If you hear food vendors at a Sicilian market shouting bastardoni - big bastards – don’t be offended.  They’re just hawking their wares, which are autumn prickly pears from cactus plants. 

The wild and wonderful food markets in Sicily are a blast to shop in and we always look forward to buying a case of bastardoni.  These are the fattest, most succulent fruit of the cactus plant, harvested in the fall in eastern Sicily.

The smaller variety of prickly pears, sometimes known as agostani for the fact that they ripen in August, are generically known as fichi d’India - Indian figs. They do not come from India nor have any relation to figs, which goes to show you that you can name things any way you want, but what’s important is eating them. 

The bastardoni are the most highly prized prickly pears because they are bigger and juicier, and are a result of cutting off the first cactus flowers in late spring, a procedure known as the scozzolatura.  This results in a second flowering of the cactus plant.  The fruits then ripen in the fall during the rainier season, which produces juicy plump fruits.  

Cactus plants were often grown as a sort of fence between neighbors in Sicily, and the prickly pear fruits were a handy thirst-quenching  treat when working in the fields.

According to a Sicilian legend, the practice of the scozzolatura began because of a feud over property lines between neighboring farmers.  In a fit of anger, one farmer cut off the flowers of his neighbor’s cactus, in an attempt to destroy his neighbor’s prickly pear crop. Instead, the cactus bore fruit later in the season, and the prickly pears were much larger and juicier than normal.  Soon the practice of the scozzolatura became widespread, and this “bastardized” version of prickly pears was born.   In some areas of eastern Sicily, there are now cactus plantations that are irrigated, which produce the beautiful bastardoni found in Sicilian markets through December.  

If you want to try eating bastardoni, the first step is to peel it, or better yet, get someone to do the peeling for you.  The peel is studded with fine prickly spines that like to imbed themselves in delicate flesh, and can be an uncomfortable nuisance for days.  Many Sicilian restaurants serve seasonal fruit including prickly pears, so you can let the waiter peel and you just taste.   

Cutting back the peel, you’ll be surprised by the color of the prickly pear fruit, which can be deep yellow, pure white, or a stunning crimson.  The fruit has a slight floral  fragrance reminiscent of citrus, and a very mild flavor, like a pear with an identity crisis.  The juicy pulp is punctuated by an enormous number of seeds that Sicilians simply swallow. It is not a fruit to everyone’s taste, but big bastards seldom are.

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I like a man who is serious about sweets.  Giuseppe Trapani, a 4th generation torrone maker in Sicily, fits the bill.

When he welcomed me into the Torronificio Trapani, he’d already been at work since 4.00 am preparing the first batch of his secret family recipe for torrone.  Since torrone is a traditional sweet in Italy at Christmas time, Giuseppe’s Christmas season begins the first of October, when his torronificio goes into high gear, making 2 batches of torrone a day.  That’s about 70 kilos (155 lbs) of torrone, which seemed like an enormous amount to me, but Giuseppe told me that it had already been reserved for customers.

In the spotless kitchen of the Torronificio Trapani, the air is suffused with the fragrance of honey.   Several people sat at a marble table busily wrapping tiny chocolate-covered torroncini, big pans of toasted almonds were being pulled out of the oven, and a machine held a huge mixing bowl where a combination of honey and egg whites was being heated and stirred, becoming a thick white cream.  I’d stepped into torrone heaven.

I’d already done extensive tasting of almond nougat from some very good artisan torrone makers (forget the commercial ones, which are like eating a sickeningly sweet sponge mixed with sawdust and ersatz flavorings) but when I first tasted Torrone Trapani, it was clearly the best, and I was here to get to the sweet heart of the matter.

Giuseppe explains what makes his torrone so good: high quality ingredients and no skimping on the almonds.  (Of course, there is also the secret to his recipe, which he isn’t revealing.) While some large-scale commercial producers of torrone use as little as 10% of almonds in their product,  Torronificio Trapani uses close to 70%.  The almonds are locally grown, not the cheap imported ones, or the California almonds that Giuseppe pronounced to be “woody and tasteless”.  His  almonds come from the highly prized almond varieties grown near Noto, and they are slowly toasted to a rich golden brown. The honey he uses is also local, and is fragrant of orange blossoms, which contributes to the torrone’s unique taste.

Giuseppe was constantly on the move – in fact he never stood still long enough for me to snap his picture – checking the consistency of the batch in the mixer, making sure the almonds are toasted to perfection then added at just the right temperature, and that each chocolate-covered torroncino is cooled properly before wrapping.  I am beginning to see that the real “secret” in the recipe is Giuseppe’s know-how and constant vigilance, as he strives to make every batch of torrone consistently perfect.

