BACON DAY COOKING

Saturday was International Bacon Day and in honour of the occasion I made this from the "cookbook that never lets me down", Marcella Hazan's Marcella Cucina.  I've featured the dish before on the blog but not for four years, so I hope you'll forgive me!  It's Marcella's involtini di maiale - pork escalope rolls filled with slices of wafer-thin pancetta and gherkins. The dish is flavoured with garlic and sage.  I now use canned  pomodorini [cherry tomatoes] in recipes requiring a can of chopped tomatoes:

ADDIO A SALVATORE LICITRA

It is with great sadness, today,  that I write of the death of the tenor Salvatore Licitra, the man hailed as "Pavarotti's heir" and a great favourite at many major opera venues worldwide.

On August 27th Salvatore Licitra, who was aged 43,  was critically injured in a motorcycle accident in Donnalucata [Ragusa] where he was on holiday.  He was treated first at Modica's Ospedale Maggiore before being transferred to Catania, where he remained in a coma for nine days.  Mr Licitra was pronounced dead yesterday morning.

Mr Licitra's organs have been donated for transplant and three lives have already been saved:  his liver was given to a 53-year-old man from Catania and his kidneys to a 57-year-old from Palermo and a 37-year-old man from Pizzo di Barcellona [Messina].  Mr Licitra's corneae have been donated to an eye bank.  Mr Licitra's brother said today that the singer had always been generous and would have wanted this.

Salvatore Licitra was born to Italian parents in Bern, Switzerland and his family originates from Acate in Ragusa Province. On September 3rd Mr Licitra was awarded the Ragusani nel mondo prize in absentia.

I know that your thoughts, like mine, will be with Salvatore Licitra's family at this sad time.

Salvatore Licitra - O Sole Mio

NOW IT'S "BRAND SELINUNTE"

Temple of Hera, Selinunte

Where Agrigento wishes to go, Selinunte is leading, it has been revealed:  the architectural site in the Province of Trapani has been "married" to Italian cashmere king Brunello Cucinelli, who will be paying a fee to the Province in return for the right to use the Selinunte "brand" on his products.  Mr Cucinelli, it is only fair to say, is a businessman with an ethical conscience:  he has been largely responsible for revitalising his wife's home town of Solomeo  [Umbria] by setting up his headquarters there and you can read more about him over at Alex's blog.

Sicilian Regional Cultural Councillor Sebastiano Misseneo sees initiatives like the Selinunte one as the way forward for Sicily and believes that other world-famous Italian companies such as Dolce & Gabbana, Ferrari, Geox and Ferragamo may also be interested in promoting the island in this way.

There were originally five Greek temples at Selinunte but only the Temple of Hera, known as Tempio E, has been reconstructed.  Foodies may like to know that the site has another claim to fame, for it is from the word Selinunte that Italian derives the word sedano and from this that English derives the word "celery".

Sicilian celery

DOMENICA MUSICALE

Enjoy:

Antonello Venditti - Settembre

OF DESPERATE TIMES AND DRASTIC MEASURES

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Desperate times, it is said, call for drastic measures and selling one's own mother on ebay would be drastic by most people's standards.  That is exactly what a Sicilian seller hopes to do, though and in the advertisement, placed on 30th August, the mother in question, who apparently does not baulk at the prospect of singing a lullaby at 3 am.,  is described as "new, unused, unopened and undamaged".  The seller goes on to say that she is an excellent cook whose speciality is sweet dishes, open-minded and a good listener.The unfortunate lady also has a university degree and speaks five languages.  

"Why is she up for sale, then?" you may ask.  Well, the seller hopes to exchange her for his or her dog, a ten-year-old Staffordshire Bull Terrier who disappeared from Castelluccio in Siracusa Province on 15th August.  Any money raised from the "mamma sale" will go towards offering a reward for the return of the dog or to ENPA [a national animal charity] in Catania.

Bidding at the moment stands at €4.50 and there is one day left to bid.

GUESS THE FLAVOURS - 10

An easier one this week.

Answers in the comments tomorrow.

SEMIFREDDO DI FICHI D'INDIA

This weekend, it is predicted, will bring another "African" heatwave to Sicily, school's still out and ice cream is still being served:  yet the rientro or return from the countryside or sea for most Italians signifies the end of summer and fichi d'India or prickly pears are already in the shops.  

