July 24, 2010
Everyone’s doin’ it. Wearing viola, that is.
Someone up North in Milano must have recently decreed that the masses wear purple. Or perhaps they issued the edict last year and the news took a while to filter down to Sicily. Whatever. The color is everywhere and stepping into the piazza on a warm summer night feels like stepping into a fieldful of blooming violets.
    
Are you wearing it, too?
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Here’s Lucy (below right). She’s a reader from Toronto (see her comment on this post) and wanted to be included as a Sicilian in purple. Happy to oblige!
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July 19, 2010
Sicilians love their mare in summer. There’s been a mass exodus from the inland baroque towns; everyone’s hit the beach. The odd thing is that when Sicilians “go on vacation,” they travel en bloc, with all their friends and neighbors. So Ragusani move 15 kilometers away to the summer village of Marina di Ragusa for July and August; Modicani move to Marina di Modica; people from Noto go to Marina di Noto—you get the picture.
“Why would you want to go on holiday to a place where you don’t know anybody?” asks a Ragusan friend when I express surprise at this herd behavior.
Those who can’t afford a second home in Marina pitch tents on the beach and mingle with extended families from sunup to sundown, gobbling up gelato and platefuls of pasta alla Norma. Just before the Festival of San Giovanni Battista on August 29, everyone migrates back to Ragusa, as if a mighty shepherd is herding them all back at once.
    
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July 15, 2010
A working kitchen has finally emerged from the rubble like a phoenix rising. After two nail-biting years. No longer do I boil up boxed soup on a hot plate, despair, mix paint around with a carrot stick, despair, write on a plaster-encrusted sawhorse lit by a bare bulb. I have a real table, lights, a working stovetop. Not just any stovetop, amici, but a Renzo Piano one. (Renzo Piano is the Italian architect who designed the Pompidou Center, the new wing of the Chicago Art Institute, etc.) The stovetop is a piece of impeccable Italian design, though tricky to light and hard to clean (makes perfect sense as form usually trumps function in Italy).
Flies buzz in tight circles. The Iblean light beats in every morning, shining off the mirror-like floor.
The centerpiece of the kitchen is the cathedral dome out the window, and the soundtrack to my life are the bells, scaring me out of bed at 7am, marking the passing of each quarter hour, ringing for the dead, for weddings, for evening vespers, for morning mass, and for festa—four crazy-making days straight.
I love my Sicilian kitchen, and I’m grateful for each day I spend there. (What are you grateful for? Come on, tell us.)
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July 12, 2010
The street sweepers here wear suits bright as orange rind and dance with twig brooms.
I see them in the early morning as I stumble across the piazza in the direction of a latte macchiato. They clear the streets of bougainvillea petals and the debris of summer weddings: hearts of confetti, bottles of Asti, handfuls of rice.
And every morning I pray, “Please Signor Sweeper, hold tight! Hold fast to those twigs. Don’t go all plasticky on me.”
I want to weep when I see the changes sweeping Sicily, her Americanization: the new shopping malls plunked down among the olives, the SUVs, the McDonald’s in Upper Ragusa (though grazie a Dio the one in nearby Modica went belly-up).
So I savor the twigs. Because someday soon they’ll disappear, never to return.
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July 8, 2010
 I’m trying to learn the Sicilian art of slow living, so my Sicilian self often sits down for a leisurely hot lunch at midday. Today’s was exceptional. Made by moi for moi.
But, really, all the credit goes to Giovanna Giglio, a cooking teacher in Ragusa.
 Giovanna in her garden My niece and I took classes with her in June; this is just one of her wonderful recipes. Super easy! Prep and cooking time less than 10 minutes. If you’re interested in lessons with Giovanna, contact me. She’s fun and inexpensive. Though she says she’s “just a housewife who cooks like all other Ragusan housewives,” she’ll be featured in Saveur magazine next spring baking her Easter breads.
TUNA WITH ONIONS
Ingredients (serves 4)
*fresh tuna fillets for 4 (about a 1/2-inch thick)
*olive oil
*2-4 large onions
*10-15 cherry tomatoes
*capers
*fresh oregano
*salt and pepper
1. Coat the tuna fillets lightly with flour. This will allow the fish to cook quickly and will seal in the juices. Heat olive oil in a large frying pan. Cook the tuna for a minute or two on each side until golden. Remove from pan.
2. Cut the onions in half and then cut them thinly into moon-shaped pieces (they’re pretty this way but can also be sliced any which way). Add them to the oil and juices already in the pan (add a bit more oil if needed). Fry until slightly wilted and golden.
3. Add the cherry tomatoes to the pan until they soften (you can mush them with a fork).
4. Add capers to taste. If you’re using salt-preserved capers, be sure to rinse them before adding. (I used to be caper-phobic, but now that I know to rinse these babies, I’m quite smitten.)
 Rinse the capers! 5. Put the tuna back into the frying pan, add the fresh oregano, salt and pepper and let everything simmer for a few minutes so that the tuna is infused with the flavor of the other ingredients.
6. Remove everything to a serving platter. The dish is good served hot, but even better served at room temperature. (You can let the tuna sit out for a couple hours. Refrigerate if you’re going to serve it the next day.)
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