One of my favourite books is Tomasi di Lampedusa ‘the Leopard’ about the social and political unrest leading up to the unification of Italy. The novel also describes a sumptuous Sicilian meal of the 19^th century:

“Beneath the candelabra, beneath the five tiers bearing toward the ceiling pyramids of homemade cakes that were never touched, spread the monotonous opulence of buffets at big balls: coralline lobsters boiled alive, waxy chaud-froids of veal, steely-tinted fish immersed in sauce, turkeys gilded by the ovens’ heat, rosy foie gras under gelatin armor, boned woodcock reclining on amber toast decorated with their own chopped insides, and a dozen other cruel, coloured delights.”

I am not sure you can still find gluttony like this – or that anyone would want to – but here are a few Sicilian specialties that should not be missed.

Sicilian street food
For some reason Sicily has a rich and inventive street food tradition, and I am personally willing to walk far down narrow streets to find the best golden fried race balls known as arancini di riso or the deep fried chickpea fritters panella

Anything melanzane
I don’t think I have ever been to a Sicilian restaurant that did not have Pasta alla Norma and in general Sicilians are very good at making the most of aubergine/eggplant.   Just try their ciambotta, parmigiana or carponata. Dishes that could make me convert to vegetarianism.

Inimitable seafood
Being an island with access to three seas Sicily has proud traditions for catching and preparing fish and seafood. Adventurous eaters might want to try the spaghetti with sea urchins (ricci) or boiled octopus (polpo bollito), but you could also settle for a fresh and juicy tuna or sword fish steak.

Pyramids of homemade cakes
The pyramids of homemade cakes mentioned by Tomaso di Lampedusa must include cannoli and cassata along with the traditional marzipan sweets known as ‘frutta martorana’  coloured and shaped to look exactly like real fruit or pastoral animals.

The inventors of ice cream
The Sicilian tradition for making ice cream can be traced back to the 9^th century, long before the invention of artificial cooling. It is said that meandering Arabs introduced a technique for making sorbet or sherbet by mixing fruit juice or honey with ice from the mountains, but it took them several centuries to work out methods for the transportation of sorbet from Mount Etna to and to cafes and ice cream parlours. However, the crushed ice sorbet granite (made with fruit juice) or gremolate (made with fruit pulp) is still a refreshing Sicilian specialty whether it is mixed with coffee, lemon, oranges or green mint syrup.

Apart from 5 foods in Sicily you might also want to try

A Palermo market taste of the Orient

Greek temples in Sicily

Sitting on a cloud sipping Marsala wine

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In Italy the citron or citrus medica grows almost exclusively along the Riviera dei Cedri on the west coast of Calabria, and its is always referred to with awe and reverence. Therefore I have been on the look outfor the fresh fruit for years, and this year I found a couple at my Puglian greengrocer. They were kind of ugly with unshapely lumps and a thick yellow cellulite skin, but this did not affect their fragrance or flavour, before and after interaction with boiled sugar that turned it into succade or candied peel.

Ingredients
500 g cedri – citron (organic lemon and/or orange zest can be used instead)
400 g sugar
50 ml water

Preparation
Wash the fruit carefully and cut it in wedges.
Remove and discard the meat leaving as much of the white inner rind as possible. If you use cedri, the meat most probably has to be carved out with a knife.
Cut the peel in strips or dices and soak it in plenty of cold water for 24 hours.
Change the water regularly, when it starts smelling like a barber shop or the Turkish limon Kolonyasi handwash
Shake off excess water and boil the peel with sugar and a little water for  30 minutes.
Pour the candied peel in sterilized glass jars and keep them like marmelade.
Add a spoonful of candied peel and succade to pound cakes or cold ricotta based desserts like cannoli and cassata
You can also leave the candied peel and succade out to dry on a piece of parchment paper, and cover each strip with chocolate or sugar as homemade confectionery.

Where to use candied peel and succade

Ricotta pudding

Baked cannoli recipe with dried fruit

Cassata Siciliana

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It is not my first visit to Copertino. A typical Puglian town near Nardó famed for being home to the popular Negroamaro rock group and the infamous school bomber arrested in May 2012, but this time I have come to check out an older inhabitant, who happens to be the patron saint of air travelers, pilots, astronauts, people with a mental handicap, test takers, and poor students. Quite a list of protectorates, he has got, so you would think travelers and pilgrims would come queuing.

The guiding signs of a quiet town
They do not. In fact, Copertino seems like a quite little town in late hours of the afternoon when the summer heat become tolerable again after the midday scorch. Still there are signs (of the brown tangible kind) indicating where to look for the history of miracles.

