My previous blog was the theory – here’s the practical.
I hope you enjoyed the ‘food through invasions’ blog – I decided on the theme and then found some great websites that gave me so much information, but it was fun researching it. The trouble is now, every time we see a food stuff (e.g., figs), Richard asks me which culture introduced it. He’s obviously not read the blog.
I’m going to try to avoid just writing a list of meals we have eaten here, although it will undoubtedly be a little like that, so apologies in advance.
I’m going to start with Trapani, our port of arrival from Sardinia after the overnight crossing. We were both feeling a bit bushed, and couldn’t be bothered doing anything on board, but the marina pointed us towards a nearby restaurant. We went straight for a typical Sardinian dish of mussel soup. I may have said before that this is not a creamy potage but a base of tomato stock in which the mussels are steamed. I’m only including this one as I sent it to my sister with a caption “mussels with croutons” and she sent it back saying “Croutons? More like breeze blocks!”
Richard has described how we visited the mountain top village of Erice twice when we were berthed in Trapani. On our second visit, we spent quite a lot of the day dodging the showers, and dived into a restaurant for lunch when a heavy downpour came over. We could not have chosen a better place to eat. There was a sharing platter of typical Sicilian seafoods. It included: octopus; bruschetta with tuna; caponata (an aubergine stew I will come back to) with tuna; arancini rice balls; fried calamari squid; tuna “agrodolce” (the sweet and sour flavour that was introduced by the Romans) and sardines. It was beautifully cooked and presented, and we tried each of the mini-dishes together so we could discuss it (you really wouldn’t want to have lunch with us). Most of what we said was “Mmmm”, and other words to that effect.
Caponata… I am sure you will have come across this before. It’s a long, slow-cooked dish of onions, peppers, celery, capers and aubergines etc., and cooked until it is almost a thick, sweet and sour relish rather than a casserole. I have always wanted to try this at home, but you are supposed to deep-fry the aubergine, and we don’t have a deep fat fryer. And don’t want to try it in an ordinary pan. As a quick aside, the Guardian does a recipe series called “How to cook the perfect…”, where they take a recipe (such as caponata or moussaka) and try out the recipe published by a number of chefs. They comment on what they liked / disliked about it, and then put together their own recipe based on the best bits across all of them. For the caponata, the chefs include: Anna Del Conte (Italian chef and food writer); Ruth Rogers / Rose Gray (River Café); Ottolenghi (my food hero); Giorgio Locatelli (Italian chef in London, and does Italian Masterchef).
Richard loves caponata, but without deep-frying I have compromised and made it as a casserole on top of the stove. As our two gas rings are quite fierce – I think they are for boiling kettles not slow cooking food – I turn the gas on and off over the course of a few hours. I wouldn’t do it with chicken, but I think vegetables are fine. Instead of vinegar and sugar, I use a lot of balsamic vinegar, and have also slopped in quite a lot of that plastic bottle of red wine I bought. We eat it as a stew, and we then put left-over as a sauce with fresh pasta. But no pecorino on this.
By the way – the fruit and veg shop where I bought the now-famous 2-litre bottle of red wine also persuaded me to buy some fresh ricotta cheese, which we ate with the delicious honey from Jean-Luc and Brigitte in France. They are friends of Sari and Thorne, and led us astray with a lot of local Corbière wine earlier in the year!
After Trapani, we sailed around to Castellammare del Golfo, and had a couple of nights there. This was the scene of the famous car hire and Sicilian roads! We did go out for dinner one night, and had a gorgeous starter of local oysters, and also sardine balls, but had the absolute best ever risotto, with a local red prawn tartare on top, and with a whole burrata mozzarella to spread over it. Creamy and rich. Superb!
We visited Cefalu, which was a delightful town. We did our sightseeing and then called for a light lunch (ha ha). For a change I eschewed the usual fish-based pasta, and went for a ravioli stuffed with cheese, lemon and grated pistachio nuts. Thanks there to the Greeks for the cheese, and the North Africans for the lemon and pistachios. It had a sauce of smoked wild boar lardons (thanks to the Normans and possibly the Ostrogoths for the abattoir) and crumbled pistachios. With it I had a fizzy water – not sure who to thank there!
While in Palermo, we ate lunch out while sightseeing. Wet, dark weather makes you glad to be aboard sometimes in the evening. One day we shared a raw fish platter, and the next, a huge plate of charcuterie and cheeses. Both tasty and well-presented. What a great city Palermo is. We expected it to be edgy and dirty, based on reports we’d read. But honestly, there’s so much to see and so many great bars and restaurants. We loved it.
We are now in the Aeolian Islands, and spent the first two nights anchored off San Pietro in Panarea. Apparently, this is the island where all the celebs hang out, like Lady Gaga, Will Smith, Orlando Bloom, Oprah Winfrey etc. We haven’t recognised anyone, but the resort has prices to match I can tell you. We did eat lunch out one day at the “Bar del Porto” - we both had a plate of extremely large pasta tubes [Ed, rigatoni] with a sauce of local oysters and sea urchins. I have eaten sea urchins with Sari and Thorne in their local oyster shack, but here the prized orange coral is used to give the umami flavour by either adding it to seafood sauces, or sprinkling it on top of other seafood. When we first arrived back to Arbatax to pick up Missy Bear, we had little sea urchins in filo pastry as a starter.
The apero of choice for a lot of people is the Aperol Spritzer, which I talked about in my Sardinia blogs, and of course it is found everywhere here too. But Sicily also produces some great wines. We found ourselves near the marina in Palermo on Friday night, and decided that we should stop for a drink before heading back to cook on board. We both had a very nice glass of local Prosecco. As we were having such a fun time, we decide to have another drink – I had a very dry white from grapes grown on the side of Mount Etna. It was extremely minerally, I don’t think R was too keen. He had a glass of local red. By now we were hungry but the bar didn’t do their own food… What they do is head out to the nearest takeaway and bring back a carton of delicious salt, fat and carbs, namely croquettes, chips and we forget what else was in there. It was gorgeous: from the absolute sublime to the ridiculous.