November 2, 2010
(first published Nov 2, 2009)
A few years ago, I wanted to buy a ruin of a house on a solitary road out beyond the Ragusa cemetery. Sicilian friends (perfectly rational, well-educated ones) said I was matta, insane, that I’d be visited at night by dead souls.
“What do you mean?” I hollered. “I live two blocks from a cemetery in the US and I’ve never seen a ghost!”
They looked at me mournfully and insisted that the danger was real. They themselves would absolutely never pay me a visit there!
So I gave up the idea of that house with its faded pink walls, shocked at how alive the dead are in Sicily.
Sicilian cemeteries are always set well outside of town behind imposing walls. Below is the Scicli cemetery, full of mausoleums, magnificent pines and tall cypress.
Cemeteries here are well-tended, with custodians and on-site florists. They seem to be open most of the day, even during the long lunch break.
Many of the tombs show pictures of the dead.
Streets have names, just like in a real town.
Today is il Giorno dei Morti, Day of the Dead. Sicilian families flock to cemeteries—arms overflowing with lilies, mums, roses, and daisies—to spend time with their dearly departed.
October 30, 2010
“They pour themselves one over the other like so much melted butter over parsnips,” writes D.H. Lawrence about Sicilians in Sea and Sardinia. “So terribly physically all over one another.”
“And that is how they are.”
I love melted butter over parsnips. How about you?
***
 D.H. Lawrence lived in Sicily (Taormina) from 1920 to 1022. Here is a 1922 New York Times article about his life there.
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Oct 27, 2010
Here’s a good chilly-weather recipe. It takes only minutes to prepare (plus an hour in the oven). Light a crackling fire, pour a tumbler of wine, and cozy up.
The recipe comes from Giovanna Bellia La Marca’s Sicilian Feasts, chock-full of simple home-style recipes. This one may remind you of something from Northern Italy or Bavaria, but I can vouch that baked sausage and potatoes is a very typical dish in southeast Sicily.
Ingredients (for 6-8)
2 pounds Italian hot or sweet sausage, or a combination
6 baking potatoes cut in wedges (I used fingerlings instead)
2 bell peppers (red or yellow) cut in wedges
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
sprinkle of dried oregano
salt and pepper to taste
xxxxxx
Directions
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Separate the sausage links. Place the sausages, potatoes, and peppers in a large baking pan. Add the olive oil, oregano, salt, and pepper, and mix well. Bake for an hour, stirring the contents of the pan twice during baking to be sure nothing sticks to the pan. Serve with a good crusty bread.
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October 23, 2010
Forests of prickly pears glitter with sunset-colored fruit: burning orange and deepest pink. The fall crop is so abundant in Sicily that most of it plops down onto roadways to rot in the sun—roadkill for nectar-seeking wasps and honeybees.
I gave the prickly pear, called fico d’india—literally, fig of India—the cold shoulder for quite a while after my first experience peeling one. Who knew to put on gloves? The invisible barbs lodged deep into my fingertips. I spend hours armed with tweezers squinting on my sunlit balcony, extracting them one by one.
But now I’ve found a happy solution: I drink my prickly pears.
Either in liqueur form …
… Or in sweet granita—seeds and all. It tastes like watermelon juice imbued with banana-y blood oranges. Of course I worried that a prickly pear plant would sprout in my stomach after this granita, but so far so good.
Have you tried the prickly creatures? Discovered a danger-free way to eat them?
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October 18, 2010
I once saw my friend Giò drop a heel of bread on the floor. She scooped it up like it was a newborn chick and tenderly kissed it.
“That’s what we do here in Sicily,” she laughed. “Bread is everything for us. Jesus is in the bread. It must always sit on its bottom, for example. And we never toss it away. That’s a sin.”
“Well, what if it gets old?”
“We make breadcrumbs from it. If it’s turning green with mold, we kiss it and apologize to Jesus.”
I once made Easter breads with an 86-year-old woman who’s never been off the island. She said a prayer as she popped the bread into the oven.
To Saint Anthony, handsome and good.
The angel passes and leaves his blessing, the angel passed and left his blessing.
May the Ragusan bread rise as big as a field, may the country bread rise as big as a mountain.
Saint Anthony is not the only person Sicilian women turn to for help with baking. Some pray to Saint Clement (“Let the bread not have a bubble!”) or directly to Mary and Jesus themselves.
I didn’t dare tell my friend Giò that as kids we made spitballs with bread, or that as an adult I’ve carelessly trashed scores of half-eaten loaves. That would be the ultimate blasphemy here.
***
What food do you revere?
***
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All photos and text on BaroqueSicily are Copyright of Jann Huizenga ©2009-2015, unless otherwise noted. Material may not be copied or re-published without written permission. All rights reserved.
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