The young Joseph or Giuseppe, as he is called in Italy, was born in a one-room house in 1603, where he grew up as a slow, hot tempered and simple-minded child. His deficiencies made him a bit of a nuisance to his family who treated him harshly and to the Franciscans and the Capuchins who refused to make a monk out of him. At the end, however, the Franciscan monastery accepted him as a servant and gradually he rose to priesthood.

Ready to soar
In the meantime, Joseph had started to mass-produce miracles and he became so popular that his location had to remain hidden like a modern pop star.

Among the miracles was his ability to levitate and fly. Devout prayers would literally lift Saint Joseph off and in Copertino alone there are more than 70 flights on record that have been testified by eye-witnesses.

In Old Calabria , Norman Douglas quotes a few examples:

“Stupendous likewise was the ‘ratto’ (flight or rapture) which he exhibited on a night of Holy Thursday. . . . He suddenly flew towards the altar in a straight line, leaving untouched all the ornaments of that structure; and after some time, being called back by his superior, returned flying to the spot whence he had set out.”

And:

“He flew similarly upon an olive tree . . . and there remained in kneeling posture for the space of half an hour. A marvellous thing it was to see the branch which sustained him swaying lightly, as though a bird had alighted upon it.”

The places to remember
There are no longer monks perched on olive branches in Copertino, and Saint Joseph’s birth home is remarkably minimalistic and modest with some wooden chairs, a statue, a naive painting and a bunch of green potted plants and plastic flowers. You have to know the story to appreciate the special atmosphere of the place.

Still, I enjoyed sitting in the church opposite his parental home thinking of how St. Joseph had alledgedly made the wife of the Spanish Ambassador at the Vatican faint when he flew up over the heads of the congregation to embrace the feet of a statue of Christ and hovered there for a while before descending with his terrifying scream.

Not to mention the most remarkable flight which took place in at a convent in Fossombrone, Marche, where Saint Joseph gyrated about the chapel and made the whole place tremble like an earthquake. Here he also  cast a young sheep into the air, and took flight after it to the height of the trees, where he “remained in kneeling posture, ecstatic and with extended arms, for more than two hours, to the extraordinary marvel of the clergy who witnessed this.”

Some people just know how to fly
Saint Joseph of Copertino performed a variety of other miracles. He multiplied bread and wine, calmed a tempest, drove out devils, caused the lame to walk and the blind to see–all of which are duly attested by eye-witnesses on oath. He detected persons of impure life by their smell, and sinners were revealed to his eyes with their faces coloured black. The backward medieval boy had sure come a long way from his humble Puglian beginning.

I leave Copertino certain in the belief that than some people just know how to fly.

If ‘Who was Saint Joseph of Copertino?’ has you interest, you might also like:

The Charterhouse of Pavia

5 things you might not know about St Peter Basilica in Rome

San Pietro in Bevagna: A divine beach in Puglia

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Ingredients
1 eggplant
4 king prawns
100 g ricotta
1 lemon – juice and zest
1 tbsp grated parmesan
50 g flour
Fresh basil, salt, pepper, olive oil

Preparation
Peel the prawns by twisting off the head and opening the shell. Watch out for the black line running down the back of the prawn. It should be lifted out using the tip of a knife.
Chop up the prawns and sprinkle with lemon juice. Leave it to marinate for a couple of hours until the meat is cooked.
Cut the eggplant lengthwise in very thin slices.
Heat up a non-stick frying pan, sprinkle it with salt and fry the eggplant slices for 30 seconds on both sides.
Stir ricotta with grated parmesan, grated lemon zest, chopped basil, salt, pepper and marinated prawns
Wrap each slice of eggplant around a spoonful of ricotta filling
Powder the eggplant wraps in flour and fry  them until golden brown.

More aubergine/eggplant recipes

Aubergine and onions

Burrata with pickled aubergine

Ciambotta – Aubergine, pepper and potato stew

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Three meager pages are all my battered old Lonely Planet from 1996 dedicates to Molise in central Italy, but the lack of obvious tourist appeal can also be seen as one of the regions finest attractions.

Molise was part of the Abruzzi – then in plural – until 1963, when it became an independent region divided by mountains and ravines that have made communication difficult and helped to preserve a slightly back-ward rural atmosphere. With landscapes and towns still marked by devastating earthquakes and heavy battles during the World War II.

Here are some suggestions on what to see in Molise’s two provinces Campobasso and Isernia.

Around Campobasso
The regional capital Campobasso stands out as one of the most cracked up, divided cities I have ever seen. Deep ravines and valleys make it difficult to get around, so I only caught a glimpse of the old castle Castello Monforte and centro storico on a distant hilltop. The commercial city center is mainly modern and not particularly interesting unless you are a wannabe carabinieri checking out the surroundings of the national military police training academy.

Outside Campobasso you can visit the well preserved Roman ruins in Saepinum. There’s good skiing and  hiking country in Monti del Matese, where you can follow the old tratturi droving trails that join the pastures of Abruzzo with Puglia. And Termoli on the Adriatic coast is a fantastic summer holiday destination, if you want to combine beach life with trademark shopping, old fishing traditions and historic drama. The short stretch of coast offers wide sandy beaches surrounded by dunes and pinewoods. There is colourful local life and medieval sites to observe around the charming borgo. And the emerald waters of the three magic Tremiti islands are only a ferry away.

Isernia and one of the oldest settlements in Europe
The historic centre of Isernia is a well restored beauty, complete with an original Roman cardo maximus  fanning out into a labyrinth of narrow streets and alleys. The town is believed to have been one of the oldest settlements in Europe as archeologists have found 700,000 year old traces of fire used by humans. And there are other places of archeological interest in the area like the charming hilltowns Pietrabbondante and Venafro. Other places to note are the village Agnone that has specialized in bellfounding. Frosolone which is well known for knife forging. And Scapoli where they have this thing – and a museum – about bagpipes.

In other words there are lots of interesting stuff to discover in Molise.

More suggestions on what to see in Molise

Molise History

Trabucchi fishing in Termoli

Termoli and the annual pirate attacks

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It is basically the same dish and the creamy mushroom pasta sauce always turns out rich and good in the end.

Ingredients
250 g porcini or fresh white mushrooms
100 g cured ham (pancetta or prosciutto crudo)
½ lemon (juice)
250 ml double cream
1 dl vegetable stock
1 clove of garlic
Butter, salt, pepper,
Fresh basil

Preparation
Clean the mushrooms and cut off the bottoms.
Slice ham and mushrooms
Sprinkle the sliced mushrooms with lemon juice to prevent them from turning brown.
Fry the mushrooms in butter until the liquid evaporates.
Turn down the heat and let the mushrooms simmer with the sliced ham.
Use a different frying pan to fry the peeled and sliced garlic in butter. Make sure it doesn’t burn.
Pour cream and vegetable stock over the garlic and cook the sauce until thick and creamy
Balance the creamy sauce with salt, pepper and lemon juice before pouring it over mushrooms and ham.
Serve creamy mushroom pasta sauce with tagliatelle or fettuccine pasta.

Other great pasta sauces

Roasted pepper sauce for pasta

Walnut sauce for pasta in less than 10 minutes

Pasta with zucchini and anchovies

Pasta with squash and saffron

Pasta sun dried tomatoes and balsamic vinegar

Creamy mushroom pasta sauce

The post Creamy mushroom pasta sauce appeared first on Italian Notes.

A Charterhouse is a Carthusian monastery which in my mind was linked to seclusion, modesty and asceticism and there was nothing in the flat landscape covered by a thick early morning mist to challenge this impression. I was therefore rather surprised to see the line-up of tourist coaches coughing out hundreds of Italian visitors from all over the country at the parking lot of Certosa di Pavia.

A high wall surrounding the entire structure made it impossible to catch a glimpse of the hidden treasures, and you could hear people gasp when they entered the courtyard and saw the exuberant facade of statues, reliefs and inlaid marble. It was like the church equivalent of a full-body tattoo and I spent about an hour just glaring at all the sculptures and decorations. The effect was so overwhelming I completely forgot to notice the frescoes and stained glass window in the church, just as I did not sign up for one of the guided walks around the cloister gardens. We did manage to take a peek view of one of the enclosures with open arcades running along the inner walls of the buildings, but then a sinister looking monk gave me the look indicating that we were trespassing.

Still, I was happy with the front of the church and a cursory knowledge of the 600 year history of this charterhouse which is probably not the one made famous in a novel Stendhal in 1839 even though there are more than phonetic affinities between Parma and Pavia.

Still, the Charterhouse of Pavia has played other roles in world history. On August 13, 1946, the paper Reading Eagle reported that the ‘body of Mussolini had been found in trunk at Pavia monastery’. The badly battered body of the fascist leader had been displayed in the Milan square before it was buried in an unmarked grave. From there it was exhumed by grave robbers identifying themselves as democratic fascists. Apparently the body was kept hidden in a trunk in the Charterhouse of Pavia for four months, before it was rediscovered by the police and two monks were arrested. The ensuing scandal closed the monastery for three years.

Today the Charterhouse of Pavia is open to the public during regular visiting hours.

If you are interested in the Charterhouse of Pavia, you might also like

5 things you might not know about St Peter Basilica in Rome

Stilo – World Heritage in Calabria

The cathedral of Milan

View Larger Map

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According to the Italian Wikipedia, grissini breadsticks were invented in 1679 upon request of the Torino courts doctor. Apparently the you Vittorio Amedeo II di Savoia could not digest breadcrumbs, so the courts baker Antonio Brunero was asked to develop a bread without a crumb. It soon became widely popular thanks to the fact that the long breadsticks could keep for weeks without deteriorating.

The classic grissini breadsticks are 40-80 cm long, but I find the shorter version more manageable.

Ingredients
2½ g dry yeast
200 tepid water
300 g flour
2 tsp salt
50 ml olive oil
Sesame seeds

Preparation
Dissolve the yeast in warm water
Mix flour and salt
Stir water and olive oil into the flour to make a dough
Knead vigorously for a looong time
Coat the dough in olive oil and leave it in a bowl sealed with cling film for 1 hour
Cut the dough in quarters and shape one quarter at a time, while the other quarters remain under the cling film.
Cut each quarter in 8 pieces and roll them into breadsticks
Dip some of the sticks in sesame seeds and place them on a pan covered in baking paper
Bake at 180 C / 360 F for 15-20 minutes until they are thoroughly dry
Don’t leave the grissini breadsticks while they are in the oven, as they burn easily and the temperature and timing vary with the size of the sticks.
Use grissini breadsticks as an aperitif or wrap cured ham, pancetta or lardo around them and serve them as an antipasto.

More breads and savoury pastries

Cheese puff pastry

Castagnaccio chestnut bread

Pastry with spinach and feta

Focaccia with herbs

Quiche with tuna fish

Grissini breadstick recipe

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Graffiti has been known in Italy since the ancient Romans, who decorated the walls of Pompeii and the catacomb with declarations of love, curses and magic spells. In fact the word ‘Graffiti’ derives from the Italian word ‘graffiare’ meaning to scratch something into a surface, and people in Italy still write their passions on the walls. Though lately – it seems to me – subject matters have changed from ‘Ti amo’ and ‘Forza La Juve’ to political statements. Could be, that  graffiti in Italy has gone from personal to political in order to reflect the current economic crisis. After all, the sense of crisis has become almost palpable in the south over the past months, where out-of-work Italians have taken up begging in competition with Romas and illegal immigrants.

The present graffiti examples have been collected in cities from Trento in north to Lecce in the south within the last year. And there are plenty of artistic uses of both aerosol cans and stencils to cheer up the otherwise rather depressing concrete walls.

Several of the statements refer to the ‘no TAV’ (“Treno ad Alta Velocità”) movement that started as a protest against high-speed trains in particular the railroads from Lyon in France to Torino. There are also a couple of juicy slogans about rebels and police uniforms. And the rather sad pollution warning, which could be seen all over Taranto a few days before the local  ‘lavoro o salute’ (work or health) referendum where no one wanted to vote.

Goes to prove that you can still read a lot about a society by reading the messages on the walls.

If you are interested in Grafitti in Italy you might also like these other notes on Italian street life

Italy and the love lock fad

Urban legend: Shoe tossing in Catania

Rome wall plaques: Those who came before Kilroy

The post Graffiti in Italy appeared first on Italian Notes.

Ingredients
250 g ricotta
125 g mascarpone
2 egg yolks
3 tbsp powdered sugar
1 small cup very strong espresso

Chocolate beans and chocolate biscuit sticks to decorate

Preparation
Start by making the espresso coffee, in order to give it time to cool.
Beat powdered sugar with egg yolks until whitish
Fold in ricotta and mascarpone and stir by hand until smooth and creamy
Fold in the cold espresso coffee
Pour the mousse in serving glasses and refrigerate for 2-3 hours or more.
Decorate this coffee mousse recipe with chocolate beans and chocolate sticks before serving.

If you want to make your own chocolate beans, bring 1 tbsp water and 1 tbsp sugar to the boil.
Melt 25 g dark chocolate over a water bath.
Pour the melted sugar in the melted chocolate while whisking vigorously
Set chocolate beans on a piece of parchment paper and let them cool.

Other desserts with a taste of coffee

Coffee walnut cake with mascarpone filling

Coffee puddings: coffee on a fork

Original Tiramisu

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