January 10, 2010
In my new incarnation as a siciliana, I look around wide-eyed. Then I
mimic
copy
follow
ape
echo.
Above is my version of the famous staircase at Caltagirone. The 25 tiled steps are disturbingly steep and narrow, a sheer cliff that I scale like a mountaineer.
The real deal in baroque Caltagirone is wide and grand—142 steps high and the size of a two-lane highway.
 
The old scala—tiled in the 1950s—bears motifs from as far back as the 10th century and bursts with vivid Caltagirone colors: sunny citrus, shiny indigo, acid green. There are mythic birds and beasts, nobles, flowers, and geometric designs. Sicilians learned majolica production from the Arabs, who had a “monumental influence” on Sicily, and many of the Escher-like designs of North African zellij found their way here.
My tumbledown staircase turned into an ordeal, the way these things do. The work dragged on for a year and a half, longer than it took to tile the entire grand staircase at Caltagirone.
Come è possibile, you ask?
Well, I measured only one step before placing the entire order for 100 hand-painted tiles, assuming the steps were of equal size.
Oh, you naïve straniera you.
My stonemason shook his head sadly and managed to grind down some of the tiles without spoiling the designs too much—and even chink-chinked away at some of the too-small steps. But for the too-big steps I measured again, ordered again, waited again, dashed back and forth to Caltagirone, waited some more.
Not only that: I had to sack the mason for an unrelated disaster in the middle of things (a blog topic for later if I dare).
In the end, though, my pesky staircase has gotten hold of my heart. It’s sweet. “Nun si mancia meli senza muschi,” as Sicilians say. You can’t eat honey without flies.
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January 3, 2010
In early 2008 I met an American engineer at a moving sale he and his wife were hosting at their posh apartment in Rome. He’d been twiddling his thumbs for two years in Italy, waiting around to start work on the suspension bridge to Sicily. Prodi was in, Berlusconi was out, and Berlusconi’s plans for the bridge had been scrapped. I bought some throw pillows from the engineer and wished him well. I was glad to see him give up and go home.
Well, Berlusconi is in again—with what seems like a vice grip on Italy—and the bridge project is very much back. In fact, there was some shoving around of dirt at the construction site near Reggio Calabria on December 23, sort of a faux inauguration, and I’m sad. They’ll ravage the fragile Straits of Messina—home to the mythic Scylla and Charybdis—with tons of concrete and sludge, pillars tall as the Empire State Building, and the greed of developers and mafia bosses.
Sicily should retain her mystique as an island, remain physically and culturally discrete. OK, it’s true that I’m a reactionary here. I want to give the local populace a good shake and say, Stop, amici! Dust off your accordions. Don your native costumes. Bring back the public baths. Make Sicilian the official language. Return to the puppet theater of your vanished world.
But most of my Sicilian friends agree with me about the bridge. Yes, we know it’s a royal pain to wait in those lines for the ferry. Yes, Messina’s a mess to drive through. But doesn’t Italy have more worthy projects? Like finishing the A3 highway between Reggio and Naples? Saving L’Acquila? Improving rail service in Sicily and the rest of southern Italy? Solving the perennial water crisis of inland Sicily? Preserving Sicily’s endangered antiquities? Preventing landslides in Messina?
Is this bridge a monument to ego? Something like the Foro Mussolini or the Vittoriano (“chopped,” as Peter Davy wrote, “with terrible brutality into the…hill”)?
Ach! Spare Sicily, per carità, from mass tourism, environmental brutality, and what D.H. Lawrence called “hateful homogeneous world-oneness.”
What do you think? I’d love to hear from you. Buon anno a tutti.
For more on the subject click here or here.
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December 23, 2009
Happy Holidays, dear Reader. If you’re in southeast Sicily at the moment, the Duomo Restaurant in Ragusa Ibla would be a memorable place for a holiday splurge. It’s formal, festive and fun. Calme, luxe et volupté.