For me they represent the taste of Sicily so this year I decided to honour them in a semifreddo:

I wanted this one to have a biscuity base and a top so I began by crushing six digestive biscuits with a rolling pin.  Then you lightly oil the base and sides of a 2lb loaf tin - use groundnut or sunflower oil -  and sprinkle half the crumbs over.  You won't really get many to adhere to the sides but it doesn't matter.  Now deal with the fruit:  you need to peel and slice 5 prickly pears and the way a Sicilian taught me to do this is to hold the fruit steady on its side with a fork, cut a slit in the skin with a knife and then cut round the fruit.  You have to be careful not to touch the skins with your hands as you can still get a nasty prickle even if you buy the fruit dethorned.  Next crush 6 savoiardi [lady's finger] biscuits and put aside while you whip up 500 ml panna da montare, whipping or double cream to stiff peaks.  Now stir in a little Sicilian prickly pear liqueur [or orange liqueur], 50 gr sugar, the savoiardi crumbs and the sliced fruit.  Mix well with a metal spoon and then spoon it all into the prepared tin.  Level the top with a palette knife and sprinkle the reserved digestive biscuit crumbs over. Wrap the tin all round with clingfilm and then with foil and freeze the semifreddo for at least 6 hours or preferably overnight.  It should turn out easily and you can decorate it with more slices of prickly pear.

Enjoy.

PRIVATISATION PROPOSAL FOR VALLE DEI TEMPLI

Temple of Concordia, Valley of the Temples, Agrigento

These are difficult times for the comuni of Italy:  the government has announced swingeing cuts in their funding   and schools, hospitals and other institutions all over the country are feeling the effect. Here in Modica, we have all been subject to discomfort caused by the failure of the administration to carry out its annual disinfestation process to deal with the summer's mosquito population and the courthouse is one of the institutions that we might lose    So worried are the country's mayors by the government's austerity measures that hundreds of them demonstrated in Milan on Monday.

It is no surprise, then, that mayors are trying to raise funds for their towns in any way they can and Marco Zambuto, Mayor of the city of Agrigento, is no exception:  this week he suggested that the Valley of the Temples, Agrigento's best known landmark, be managed as a "brand"  by private companies such as banks or auction houses for limited periods of time.  Under the proposals, the private companies would be able to use the architectural site for events along with the "brand" for their products and advertising in return for paying a fixed fee to the city.  The companies would also be "invited" to sponsor the maintenance and restoration of the site as well as the maintenance and improvement of its infrastructure.

Louis Vuitton, Versace and the London auction house Sotheby's are some of the companies that the Mayor is said to have in mind for the project.  Who wants a temple motif on their Louis Vuitton bag?

ONE FOR MUM

We all need our mums in this life, however old we are.  This song is for mine, who died 18 years ago today:

Connie Francis - Mamma

THE BEST BOOK I'VE READ - A "LET'S BLOG OFF" POST

I was delighted to be invited by Paul to participate in the fortnightly Let's Blog Off  event and, first of all,  I'll let him explain the concept here:

"Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive with something called a Blog Off. A Blog Off is an event where bloggers of every stripe weigh in on the same topic on the same day. The topic for this round of the Blog Off is 'What's the best book you ever read?' "

Now, I'm the woman who brought 6,000 books to Sicily so an excuse to write about some of them is always welcome. But the best book I've ever read?  How was I going to choose?

Well, I suppose a lot depends on how you define "best":  if the book I'm reading at any given moment is unputdownable, I'm likely to think it's the best I've read - until I start the next one!  I read a lot of biography and among the most interesting I've read in recent years are:  Maria Fairweather's superb account of the life of one of my heroines, Madame de Stael;   the aptly entitled Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton by Kathryn Hughes;  An Ordinary Man by Paul Rusesabagina;  and The Woman Who Shot Mussolini by Frances Stonor Saunders.

But wait a minute:  what if I define "best" in terms of books that have influenced me?  My studies have led me to read in three languages other than my own so I must admit that my literary influences are many and diverse.  Coincidentally, the other day I took part in a vote in which people selected their favourite authors from Nobel Prize in Literature laureates: after much deliberation I chose Albert Camus, not for L'Etranger [The Outsider] but for La Peste [The Plague] which I read in French at school and which challenged and changed my thinking more than any other book.  Then there is Voltaire who taught me tolerance, Balzac - so little read these days but a must for anyone interested in human nature - and my beloved Simone de Beauvoir. Lorca's poetry sustained my late teens, Gramsci's Letters from Prison my extreme leftie phase and I must not forget, among the poets, Modica's own Salvatore Quasimodo;  little did I imagine, all those years ago as I burned the midnight oil writing essays on his work, that I would one day come to live in his town.

