Foods of Sicily and Sardinia and the Smaller Islands Reviewed by Ruth Paget
I purchased Foods of Sicily & Sardinia and the Smaller Islands (Elba, Giglio, Capri, and Ischia) by Giuliano Bugialli after vacationing in the Sicilian city of Arcireale between Taormina and Syracuse when my husband Laurent and I lived in Stuttgart, Germany.
Bugialli writes that Sicily has been at the crossroads of war and invasion for centuries beginning with the tug-of-war between ancient Rome and Carthage. Even Swabian Germans from the area around Stuttgart had been invaders of Sicily at one time.
The Sicilians have developed a civilizations that is able to withstand misery, maintain cultural values, and eventually become rich enough to entice new invaders to chase out the old ones. I wanted to see what I could learn about survival in the 21st century from my trip there and used Bugialli’s cookbook to ferret out some great recipes and clues about how towns and lifestyle are organized in Sicily from the book’s photos.
I chose the following four recipes to show how inventive the Sicilian are with vegetables, olive oil, lemons, oranges, red wine vinegar, herbs, and fish (California has all these ingredients and can do the same thing by the way.):
*melanzane marinate (grilled and marinated eggplant)
This dish calls for a marinade that will later double as a sauce. You marinate eggplant slices in a mix made with anchovies, garlic cloves, rosemary leaves, sage leaves, lemon juice, oregano, and olive oil. You then grill the eggplant and use the marinade as a sauce.
*zucchini marinate (grilled and marinated zucchini)
For this dish, you grill zucchini slices in olive oil and then let them marinate in a mix of olive oil, salt, basil leaves, mint leaves, salt and pepper, and red wine vinegar.
*pesce all erbe aromatiche (swordfish or tuna fish marinated in aromatic herbs)
For this recipe, fish strips are sautéed in olive oil and then marinated in a sauce made with mint leaves, verbena leaves, basil leaves, parsley, sage leaves, rosemary leaves, capers, oregano leaves, red onion slices, lemon juice, olive oil, and red wine vinegar.
*insalata di arance (orange salad)
This recipe is made with peeled orange slices laid out on a serving dish with chopped celery hearts and walnuts strewn on top of the orange slices. The oranges are then drizzled with olive oil and red wine vinegar and salt and pepper.
In addition to well-written recipes, this cookbook provides cultural information with photographs about sheep shearing, the Vucciaia Market in Palermo, and the Sicilian cassata Easter cake.
To enhance meals out to Sicilian restaurants in the United States or travel to Sicily, reading Foods of Sicily & Sardinia and the Smaller Islands by Giuliano Bugialli can serve as a great reference.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
