Mrs Manfredini  is also one of the last four living people to have been born during the reign of King Umberto I.  Although she left Italy at the age of 23, she still occasionally speaks Italian to her local priest.

But if you want to live a mere 100 years, the place to come to is, as I've written before, Ispica!

SAUSAGE STEW WITH A KICK

The recipe for a sausage and vegetable stew in the November edition of the Conad supermarket chain's Bene Insieme magazine turned out well:  the stew contains mushrooms, carrots, tomato pulp, rosemary [only I didn't have any so flavoured it with sage], onion, vegetable stock and, as you would expect, sausages. I added some pumpkin and potatoes [unpeeled] because I had them. The recipe tells you to add some white wine and rum but I didn't have any rum and can't stand the taste of it in any case; I did, however, have some Calvados in the cupboard so chucked a drop or four of that in. I found it did the trick!

A SEWING TREE

Raffaele the hairdresser always has an original theme for his Christmas tree and this year it's a "knitting and sewing" tree. I should probably point out that he put it up before today's royal news broke from Britain so as far as I know, Raffaele isn't knitting any baby clothes!

DOMENICA MUSICALE

I got literally caught up in my Christmas decorations yesterday, so it's "sabato musicale" on Sunday.  Here is Irene Grandi to kick off the season for us:

Irene Grandi - Bianco Natale

LOVELY WEATHER FOR....

It poured with rain this morning and when I announced that I was going to the supermarket - all of two doors away from the school - at lunchtime I was met with a chorus of, "You can't go out!"  "Of course I can - I'm British", said I.

Now, usually you can't get near the meat counter on a Friday as Sicilians, and Italians in general, buy an awful lot of meat for the weekend. Unlike the British, they do not buy a large joint and that is that - oh, no:  it's a goodly amount of this, another kilo of that, "better take a mezzo kilo of that as well" and, just when you think the person in front of you has finished, they will think of something else that the butcher has to go into his workroom to cut. After that every one of them will want "un po' di salsiccia" - and who can blame them? - before they enquire after the butcher's wife, children, uncles in America, neighbours and plans for the weekend.  If you can manage the wait, it will be worth it but sometimes I just can't.

Today, however, was different, for the rain had kept even the most earnest shoppers away; I was served in double-quick time and it was smiles all round.

As a bonus, later the Christmas lights came on in via Sacro Cuore [ which is more than happened last year] but I don't think many of the people who ventured out in the late afternoon saw them, as most were walking around with heads bowed and umbrellas up even though it had stopped raining hours before. I was reminded of football's favourite naughty boy, Mario Balotelli, who in this interview told Time that he "never goes out" in Britain because of the rain. 

ITALIAN LOGIC PRIZE 2012

One of the earliest posts I wrote on this blog, back in 2006, was partly about the public conveniences - or lack of them - in Modica and the condition of the facilities that did exist, mostly in bars, at that time. Four years later, I wrote this for Italy Magazine.  I'm glad to say that the toilet seat situation has improved since then but there are still institutions and establishments that stubbornly prefer the seatless toilet because it is thought to be more hygienic. The owners or managers of these premises may like to take a look at this article from the BBC.

In that early blog post, I said that bar staff in Italy as a whole are understanding if passers-by just need to use the bathroom but this is changing and in larger cities like Catania or other tourist spots you are now likely to see notices informing you that you are expected to buy something if you want to use the facilties. This does not bother me as I don't mind paying  €0.80 for a coffee if I need to use the loo but I do suffer from a Brit's sense of bewilderment at the absence of public conveniences - you know, easily accessible toilets that are just toilets.

The British, who, as the outcomes of recent EU summits have shown, consider themselves "different" from the rest of Europe, tend to believe that the public convenience issue proves it and have openly wondered for over a century whether their Latin neighbours have stronger bladders.

Well, I can tell my fellow-countrymen tonight that I have solved the mystery: having dared to ask an Italian colleague today why we didn't purchase better quality toilet paper for the school, I was met with an expression of pure horror and the response,

"But people go to the toilet at home!"

AN EARLY CHRISTMAS GIFT

I was delighted to receive this bottle of this year's extra-virgin olive oil from my friends at Barbuto. The colour is sublime. I can't wait to taste it and I love the label, too!

QUALITY OF LIFE SURVEY

Il Sole 24 Ore has published its 2012 Quality of Life in Italy survey and has pronounced Bolzano the best of Italy's current 107 provinces to live in.  The provinces were ranked  according to 36 criteria in six categories which were:  standard of living; business and work; environment, services and health;  population;  public order; free time.

"In Bolzano you can breathe in an air of well-being, verging on opulence", said the journalist sent to the province. The province also has low unemployment , at 3.3% as compared to a national average of 9% and a low rate of crimes such as burglary and car theft. The tourist industry is thriving, too.

This is not the first time Bolzano has come top of the list, now in its 23rd edition, as it was ranked number one in 1995, 2001 and 2010.  Its citizens must be particularly pleased with themselves this time, as their province has toppled Bologna from its number one position and can lord it over Siena, which is ranked second.  

According to the survey, the top ten provinces for quality of life are:

1.  Bolzano

2.  Siena

3.  Trento

4.  Rimini

5.  Trieste

6. Parma

7. Belluno

8. Ravenna

9. Aosta

10. Bologna

Bologna, as you see, has dropped dramatically in the rankings whilst Milan is ranked 17th and Rome 21st.  Poor old Taranto comes last.

The Sicilian provinces are ranked as follows:

81. Ragusa 

87. Enna 

88. Siracusa 

90. Catania 

94. Messina 

95. Agrigento 

99. Palermo 

103. Trapani 

105. Caltanissetta 

Messina has dropped five places in the table, mainly because it fared badly in the business and work category. It had actually gained points in the standard of living category.

Ragusa has high unemployment at 9% and pensions are lower than the national average. On the other hand, house prices are also lower and, of course, the area has a lovely climate.  It fares well in tourism, too but there are too many crimes such as car theft, pickpocketing and extortion. The birth rate is ten babies per 1,000 inhabitants annually, as compared with a national average of 9.6.  I am happy to report that the number of bookshops in proportion to the population in the province is higher than the national average and that clinches it for me. So before you all rush to relocate to Bolzano, consider Ragusa!

SABATO MUSICALE

The gorgeous Mr Buanne has not made an appearance on this blog for a while, so let's put that right with this lovely song:

Patrizio Buanne and Dana Winner -  Life is Beautiful [La Vita è Bella]

AN ENCOURAGING APPOINTMENT

Back in 1965, the then British Prime Minister Harold Wilson appointed one Barbara Castle as his Minister of Transport and caused a sensation, firstly for having appointed a woman but mainly because Mrs Castle could not drive. I remember the fuss and ever since I have been amazed at the alacrity with which governments everywhere put people with little or no knowledge of a given sector in charge of it.  Most people would not ask their lawyer to carry out dentistry so I've never understood why they are happy to allow decisions regarding their children's education to be made by men and women whose only experience of school has been as pupils. Yes, I would expect an education minister to have taught, and not in a Cameronesque private school or élite grove of academe!

However, on the rare occasions when experts like Mr Monti's not-so-merry band of "technocrats" are appointed as government ministers, they tend to disappoint. I am convinced, as I've said before on this blog, that this is because such "experts" are usually well-off individuals with little understanding of the day to day struggles of those they are called upon to govern.

Hats off, then, to Sicily's new Governor Rosario Crocetta who has appointed a young female student as Regional Councillor for Training:  29-year-old Nelli Scilabra is a law student at Palermo University, where she is a member of the Academic Senate.  She is also Palermo president of Rum, the Mediterranean University Network.  Ms Scilabra says that she knows what it is like to be young in these times and that she hopes to be able to help young people to stay in Sicily rather than leaving it, as so many feel they have to, in order to find work.

The appointment is one of the latest to the "committee of intellectuals" that Mr Crocetta feels the island deserves in its regional government.  ""At last", he says, "young people will be represented."

It might just work and I hope it does.  And what do Sicilians think of it?  Before I wrote this post I voted in an online poll on a Sicilian newspaper site.  Readers were asked to decide whether the appointments announced so far have pleased them not at all, a little, enough or a lot.  I voted "enough" and found that I am with the majority of voters. [You can't see the number of votes until after you have voted.]  Hope with a dose of Sicilian cynicism is the order of the day, then.

VERGOGNA

I was happy to bring you some good news about Modica on Monday but Sicilians' ability to shoot themselves in the foot was in evidence again the very next day when it was reported that 106 out of a total of 126 employees at the town hall had been regularly cheating their employer, the city council. 

The list of misdeeds is endless:  employees were allegedly getting colleagues to clock in for them, going out to the bar or the hairdresser's during working hours, sitting in the car park listening to music instead of working and even, in one case, resetting the clocking-in machine. Some of these employees had already been under investigation for absenteeism.

The Mayor of Modica has let it be known that he considers the Council of Modica to be an injured party in the case.

Vergogna - Shame on those who have brought this lovely city into disrepute.

AND NOW IT'S TIME FOR.....

Christmas doesn't really get under way here until the December 8th holiday and even then, there is little of the bustle and excitement we associate with the season in Britain.  But you know it's getting near when you can hardly move in the supermarket for wall-to-wall panettoni. This morning I espied this year's Bauli mini pandori and they're so cute I just had to have one for my tree!

Hmm - do you think he looks a bit lonely and needs a companion?

INVOLTINI WITH MUSHROOMS AND POMEGRANATE SEEDS

The inspiration for this comes from the involtini con pancetta e salvia recipe in this month's Conad supermarket chain's free magazine. Their involtini are made with chicken breast escalopes and filled with chestnuts and mirtilli [whortleberries]. Well, I can't stand chestnuts and couldn't find any mirtilli, so I used a mushroom mixture and what has accidentally become my ingredient of the month - pomegranate seeds.

The Conad butcher, pleased that someone was going to cook something from the magazine - I didn't tell him of my sabotage plans - suggested I use skinless chicken thigh fillets instead of breasts and, although there were thin strips of pancetta already on display on the counter, he decided these were not thin enough and cut some more especially. This kind of service and advice always cheers me up and he hasn't been wrong yet!

Anyway, this is what I ended up doing:

First, soften about 200 gr sliced mushrooms in 125 gr butter and add a handful of pane grattugiato or fresh breadcrumbs plus some chopped fresh sage.  Stir well and take off the heat. Lay the fillets - I used 6 -  out on a chopping board and spread the mushroom mixture over them. Distribute the contents of half a pack of pancetta dolce cubes over [about 85 gr] and sprinkle over some pomegranate seeds, a little ground cinnamon and about half teasp ground cloves. Add a few twists of pepper and some seasalt, roll up the fillets in 2 slices of pancetta each and secure with cooking string. Tuck a sage leaf into the top of each involtino. Brown them on all sides in 4 tablesp olive oil in a wide pan, then add a glass of white wine.  When it evaporates, add 200 ml chicken or vegetable stock and some more pomegranate seeds. Bring to the boil, then simmer for about 40 mins, turning the involtini over after 20 mins.  Take the involtini out and place on a serving dish and snip the string off, then quickly add a roux of a dessertspoon of butter and the same quantity of flour to the sauce. Stir to dissolve and thicken the sauce, pour over the involtini and serve.  [You can slice them to serve if you like but I'm not good at slicing meat thinly and, in the absence of one of those meat-slicing contraptions that most Italian women have, would make a terrible mess.] Decorate with even more pomegranate seeds if you wish.

Buon appetito. [I think I've used up all those pomegranates now!]

SOUTHERN STARS

The Michelin Italia Hotel and Restaurant Guide for 2013 is out and the South is chasing the North in terms of stars!

Lombardy has the most stars in Italy with 50 one-star, four two-star and two three-star restaurants, while Piedmont is second with 32 one-star, five two-star restaurants and one three-star establishment. But look what happens next: Campania, with 27 one-star and six two-star restaurants, beats Emilia-Romagna [26 starred restaurants in total], Trentino Alto-Adige [25], Veneto and Tuscany [24 each] and Lazio [21]. Puglia has five one-star restaurants while Calabria and Sardinia both have three.

Sicily has eight one-star and three two-star restaurants and I am happy to say that the Province of Ragusa has done very well:  Il Duomo di Ibla in Ragusa Ibla has two stars, the Locanda Don Serafino, also in Ragusa Ibla, has one and another star is retained by Ragusa's La Fenice in the Hotel Villa Carlotta. Lovely, Baroque Modica is not left out as La Gazza Ladra in Modica Alta's Hotel Palazzo Failla retains its well-deserved star.

Only Taormina can rival Ragusa for Michelin stars in Sicily and the Principe Cerami in the San Domenico Palace Hotel retains its two stars, while single stars are again awarded to the Bellevue in the Hotel Metropole, the Casa Grugno [website apparently down] and La Capinera at Taormina - Lido di Spisone.  A celebration dinner for the city's "star" chefs is being held in the Palazzo San Domenico Hotel tonight.

In all, 307 Michelin stars have been awarded to restaurants in Italy for 2013.

Antonello Venditti - Stella

SABATO MUSICALE

For everyone who is having a melancholy Saturday evening, missing one special person...

Claudio Baglioni - Tu come stai?

JEWELLED RISOTTO

Risotto al radicchio is a traditional dish of Verona and they make it with pancetta up there.  My version uses what I had in the house last night and if you saw yesterday's post, you'll know that I have a kitchen full of pomegranates!  This is what I did:

Finely chop 2 shallots and soften them in a wide pan in 4 tablesp olive oil, adding a handful of pinenuts after about 2 mins. Add the finely chopped leaves of 1 radicchio - I chopped mine in the processor - and stir everything for about 5 mins. Add 500 gr arborio rice and stir that around too, then add a glass of white wine to the pan, stirring.  Have ready 1 litre vegetable stock, add about a quarter of this and stir.  Turn the heat down and let it absorb, then add another quarter and repeat the process until the stock is used up. It will take about 20 mins.  At the end, season to taste and add the seeds of a pomegranate, then add about 100 gr grated parmesan, grana or ragusano cheese. Stir well, then take the pan off the heat, add a few knobs of butter and stir these in too.  The pomegranate seeds will become mouth-burningly hot so let it stand for 3 mins or so, then serve in bowls.

Serves 4 generously.

Buon appetito!