Suppose, though, I take "best" to mean the book I would most like to take with me to get me through a  period of enforced solitude - on that mythical desert island, perhaps?   This, I've concluded, is the "best" definition of "best", when it comes to books!  At first I thought I would take something long and easy to dip into, such as the Larousse Gastronomique, but then I realised that such a volume might actually cause me distress if I only had berries to eat.  My next idea was to fall back on poetry and, having narrowed my poets down to Verlaine and Burns, I decided that Burns [with a glossary] just had the edge.

And then I remembered something else:  some years back, when I had to go into hospital, I took along Pages  from the Goncourt Journal to pass the time and I forgot all indignities, pain and discomfort as the nineteenth century French authors I'd studied so long ago passed through the volume like friends.  I even said "Hello" out loud to some of them.  In my life, friendship has been very important so a book full of "old friends" such as these is - for the moment - the best book I have ever read.

Below is the full list of contributors to this Blog Off theme:

A FIRST FOR TRAPANI

Aeroporto di Trapani-Birgi
Image:  Wikimedia Commons

Sicily's Trapani-Birgi [Vincenzo Florio] Airport has this weekend been named the world's top airport for increased passenger use in the World Airport Traffic Report 2010 published by ACI  [Airports Council International]. It was ranked 406th airport overall in the study of data from 900 airports worldwide.

This is indeed good news for the airport that is the "gateway to western Sicily" and it could certainly do with some for, being a civil airport that is sometimes used for military purposes, Trapani-Birgi has found itself involved in the Libyan crisis, with NATO planes having taken off from there on missions to the country. This has sadly caused a 50% decrease in the airport's civil traffic in 2011.

Salvatore Ombra, president of the airport's management company Airgest, is, however, optimistic:  he says that, provided the Italian government lifts limitations on the use of the airport for civil flights from October 1st, as promised, the airport's apron is reassigned to civil aircraft and that the government pays the airport the €10 million due to it in compensation for disruption to civil flights, Trapani-Birgi will again be able to operate at full capacity, maintaining current routes and introducing new ones.

Good luck, Trapani-Birgi!

CHICKEN WITH PEACHES

This was inspired by a recipe in the September edition of La Cucina magazine which comes with Corriere della Sera.  I've altered the recipe quite a lot as it uses fresh mangoes and I couldn't find any mangoes, fresh or tinned, so I used tinned peaches [which I prefer].  I didn't have any dried chilli peppers either, so I used half a fresh one.  [They come larger in Italy than the ones usually available in the UK.] I also dislike recipes that tell you to brown the meat, then take it out while you do the vegetables;  I find this bothersome and usually unnecessary, as long as I'm using a nice, wide pan.  I liked the idea of using a good amount of chives, as my chive plant on the balcony survives despite my régime of benign neglect.  Anyway, this is what I did:

Brown 6 - 8 chicken joints, skin-on, on all sides in 3 tablesp olive oil.  Meanwhile, chop a lovely Sicilian white onion, 2 cloves garlic and half a fresh red chilli pepper.  When the chicken is brown, add these to the pan and continue to cook everything over a low flame till the vegetables are softened.  Add coarse seasalt to taste, the drained contents of a large tin of peaches, a handful of chopped chives, 3 tablesp water and bring to the boil.  Turn the heat down, cover the pan and simmer, stirring occasionally, for about an hour.  Garnish the dish with more chopped chives.

Buon appetito.

SABATO MUSICALE - FOR "VON"

This one is for Von:

Andrea Bocelli - Estate

GUESS THE FLAVOURS - 9

Amarena and ......?

And what did my friend have? - Not an ice cream.

Answers in the comments tomorrow.

BLOGGING - RUMINATIONS

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I'm ruminating about that old mystery, love, in this guest post at The Wounded Warrior today.

Just a word of warning: you may find some of The Wounded Warrior's content distressing but you will find some excellent poetry on the site as well.

Thanks for the invitation, Jan.

"VON"

It was with great sorrow that I learned this week of the death of Yvonne ["Von"] Hadley-Jones, known to and loved by many as the "Devonshire Dumpling" of  No Clue blog.

Although I never met Von, I counted her as a friend and she was a very kind person:  when she was losing her hearing, she sent me some of her CDs as she wanted her favourite music to continue to be appreciated and when this single life got me down, she understood and was there for me.

Von's dry humour as a blogger put many a bureaucrat and politician in their place and I shall miss her observations on life in a part of the UK where I spent many happy childhood holidays.

Arrivederci, Von - I shall think of you every time I play Bocelli.   You give 'em what for up there, now!

Sally in Norfolk has more details of Von's last illness and Posh Totty has a fine tribute here.