Chef Ciccio Sultano—the only chef on the island with two Michelin stars—is a humble genius.
Il Duomo is just behind Ibla’s curlicued Baroque cathedral and so close to my house I could lob a fat olive from my balcony and hit it. I’ve eaten da Ciccio four times and have always emerged elated, sated.
My sister and I celebrated her birthday there in 2007 with one of the prix-fixe tasting menus. I’ll never forget a plate called Earth, Sky, and Sea—a lemon-sauced antipasto of rare pigeon and plump oysters on a bed of whipped potatoes. Astounding. I felt a little sad about the pigeon and wondered if he was related to the flock of pink-eyed birds that nest in my roof tiles. Chef Himself made an appearance bearing a vibrant tomato sorbet “to cleanse the palate.” Next up: ricotta cheese ravioli in a pasture-green puddle of puréed fava beans. A long parade of goodies ended with carob mousse swimming in ricotta cream and, finally, sorbetto di mandorla, almond sorbet.
In June 2009 I celebrated there with two friends, Rosamund and Roberta. We guzzled a bubbly prosecco so fast that the details of our feast are a bit fuzzy, but who could forget the starter: Sicilian truffle gelato—with black truffles from the Nebrodi Mountains south of Messina—on crostini. I laughed out loud as I picked it up and nibbled it like an ice cream sandwich—crusty-soft and savory-sweet (sounds odd but it was heaven). What kind of a man invents this? Here’s a photo—can you see the gelato peaking out from the crostini and truffle slices?
A few hours into the meal, these gorgeous goat chops stuffed with chickpeas, liver and parsley appeared in front of me:
This was Rosamund’s seafood dish:
My latest meal there, in October, was equally amazing. The grand-finale nearly killed us—a bianco mangiare alla mandorla served together with a sorbetto di pera con mosto.
Chef Sultano is known for his innovate approach to Sicilian cuisine, but the creations are not random. “Sperimentare ma nel solco della tradizione,” he says. Experiment, but within the groove of tradition. His dishes change according to the seasons.
You can find cooking videos (in Italian) on his website, ristoranteduomo.it, including one for pistachio couscous.
Look at this. I couldn’t tell you exactly what it was, but don’t you think it’s an abstract/painterly/sculptural masterpiece?
Closed all day Sunday and Mondays at lunch. Tel. ++39 0932 651265
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December 12, 2009
Girls, would you let this fellow…?
Well, I did. Not only did I let him sell me a melon far bigger than I could ever eat, I let him feed me some. Its November flesh was pinky-orange, perfumed, and so overripe and juicy that I was dribbling like a love-struck fool.
The man could have sold me just about anything—rotten apples, stinking fish, whatever.
When my sister, an Angeleno, arrived in Sicily for the first time several years ago, she took a look around and said, “Very pretty men. We should be Hollywood scouts.”
They’re like stallions, Sicilian men—tossing thick manes and flashing wild black eyes, putting out cigarettes as if they’re pawing the ground with a hoof.
Not everyone is impressed. Seated at a cafe on a Sunday afternoon, while my sister and I murmured our approval of the preening Antonio Banderas-types trotting up and down the street, my Sicilian friends Giò and Rosaria, 30-something divorcees, pulled sour faces. “Horrid!” they cried. “Horrid!”
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December 7, 2009
Sicilian director Giuseppe Tornatore’s new autobiographical epic, Baarìa, has been out here for a few months. I haven’t seen it yet but love the poster, which looks great in the context of Sicily.
Below are shots of Teatro Garibaldi in Piazza Armerina and a wall in Modica.
An American friend saw the film first in Bologna and then in Palermo. She said there was much more laughter in Palermo—the audience was apparently picking up on the director’s “in” jokes.
Baarìa, by the way, is dialect for Bagherìa—a town on the coast just east of Palermo where Tornatore grew up.
Here’s a short review of the film in the Guardian.
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