Giuseppe’s Aunt Maria is helping out. She has been making torrone for 30 years, though she admits that she no longer likes to eat it.  Don’t worry, I think, I’ll eat your share.  She remembers when all this work was done by hand – heating the honey and egg white mixture over a coal fire in a big copper pot, and stirring the mixture for several hours.  “Difficilissimo,” she says, sounding tired at the mere thought. Then the pots were scrubbed with ashes and lemon juice, and polished until gleaming with a white cotton cloth.  She shakes her head in wonderment. 

In 1986, Giuseppe asked an engineer to design a machine that would mimic his hand movements as he mixed the honey and egg white mixture, and this helped him increase his production with a larger batch that couldn’t be mixed by hand. Then in 1996, he decided to investigate the use of the machine that he now has on the premises, to see if he could replicate his torrone with a device that both mixed and heated. He traveled to Milan to try out the machine, mixing his batches of torrone and adjusting the temperature and paddle of the machine until he was satisfied that he could make the same excellent caliber of torrone. Only then did he buy the machine, which allowed him to double his production.

There is still a lot of hand work involved in Giuseppe’s torrone business.  When Giuseppe pronounces the torrone in the mixer ready, the staff snaps to attention and works like a well-trained relay team.  One fellow piles the warm nougat mixture on a wooden board on a scale. When the needle hits exactly 7 kilos, he passes the board to a table, where 2 people pat the nougat down into an even layer, then pass it to Giuseppe. He inverts the mixture into a shallow rectangular mold that was previously lined with edible wafer paper, then vigorously works a rolling pin over the torrone mixture until it uniformly fills the mold.  He places the mold on a rack and another person covers it with wafer paper, and lets it rest.  This procedure is repeated nine times.

The cooled nougat is then cut – first with a machine that scores the torrone, then finished by hand with a pizza cutter – which releases an intense aroma of toasted almonds.  Mixed with the sweet fragrance of honey, the air becomes almost edible.

Torronificio Trapani’s classic torrone bianco is available with almonds, a combination of almonds and pistachios, with hazelnuts, or as individual almond torroncini, covered in dark or white chocolate.  I stocked up on a variety before stepping out into the disappointingly sugar-free air. 

Before I got to my car, I’d already unwrapped a torroncino.  The dark chocolate coating was paper thin, just barely beginning to melt against my anxious fingers. And inside, oh my.  It was packed with crunchy almonds, toasted to perfection, with just the right amount of creamy filling holding it all together in a sweet embrace.  Torrone heaven.

Torrone Trapani can be found in several pastry shops in the area – Pasticceria Di Pasquale in Ragusa and the wonderful Rosy Bar in the Sacro Cuore district of Modica – as well as the larger DiMeglio supermarkets. 

Or go straight to the source:
Torronificio Trapani -Via del Mercato 66

Giarratana (RG) 

Tel 0932 975014

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Almond Milk Recipe

Weeds for Cheese

During summer in Sicily a traditional beverage is latte di mandorla – almond milk – and visitors wilting in the heat will often be offered a chilled glass of this refreshing drink. Once upon a time, almond milk was commonly made at home in Sicily, but nowadays, most people drink the commercially available stuff bought in the supermarket. Instead of being refreshing, I find it to be cloying sweet. So, I set out to make my own.

I had scored a kilo of beautiful pizzuta almonds from the San Basilio farm during the almond harvest, and so I began quizzing the natives about the best way to make almond milk. Asking for culinary advice is always a dangerous proposition in Sicily, as it inevitably leads to an overload of information, often conflicting. Just when I may have settled on a method, another person will look at me in surprise and explain an incredibly simple way of doing the same thing, that they claim is buonissimo. So, first I needed to sift through all the almond milk info.

Everyone did agree that the almonds had to be shelled, which I had taken for granted. Next, should they be blanched in order to remove the brown skins? The “yes” crowd said the skins would make the almond milk bitter, the “no” crowd claimed the skins added flavor and color. I wondered if the no crowd could simply be lazy? Everyone also agreed that the almonds needed to be finely chopped, though methods differed. A food processor was okay with some (see lazy crowd above), others said the heat generated by the blades would affect the taste, and that the almonds must be finely chopped with a mezzaluna. My friend Giovanni said they should be slowly pounded to a paste with a mortar and pestle, gradually adding water. He claims he learned this when he had to make emulsions while studying to be a pharmacist at the University of Catania. Meanwhile, my trusty neighbor Beatrice said she just tied the unpeeled almonds in a cloth sack and beat the whole thing with a wooden mallet. As the path to almond milk became ever baffling, this at least seemed like a great way to release my frustration.

Everyone soaked the ground almonds in water, except for Beatrice-of–the-Mallet, who just dipped the sack in water periodically, until the water became “milky.” The soakers put the almond mass into a fine cloth and squeezed out the almond milk. Some added sugar, others honey. One left it plain, but admitted to being on a diet. Time to move on I told myself, before I just decide to make almond biscotti.

First, I had to shell the almonds, and these being pizzuta almonds with amazingly thick hard shells, a regular nutcracker was useless. It was time to use ‘The Rock’, a 5 lb. stone that I use for crushing olives, and occasionally, my fingers. At first, I had a tendency to hit too hard and crush the almond to smithereens along with the shell, but soon I got skilled at giving one sharp whack that splits the shell, yet leaves the almond intact. By the time I’m done, I’ve got a sore arm and one bulging bicep.

Next, because I don’t fancy the idea of brown bitter milk, I decided to remove the skins. I poured boiling water over the almonds, and let them sit for 30 minutes, while I rested my arm. Then by squeezing each almond between thumb and index finger, the skins slipped off quite easily. There are always a few recalcitrant ones that hold tight to their skins – I used the zero tolerance approach to these and just ate them.

By the time I am done with this, I am intimately familiar with each and every almond and am beginning to understand why everyone buys almond milk at the supermarket. (You could skip this whole process if you simply buy blanched almonds, but depending upon their age, they may be fairly tasteless, and you won’t become close personal friends with your almonds.)

Now, it was finally time to chop or grind the almonds. I tried the mortar and pestle method, and it took just 30 seconds to flunk out of pharmacy school, as with each move of the pestle, the slippery almonds flew out of the mortar and went skidding across the kitchen floor. By now I was hot and tired, and longed for a glass of cold almond milk to perk me up. Time to skip tradition and revert to modern times with a food processor (you could probably use a blender, but I don’t own one.) I ground the almonds in batches, pulsing and adding a bit of water until the mixture was fairly fine, then dumped the mixture into a bowl. I added some mineral water, and let it soak while I rested in front of the fan.

Finally, I poured the contents of the bowl into a cloth-lined strainer, over another clean bowl. Then with my last bit of strength, I squeezed the cloth of ground almond paste to extract all the liquids. Wow! Out poured almond milk! I refrigerated the almond milk and had a nap. Once it was cold, I slightly sweetened it with sugar – this seemed to enhance the almond flavor – and added a little more mineral water. Sitting in the shade, it made a refreshing silky drink with a surprisingly tangy almond finish. In the end, worth all the effort.  

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Recipe type: Beverage
Author: Anita Iaconangelo
Prep time: 1 Hour
Cook time: No cooking
Total time: 2 hours, including chilling
Serves: 8 three-ounce servings

Nutrition:
Serving size: 3 oz

Ingredients:
4 oz almonds

Cooking Directions:

1. Pour boiling water over the almonds to cover, let sit for 15-30 minutes, then squeeze each almond individually so that it slips out of its brown skin. (You can also just buy blanched almonds and skip the shelling and skinning.)
2. Place almonds in food processor and pulse in order to finely grind, adding a bit of water to make a thick chunky paste.
3. Transfer the almond paste to a bowl, add about 2 cups (16 oz.) of mineral water, and let soak for 30 minutes.
4. Dampen a square piece of fine linen or cotton cloth and place it in a sieve over another clean bowl.
5. Pour the contents of the almond paste bowl into the cloth lined sieve.
6. Let the liquid (which should be milky looking) drain into the clean bowl.
7. Gather the corners of the cloth together, twist them tightly and squeeze the almond paste so that the liquid also goes into the clean bowl – do this until you have squeezed out all liquid humanly possible from the almond paste, and are perspiring heavily.
8. Next, fill a measuring cup with about ½ cup of water, and place the bag of almond paste in it, dip it and up and down, then push it down into the water several times to extract more milky liquid, then add the liquid to the bowl of almond milk and squeeze the bag again – do this 3 times or until the water is no longer very milky, and you are feeling weak.
9. Assuming you have enough strength left, place a funnel in a bottle or pitcher and pour the contents of the almond milk into the funnel.
10. Taste the almond milk!
11. It will be quite bland without any sugar, but should have a nice almondy finish.
12. Sweeten to taste if you like, with either honey or sugar.
13. If it seems okay as is, refrigerate; if too strong, add a bit more water.
14. Shake or stir before pouring into glass, and serve well chilled.
15. Makes about 8 servings of 3 oz each.

When the almond trees are in blossom in Sicily, it is a glorious sight.  Beginning in late January and through the early days of March, the cool green hills are bedecked in lacey blossoms in shades of pure white to delicate pink.  The air is sweetly perfumed and bees are buzzing.  It’s already spring.

On the other hand, the almond harvest takes place in the heat of summer, so forget cool and green, and think Dante’s Inferno. The August sun is fierce, the earth baked dry.  Still, I wanted to experience the almond harvest, and Francesco Padova of the Mastri San Basilio farm, willingly obliged. 

I am not sure why people who are not farmers often have a romantic idea of agriculture, and are prone to exclaiming “Oh, wouldn’t it be fun to take part in the grape harvest!  Or “ How wonderful to go olive picking!”  Their enthusiasm quickly wanes once they are covered with mud, miserably damp, and have stiff fingers aching from the cold.  Not once have I heard anyone thrill to the idea of almond picking, and now I know why.

I follow Francesco’s car to where his great-grandfather first farmed in the late 1800’s, near Ispica in southeastern Sicily.  The hills are chalky and grey, looking nearly white in the harsh sunshine.  Once we’ve parked along a quiet road, I open the door of my air-conditioned car to a blast of oven-hot air, and wonder what I’ve gotten myself into. 

Francesco leads the way on foot up a steep rough track, through groves of almond trees that have already lost many of their leaves.  Underfoot the finely tilled earth is soft but dry as a bone, and my shoes are soon covered in grey dust.  Above my head, the  outer husks of the almonds – which were once as plump as little peaches – have shriveled and split, and the precious almonds are protruding.  It feels strangely sad and forlorn yet bountiful at the same time. 

At the top of the hill, I am drenched in sweat, and glad to find a carob tree that provides some shade.  Francesco leads me to an overlook that looks out onto an intensely cultivated landscape, where the bare fields are resting in the August heat. 

I’d normally be thankful for a breeze but here on the hilltop a hot wind is blowing – the scirocco from Africa – and it feels as though I’m standing in front of a full-length  hairdryer.  We retreat to the shade.

Francesco speaks in measured tones, calmly explaining the ins and outs of almonds as beads of sweat trickle down my back.  We are in a grove of fascionello almond trees, which along with the prized pizzuta cultivar, are able to thrive in this arid climate.  The fruits survive the intense Sicilian heat by growing an extremely thick, hard shell that protects the intensely flavored almond seed inside.  In fact, the shell amounts to 80% of the whole almond’s weight. 

Francesco warns that it is impossible to open these almonds with a nutcracker – the farm has a special machine for this, and sells most of its almonds already shelled.

By comparison, California grown almonds have only a 40% shell weight, but their almonds contain less oil and as a result, less flavor.  It’s a trade-off that Francesco seems happy to make.  

At last we hear a motor and the almond harvester arrives.  It has a tractor-like section in the rear with a yellow contraption up front that resembles a huge upside-down umbrella.   

Within the folds of the umbrella, are two thick metal arms covered with rubber, which reach out and grasp the trunk of a tree.  The umbrella unfolds to form a big cup-like sack, and suddenly a loud motor kicks on.  The ground beneath my feet trembles, the tree shakes furiously, leaves fly up in the air, and almonds land neatly in the sack.   It only lasts a few seconds, like a mini-earthquake. 

Francesco explains that with this method – manned by 2 or 3 people – they can harvest as much as what 40 men could do by hand, or about 600 trees in a day.  When there are 15,000 trees to harvest, it makes sense. 

A few of the smaller trees with slender trunks still get the hand-picked treatment, which consists of whacking the branches with a wooden pole, then collecting the almonds that fall to the ground. The fellow that does this has skin darkened from the sun, and is amazingly energetic, filling a bucket in a short time, then jogging off to dump them in the machine’s sack.  Finding 40 men like this would be no easy task.

Later the harvested almonds are separated from the leaves and left to dry in the sun for a few days, until they “sound right.” When ready to be harvested, the almond will rattle in the shell.  If you listen to it carefully, the rattle will be soft, like a tiny thud.  Once it has dried in the sun, the rattle will become like a sharp tapping noise.  This is a signal that the almond is truly ready.  It can be stored without fear of getting moldy. 

Since I’m obviously a glutton for punishment, Francesco gives me a kilo of whole almonds so that I can attempt to open them.  Being around all these almonds has given me a hankering to make traditional Sicilian almond milk.   

 “Let me know how it goes”  he says.  Later, when I am struggling to open the the almonds by bashing them with a rock, I wonder how he managed to say that with a straight face.

It’s now close to noon, and is getting hotter by the second.  As the top of my head feels like it’s about to burst into flames, I say goodbye to Francesco. 

My car is parked in the sun, and is like a blast furnace inside.  I’ve learned a lot about the almond harvest, but also that being hot in Sicily is a relative thing.  I drive home with the windows down, enjoying the African wind.

Details:  Mastri San Basilio pizzuta almonds can be purchased in Ragusa Ibla at Gelati Divini or by mail order in the USA at Zingerman’s.

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Magical Mandrake Plant

It’s hot. Not just any hot, but Sicilian hot. Which is why we are out at 8.00 am, before the heat forces us to stay locked indoors until sunset. It’s time to pick capers.

Caper plants thrive in stone walls and rocky crevices, and disdain rich earth – in fact the few that I have managed to grow in a pot are decidely puny, while a cliff of limestone sends the capers into a fit of ecstatic growth.

And then there are the flowers. Exquisitely delicate, they last no more than 24 hours, leaving behind a stem with a tiny seed pod that will grow into a caper fruit, called cucunci in Sicily.

But I’ve gotten ahead of myself. The capers are the buds of the flowers before they open. In Sicily, they are traditionally preserved in salt, which is easy to do at home.

Start by picking as many as you want, choosing the tight healthy buds – leave the large ones that are ready to open into flower so at least someone else may admire it in the next 24 hours.

We like to combine a lovely walk with caper picking in the canyon of Misericordia near Ragusa, where sprawling caper plants drape the limestone cliffs, and we are far from any kind of pollution. A 15-minute downhill walk brings us to a narrow trail that hugs the cliffside, and capers grow in profusion As birds sing we rustle through the caper leaves, the scent of wild mint in the air. The tiny buds break off easily in our hands, and we quickly filling a small bag.

Before trekking back to the car, we stop to cool our feet in a clear stream, and Emanuele flicks tadpoles with his toes. The sun is hot on our backs as we continue our walk which has clearly become a trudge, and we realize that we should have started at dawn. At least we had the good sense to park in the shade. A short drive with the A/C blasting and we are back in the kitchen with our caper stash.

Once they have been cured in salt, capers can be used in many recipes, such as this pasta dish. Here is how to preserve capers in salt so they end up looking like this:

Recipe type: Breakfast
Author: Anita Iaconangelo
Prep time: 5 mins 
Cook time: 1 week
Total time: 1 week
Serves: As desired

Ingredients:
Capers
Sea salt

Instructions:

1. Go through the capers carefully, picking off any extra-long stems and stray ants (particularly important if you are vegetarian).
2. Rinse them in a colander, and pat dry on a dish towel.
3. Place the capers in a jar, layering them with fine sea salt.
4. (If you have a lot of capers, it’s better to use 2 small jars than one large one.)
5. Cover the jar with its lid and shake it to make sure the salt is well distributed.
6. Remove the lid and cover the jar with a single layer of a paper napkin or tight netting, and close with an elastic band.
7. Leave it in a place where it will get some airflow, but not in direct sunlight – a breezy countertop is good.
8. Every day, drain off any liquid that forms, and add another spoonful of salt.
9. After about a week, or when the capers stop giving off liquid, transfer to a clean jar/storage container and cover with a lid.
10. The capers can be kept on a shelf for up to one year.

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Festival of San Sebastiano in Sicily

There are many patron saint festivals in Italy, but few can top the festival of San Sebastiano – St. Sebastian – in Sicily. 

San Sebastiano is most often depicted as a young martyr tied to a post, wearing only a loincloth, and bearing a strangely serene expression for someone who is stuck through with arrows.  Shooting him with arrows was actually the first attempt at killing him for his Christian beliefs, and after being nursed back to health, he went off to harangue the Roman emperor Diocletian for persecuting Christians, and was promptly clubbed to death.  So, a serene but belligerent martyr he was.

San Sebastiano is the patron saint of the Sicilian town of Palazzolo Acreide, about a 40 minute drive from where I  live in eastern Sicily.  I had heard much about this festival and finally the timing was right, so off I went with Emanuele & friends in tow.

The two most intriguing things about this festival are the “sciuta”, Sicilian for the “exit” or when the San Sebastiano statue on a gilded cart exits the church, carried on the shoulders of an army of men dressed in white and red.  I was told that there was much fanfare and it was “molto, molto bello.”   I’m used to the Sicilian’s fondness for exaggeration, and figured it would be similar to many festivals I had already seen.  Boy, was I wrong.  

The second intriguing thing, that borders on the bizarre, is that little babies, who are often stripped naked – apparently this is to echo the nudity of San Sebastiano – are offered up to the saint’s statue as a kind of blessing to protect them.  The babies might wear a necklace bearing banknotes that are pinned to the outside of the cart, but donations of coins are also accepted. 

Join in the celebrations as these pictures depict how the festival of San Sebastiano unfolds.

When first arriving in town, we are met with a line of bancarelle, stands selling an assortment of stuff, from straw hats to ward off the hot sun to cheap plastic toys made in China to entice the hoards of children into pestering their parents.  Sales are slow.

But we are looking for tradition and folklore, and soon we find it outside the church steps.  There is a cart selling cuddure, ring-shaped breads that celebrate the wheat harvest in August.  Bakeries donate these breads to the festival, and the money from purchases goes to finance the celebrations. 

Soon a band starts playing and a parade starts, and the festive atmosphere heats up. 

Finally a few loud firecrackers announce that the sciuta is happening soon, and everyone squeezes into the piazza in front of the church.  The sun is fierce and tensions are high – I argue with a tall guy who pushes in front of me, and he agrees to squat so that I can see over his head.  And then the sciuta begins.

The first moments of the sciuta are electrifying.  Some of the men who will help to carry the statue call out with arms raised exhorting San Sebastiano to come out of the church.  Just as the cart reaches the doorway a series loud explosions are accompanied by violent sprays of ‘nzareddi, colored paper ribbons.

The continued explosions are deafening and the church is obscured in a swirl of colors and smoke, while people shout and raise their fists in the air.  I’m in the midst of a psychedelic bombardment, and as the crowd surges forward, I lose Emanuele in a whirl of colors. My heart is pounding,  my hands are shaking and it’s hard to keep the camera still. 

 Finally the colors part, the smoke clears and we can see the cart of San Sebastiano!

I follow the cart as it is carried through the town, and babies are held up to receive the blessings of San Sebastiano, who becomes their protector.  Sometimes the babies are stripped naked, mimicking the nudity of the saint.  As they are lifted up to the heavens, the crowd rejoices, Viva San Sebastiano!  I’m swept up in the soaring energy.

Not all the babies are as thrilled as the spectators.   I almost feel like crying, too.

As the statue of San Sebastiano heads down a side street, the piazza is suddenly overrrun with children frolicking in the ribbons of paper, while a priest and other devotees walk solemnly through the riot of colors.  A few diligent workers are busily dumping buckets of water on little fires that have sprung up in the paper ribbons. 

All in all it was one of the most emotional patron saint celebrations I’ve witnessed in Italy, an exuberant but exhausting experience.

I find Emanuele & friends, and babbling excitedly like children, we head off to lunch.

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The festival of San Sebastiano takes place on August 10 in Palazzolo Acreide in eastern Sicily. but other festivities go on for a week.  Check the website for a calendar of events.

When Italian relatives call to say that you MUST come and pick something that is ripe, it’s impossible to say no – refusing free food is simply not done. I had already been through this last year, when my sister-in-law Elisa announced that I MUST come and pick sour cherries from her tree.  Being the first time I had done this, I enthusiastically picked kilos of amarene, then much less enthusiastically pitted them, and made lots of sour cherry jam and a crostata.  This meant slaving over a hot stove for hours, and then baking, so that the house didn’t cool off again until September. Frankly, it was not an activity I wished to repeat on a blazing hot summer day.  

After the third urgent phone call from Elisa it seemed that it would now be my fault if the amarene cherries just rotted on the tree – I did not ask who had been picking the cherries for years beforehand – and that barring a fatal disease, I had no choice but to pick.  With the hopes of not being stuck with too many cherries, I invited my neighbor Beatrice to go picking with me, as she had suggested that we make sour cherry syrup.  Other than accidentally spilling half a bucket of cherries in the dirt (which I immediately hid under more dirt), our picking went smoothly. 

Sour cherry syrup makes a delicious cherry soda, and was traditionally served in summer in Italy with a generous squirt of seltzer – nowadays we use sparkling water.  Getting a few cherries in the glass made it more fun, so you had a spoon to go along with it.  Or kiosks in cities like Rome would serve a grattachecca – shaved ice, done right before your eyes from a big block of ice – with the sour cherry syrup poured over it, a sort of old-fashioned snow cone.  I liked the idea of having sour cherry syrup on hand for a refreshing summer drink that is not too sweet.  Plus, I’d get points with the relatives.

So, I ask a neighbor, and another relative, about the best way to make sour cherry syrup, and soon phone lines are buzzing with advice.  Even something as simple as syrup manages to stir up a controversy in Italy. Lidia tells me to mix the pitted amarene cherries with sugar and leave them in the sun for 2 days, then boil for 10 minutes.  That’s the way her mother did it – she was Sicilian, and they seem to have a thing for putting things out in the sun to dry: tomatoes, black olives, figs, underwear. 

My neighbor Beatrice consulted her friend Laura, who she claims is a whiz at anything sweet, and Laura said to simmer the cherries with sugar for 20 minutes, and not a minute longer.  She is Sicilian, and never mentioned the sun. 

Still another neighbor suggested that to avoid the nuisance of pitting the amarene, they should be tied up in cheesecloth bags, pits and all, and simmered in a sugar syrup.  Upon further quizzing I eventually managed to extract an idea of proportions – how many cherries to how much sugar – as I scribbled furiously. 

I decided to try the cherries in the sun method for no other reason than I will definitely run into Lidia at family gatherings, and she is bound to pester me about this – plus it was a scorching hot day, so why not put that sun to good use.

I  also tried Laura’s method of simmering for 20 minutes, and just because I couldn’t stand pitting another cherry, the unpitted sour cherries in cheesecloth method came last. 

At the end of all this research, feeling slightly ill from having drunk an enormous quantity of sour cherry syrup, the Amarene Awards were officially bestowed:

First prize goes to the cherries-in-the-sun method.  Flavor was superb – intense cherry with a tart finish – and the whole cherries tended to stay round and plump. Beautiful red color was slightly brighter.

Coming in a close second was Laura’s simmer-for-20-minutes method.  The flavor seemed nearly identical to the sun method, though the cherries were a bit more broken apart due to the longer cooking time, and a bit less red. 

A distant third was the non-pitting cheesecloth method, which apart from having a less intense cherry flavor, also did not have any whole cherries in the syrup, and fishing the whole tart cherries out of the glass is half the fun of drinking the stuff.  Easy, but not worth repeating.

Below you’ll find my 2 recipes for preparing sour cherry syrup or sciroppo di amarene with whole cherries.  If you can stand to read any more about sour cherries, you might like:

Sour Cherry Jam

or go off in another direction:

Magical Mandrake Plant

History of a Sicilian Biscuit

Have Sausage, Will Travel

When the season begins for amarene – sour cherries  – there are buckets to be had, and I usually make sour cherry jam, which entails a lot of sweating over a hot stove.  And usually the only thing baking at my house in Sicily in the summer is me, but on an unseasonally cool June day,  I decided to turn the oven on and experiment with making a sour cherry cake. 

I have used a similar recipe using sweet cherries or apricots, but what to do about the very sourness of sour cherries?  I solved this by giving them a sweet syrup “bath” which took the edge off the sour taste, making the cherries just pleasantly tart. 

This is a plain rustic cake that is not too sweet or rich, enhanced by tart little bursts of cherries and the crunch of almonds, and the sweet dusting of confectioner’s sugar was just right – a very nice combination I told myself, as I helped myself to a second slice.

Since the almonds play an important role in this cake, make sure they are top quality- not rancid or strange tasting.   I ate a handful just to make sure.  Though expensive, I adore the  pizzuta almonds from the San Basilio farm in eastern Sicily.  Intensely flavored with a slightly bitter finish, they pair well with cherries. 

More Sour Cherry Recipes:

Sour Cherry Jam

Sour Cherry Jam Tart – Crostata di Marmellata di Amarene

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Italian Cheese Stamps

After a night of rain and hail, the morning sunshine is thick and warm, like an apology for the night before. Late winter in Sicily is known for its capricious weather, so I seize the moment to head out on a walk foraging for wild asparagus. 

Wild asparagus are thinner than the cultivated variety, and more bitter in taste. They are delicious in a frittata or simply steamed and doused with olive oil.  But they really come into their own in an asparagus risotto, where they maintain a pungent flavor that is in perfect contrast to the mild nutty flavor of rice.  And the effort and thrill of finding wild asparagus makes eating them infinitely more pleasurable.   

The countryside where I live near Modica in Sicily is characterized by hand chiseled stone walls that enclose pastures and form the terracing of olive groves, and are a symbol of the backbreaking work needed to farm this rocky land. But with no effort at all, wild asparagus thrives here.  It loves the crevices of limestone walls or the leafy soil under the shade of a carob tree, while the thickest, most tantalizing spears favor the tangle of treacherously thorny brambles. Don’t wear your good coat.  

In fact, you don’t need fancy equipment to forage for wild asparagus- the older and rattier the better.  I wear an old windbreaker which is relatively resistant to snags.  It’s also bright red, so that in case I become hopelessly entangled in brambles, a search team will be able to locate my body.  Old gloves, boots, jeans and filthy gloves complete the look.  Of course, you’ll need a bag for carrying all the asparagus (does not have to match your shoes.) Optional equipment includes a knife (rusty and bent) and a whistle (in case you don’t have a red coat) and a walking stick, which is useful for snaring asparagus spears that are hard to reach, or balancing on the edge of a stone wall. 

Emanuele joins me on this walk, and in classic Italian fashion, ignores all this good advice and wears a nice jacket, woolen dress pants, and city shoes, then  curses furiously when he inevitably steps in cow dung.  Just a few minutes walk from our front door and we are on an old farm road called a trazzera, lined with beautiful stone walls that curve into the distance.  Emerald green fields stretch out against a silky blue sky, and we walk in silence, enjoying the warmth of the sun on our backs.  Midway into our walk, we’ve only found a few asparagus spears, but then Emanuele sees one on the other side of a fence, and leans over, only to have a donkey try and snatch it first. Emanuele wins.  

We open the rusty gate to “la casetta degli asparagi” a little abandoned house that has long  been one of our most prolific foraging spots, but in the overgrown garden there is far less asparagus then we had anticipated.  We decide we need to go further afield, and are soon clambering over dry-stone walls, landing in shrubs of thyme that release their spicy fragrance underfoot.   We scramble up and down terraces through olive groves, and rummage under carob trees.  Most of the asparagus is still quite thin and small, but the beautiful day does not allow us to be disappointed.   Everywhere we look, there are signs of spring, and we pause to collect a few wildflowers to grace our kitchen table.

On the way back along our initial trazzera, I spy a tall elegant asparagus spear soaring above the stone wall.  How ever did we miss this?  “It must have grown while we were walking” says Emanuele drily, as he expertly whacks it with a long stick and triumphantly catches it in midair. I boost myself up on the wall and peer over the other side, and gasp in glee at a clump of beautiful asparagus spears and we race each other to get over the wall.  I do this clumsily, teetering on the edge of the wall before taking an awkward dangerous leap, but being first counts, not style.  I want the satisfaction of picking these spears myself. They are tall and plump, and snap readily under my eager fingers, squirting asparagus juice onto my face. 

By the time we get home, it’s nearly lunch time and we are starving, so decide to skip the risotto in favor of something quicker.  We pair the steamed asparagus with barely hardboiled eggs and drizzle the plate with plenty of extra virgin olive.  I sop up all the oil with a piece of crusty bread, leaving my plate sparkling clean.  Risotto or not, the wild asparagus season is off to a fine start.

Check out Emanuele’s asparagus risotto recipe.

Come with me on a 1-day foraging walk in Sicily.

Read similar stories about walking in Sicily:

San Giuseppe Wild Iris - a velvety black iris and the legend that surrounds it

Muragghi of Sicily - mysterious stone towers in the Sicilian countryside

On the slopes of the Mt. Etna volcano in Sicily, there are orchards of heirloom varieties of apples, generally known as mele dell’Etna or Etna apples. Small in size, they thrive in Sicily at an altitude of 1300 meters (4300 ft), and are highly resistant to nasty worms. Slightly elongated in shape, they have pale green or straw-colored skin, often marked with red “freckles.” Inside you’ll find a sweet juicy pulp and an aromatic scent, like a pleasant apple perfume.

I usually eat 2 or 3 as a snack or paired with a mild cheese, like a provola from Ragusa. But when a friend from Catania brought me a sackful of Etna apples, I decided to see if they could hold their own in a torta di mele - Italian apple cake. I actually used a couple of varieties in this cake and it was delicious, and makes an impressive presentation, too. So all that boring coring was worth it!

The apple cake batter is easy and basic – butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, flour, baking powder – with the addition of grated lemon rind. This makes a rustic cake that is not too sweet.

Peeling the apples AFTER the cake batter is already in the pan, along with the placement of the apples, is crucial to the esthetic success of this cake.
The apples are peeled, cored and quartered, then cut into slices about ¼ inch thick. The slices are then placed core side down like rays of the sun (or spokes of a wheel if you are more mechanical) with a larger outer circle and a smaller inner circle. The slices should be close together so that there is very little batter showing. Sprinkle with sugar and then bake for 50-60 minutes. After cooling, dust with confectioner’s sugar.

Una bellissima torta, no? And great for breakfast with a cappuccino, too.

Here is the Apple Cake Recipe.

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Have Sausage, Will Travel

Amalfi Coast Lemon Cake

Bartering Caciocavallo Cheese