PALERMO IS SECOND COFFEE CAPITAL OF ITALY

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Palermo, according to the Milan Chamber of Commerce and Istat [the Italian Statistics Office] is second only to Naples for the number of coffee manufacturers in the city:  Naples has 69 [6.2% of the national total] whilst Palermo has 47 and Sicily as a whole 70. 

In Modica we have the headquarters of Caffè Moak and on some mornings the delicious aroma of roasting coffee beans pervades the modern Sorda area where I live.  This, of course, sends me scuttling to the nearest bar for my wake-up fix of espresso.

One of the greatest compliments I've received here was when a friend's husband told me I make a good espresso - "per un essere inglese" ["for a British personage"].

GOING POTTY - 2

Visualizzazione ingrandita della mappa
Click top arrow to see proximity of Città del Vaticano

Following Friday's story of the policeman arrested for growing 17 cannabis plants in his barracks, today we learn of a 21-year-old man from Rome, with previous convictions, who was growing nine marijuana plants on his balcony in via delle Fornaci, a stone's throw from the Vatican City.  A stray branch, blown into the street, had alerted police.  

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Going potty in a different way were the 100 or so unfortunate passengers, including both Sicilians and Norwegians,  who landed at Palermo's Aeroporto Falcone e Borsellino on a flight from Oslo on Monday afternoon:  upon leaving the plane, they were led into a room next to the Customs post where they were abandoned, in a temperature nearing 40 C and with no openable windows, doors or air conditioning, for at least 30 minutes.  The bus that should have transported them to "Arrivals" never arrived and when some of the passengers tried to go back out through the door by which they had entered the room, they were forced back by baggage handlers because they were setting foot on the runway.  

By this time the elderly passengers were desperate to sit down - there were no seats in the room - the babies and children amongst them were becoming distressed and other passengers urgently needed to use a restroom.  Others were anxious about missing connecting flights.  Several tried to call for help on their mobile phones but no help was forthcoming.  

Finally, after some of the passengers had banged loudly on the locked glass doors and shouted at the tops of their voices, a man in uniform arrived and opened them.  However, recognising him as the same official who had led them into the room in the first place and then forgotten them while he spoke on his mobile phone, several passengers became angry with him and one, who took a photograph of him, was accused of insulting him.

Come, come, Palermo :  this is hardly the way to encourage tourism, is it?

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SICILY HAS WORST YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT RATE

Italy, according to figures released by the small business association Confartigianato, has the highest youth unemployment rate in Europe with 1,138,000 unemployed under the age of 25.  Of these, young adults under the age of 24 are the worst affected, with 29.6% being unemployed as compared with a European average of 21%.

Sicily is the largest and worst affected of the Italian regions, with 28% of adults under 35 being unemployed.  This compares with a national average of 15.9%. In Southern Italy as a whole 538,000 young people are unemployed. The rate in Campania is 27.6%, in Basilicata it is 26.7% and the rate in Sardinia is 25.2%.  Things are very different in the North, the rate in Trentino-Alto Adige being 5.7% and that in Lombardy being 9.3%.  The rate in the country's smallest region, the Valle d'Aosta, is 7.8%.

I feel sorry for young people in Sicily, who, as I've written  here, do not go around burning the businesses of people who might one day have employed them, loot shops or terrorise the good citizens of their cities.

The unemployment rate for adults in Italy is 23.2%.

IN THE COOL OF THE EVENING

What you need at the end of a day so hot that even the Sicilians have been grumbling is a cool garden to sit in, cool food and a gathering of the coolest people you know.  All three were on offer at Linda and Gino' s on Sunday evening and what a spread Linda and Chiara had prepared!

There was Parma ham with local cheeses and bocconcini of mozzarella. There were homemade bread rolls plus Linda and Chiara's pizza and focaccia. There were grilled aubergines, little baked, stuffed onions and tomatoes, olives and tiny broad beans from Linda and Gino's garden.  There was also a wonderfully refreshing salad of homegrown lettuce, local cheese and walnuts. Forgive me if I've left anything out, Linda and Chiara!

There were figs from the garden:

In Sicily, it is the custom to take along a dessert when you are invited to lunch or supper so I made my semifreddo di frutti di bosco again:

Linda and Chiara had made peach granita:

Ragusa's best Yorkshire cook, Jean, had made a Bakewell Tart.  [Yes, I do know Bakewell is in Derbyshire!]

And, as you can never have enough ice cream in Sicily, other friends had brought these delights along:

Then there was Modican chocolate:

Grazie, Linda, Chiara e Gino e tutti gli amici!


Frank Sinatra - In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening