Sicily Food Quotes

Is it fair for the bears to come down to where humans live, looking for food? Is it fair for the Duke's soldiers to shoot at them? Is it fair for the bears to crush them with giant snowballs? Often, if you point out something that isn't fair, someone will reply, "Life isn't fair." What is to be done with such people?

In Sicily where food is love and the street is a stage street food is more than a cheap meal it's Communion.

Preparing the communal evening meal sometimes caused arguments. Every village in Sicily had a different recipe for squid and eels, disagreed on what herbs should be disbarred from the tomato sauce. And whether sausages should ever be baked.

But you don't come to Palermo to stay in minimalist hotels and eat avocado toast; you come to Palermo to be in Palermo, to drink espressos as dark and thick as crude oil, to eat tangles of toothsome spaghetti bathed in buttery sea urchins, to wander the streets at night, feeling perfectly charmed on one block, slightly concerned on the next. To get lost. After a few days, you learn to turn down one street because it smells like jasmine and honeysuckle in the morning; you learn to avoid another street because in the heat of the afternoon the air is thick with the suggestion of swordfish three days past its prime.

Growing up in an Italian home I wasn't often hungry. Perhaps Italians know that hunger feels too much like sadness. They know that to love someone, to make them happy, means ensuring they are fed. Alex used to groan about how much food got eaten at our family dinners. He got heartburn from the thick, fatty salami and soft, warm polpette. He didn't understand our fawning over Nonna's secret pasta al forno recipe, stuffed with meatballs, cheese, pasta, and eggs. He couldn't believe we ate octopus and rabbit and, sometimes, mainly the older family members, pigs' feet. We fed him full of artichokes, macaroni, caponata made with capsicums and cauliflower and tomatoes while the cousins talked of breakfasts in Sicily- chocolate granita or gelato stuffed into brioche rolls.

They shared a platter of meze and dips and, for dessert, summer berries dipped in four kinds of melted chocolate. Lovers' food, Lara thought, watching Phil feed Katy a strawberry. When she was married, she had made special trips to obscure ethnic supermarkets for Vietnamese rice pancakes and soba noodles. She had bought extra-virgin olive oil online from a tiny estate in Sicily. She had discovered celeriac and plantains and Jerusalem artichokes. She had sautéed and ceviched and fricasseed and brûléed.

By first light, immigrants haul crates of melons and buckets of ice over the narrow cobblestone streets. Old men sell salted capers and branches of wild oregano while the young ones build their fish stands, one silvery torqued body at a time, like an edible art installation. It's a startling scene: gruff young palermitani, foul-mouthed and wreathed in cigarette smoke, lovingly laying out each fish at just the right angle, burrowing its belly into the ice as if to mimic its swimming position in the ocean. Sicilian sun and soil and ingenuity have long produced some of Italy's most prized raw ingredients, and the colors of the market serve as a map of the island's agricultural prowess: the forest green pistachios of Bronte; the Crayola-bright lemons and oranges of Paternò; the famous pomodorini of Pachino, fiery orbs of magical tomato intensity.

... the exotic spices arriving daily from the East Indies and the Americas, the crates of sweet oranges and bitter lemons from Sicily, the apricots from Mesopotamia, the olive oil from Naples, the almonds from the Jordan valley... I have seen and smelled these delicacies at market. But does any English person know how to cook with such foods? I think back to my time in France and Italy, of all the delicacies that passed across my tongue. And then to the gardens I've seen in Tonbridge with their raised beds of sorrel, lettuce, cucumbers, marrows, pumpkins. Already the banks are starred bright with blackberries and rose hips, with damsons and sour sloes, the bloom still upon them. Trees are weighted down with green apples and yellow mottled pears and crab apples flushed pink and gold. Soon there will be fresh cobnuts in their husks, and ripe walnuts, and field mushrooms, and giant puffballs.

All of this could fall flat, feel too much like a caricature of a Sicilian trattoria, if the food itself weren't so damn good: arancini, saffron-scented rice fried into crunchy, greaseless golf balls; polpette di pesce spada, swordfish meatballs with a taste so deep and savory they might as well be made of dry-aged beef; and a superlative version of caponata di melanzane, that ubiquitous Sicilian starter of eggplant, capers, and various other vegetation, stewed into a sweet and savory jam that you will want to smear on everything. Everything around you screams Italy, but those flavors on the end of the fork? The sweet-and-sour tandem, the stain of saffron, the grains of rice: pure Africa. The pasta: even better. Chewy noodles tinted jet black with squid ink and tossed with sautéed rings and crispy legs of calamari- a sort of nose-to-tail homage to the island's cherished cephalopod. And Palermo's most famous dish, pasta con le sarde, a bulge of thick spaghetti strewn with wild fennel, capers, raisins, and, most critically, a half dozen plump sardines slow cooked until they melt into a briny ocean ragù. Sweet, salty, fatty, funky- Palermo in a single bite.

Palermo is dotted everywhere with frittura shacks- street carts and storefronts specializing in fried foods of all shapes and cardiac impacts. On the fringes of the Ballarò market are bars serving pane e panelle, fried wedges of mashed chickpeas combined with potato fritters and stuffed into a roll the size of a catcher's mitt. This is how the vendors start their days; this is how you should start yours, too. If fried chickpea sandwiches don't register as breakfast food, consider an early evening at Friggitoria Chiluzzo, posted on a plastic stool with a pack of locals, knocking back beers with plates of fried artichokes and arancini, glorious balls of saffron-stained rice stuffed with ragù and fried golden- another delicious ode to Africa. Indeed, frying food is one of the favorite pastimes of the palermitani, and they do it- as all great frying should be done- with a mix of skill and reckless abandon. Ganci is among the city's most beloved oil baths, a sliver of a store offering more calories per square foot than anywhere I've ever eaten. You can smell the mischief a block before you hit the front door: pizza topped with french fries and fried eggplant, fried rice balls stuffed with ham and cubes of mozzarella, and a ghastly concoction called spiedino that involves a brick of béchamel and meat sauce coated in bread crumbs and fried until you could break someone's window with it.

You'll find trattorie brimming with the spirit of Sicily no matter which direction you head from the Four Corners. At Zia Pina, you will find no menu at all, just Pina and her helpers cooking up great piles of stuffed sardines, baby octopus, and fried red mullet. At Trattoria Basile, you take your ticket and build your meal piece by piece: a few stuffed eggplant, a plate of spaghetti and clams, maybe a bit of grilled sausage.

This is where I come to eat lunch most days. The café is generally quiet and cool. It's across the road from the beach, which is rocky and met by the pale green, glittering sea. The caféiss't pretty or fancy; the food's simple and traditional. Some days the cook is late and they serve only what the man at the bar can grill or fry- whole fish, the silver scales marked with charred black lines, and home-cut potato fries. On very hot days, I order gelato brioche or granita.

Europe’s earliest cookbook came from ancient Rome. In it, the writer Epicius described the recipes for dishes such as stuffed dormouse, and snails soaked in wine and oil. Food fashions may have changed, but many Italians still take great pride in their cooking. Regional Italian dishes have become familiar in countries around the world. They include bolognaise sauce from Bologna, cassata siciliana (an ice-cream dessert) from Sicily, and from Parma, the smoked parma ham which is often served thinly sliced with fresh figs. Italian restaurants are found in towns and cities in many other countries. Traditionally, the midday meal is the main meal of the day, and a family event. Fresh ingredients are usually used, and packaged “convenience foods” are less common than in many other countries. Fresh raw vegetables, sliced very thinly and arranged in a colorful display, are often served as an appetizer. Common drinks are wine (though often watered down for children) and mineral water. For dessert there is usually fresh fruit and more Italian specialties, ice cream and espresso coffee.

Saro, a chef, had always said he married an American, an African American woman, who had the culinary soul of an Italian. In his mind, I was Italian the way all people should be Italian: at the table. Which to him meant appreciating fresh food, forging memories and traditions while passing the bread and imbibing local wine.

Sicily--- Oranges, pistachios, and/or aubergine. Sicilian food a product of immense, diverse history. Have sardines! Try the orange cake. You'll find it all over, but there used to be a good one in Taormina. I shake my head in amazement. Somehow, it feels like Dad had been quietly guiding me. Tuscany--- Wild boar is good but tomatoes are better. Nothing else! Please say something with Chiara's tomatoes. I want to help her. Farm is a century old and sells some obscure varieties. Tomato salads, tomato bread soup, panzanella. And here too, Leo and I had organically found the path my father laid out for us. The notes on Liguria are less specific, but when I read his scrawled handwriting, I smile to myself. Liguria--- Was thinking about beans, but basil a good opinion. Oh boy, I cannot wait to show that note to Leo. Basil a good option! Leo. I sit and write with an open heart, not shying away from treacly memories of cut oranges shared in the sea. Pushing my cynicism to the side and allowing the love I have for food, for Italy, for my father, to run from my heart down my veins to my fingers and onto the page.

Sicilians love meatballs so much there is no food they have not shaped into balls.

some historians call Sicily “the world’s island” because it has been conquered by so many peoples, owing to its location in the middle of the Mediterranean, valuable for trade and military reasons. Sicilians have been influenced by each culture, and the island’s amazingly diverse history is reflected in its dramatic architecture, ruggedly beautiful terrain, delicious food, sibilant language, even the faces of its people.

Figs were imported from Malta, dates and raisins from Damascus. Sugar from Sicily was preferable to honey as a sweetener in aristocratic kitchens, since it could be confected into those impressive ‘subtleties’. Anything grown in England was sold only in its natural season. Green peas were eaten raw and delicious – no one thought of cooking them. Other vegetables were being grown in a garden in Stepney by Henry Daniel, a contemporary of Chaucer. He recommended turnips, borage, mallows and orach for pottage, the kind of food the ordinary man depended on. Chestnuts could be roasted, and parsnip, that ‘wholesome food’, could be both baked and fried.

There is no old age like anxiety,” said one of the monks I met in India. “And there is no freedom from old age like the freedom from anxiety.” In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding that they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place. Generally speaking, though, Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure. Ours is an entertainment-seeking nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one. Americans spend billions to keep themselves amused with everything from porn to theme parks to wars, but that’s not exactly the same thing as quiet enjoyment. The beauty of doing nothing is the goal of all your work, the final accomplishment for which you are most highly congratulated. The more exquisitely and delightfully you can do nothing, the higher your life’s achievement. You don’t necessarily need to be rich in order to experience this, either. I am having a relationship with this pizza, almost an affair. Without seeing Sicily one cannot get a clear idea of what Italy is. “No town can live peacefully, whatever its laws,” Plato wrote, “when its citizens…do nothing but feast and drink and tire themselves out in the cares of love.” In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real. The idea that the appreciation of pleasure can be an anchor of one’s humanity. You should never give yourself a chance to fall apart because, when you do, it becomes a tendency and it happens over and over again. You must practice staying strong, instead. People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. They break your heart open so new light could get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you had to transform your life. The Zen masters always say that you cannot see your reflection in running water, only in still water. Your treasure—your perfection—is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the busy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart. Balinese families are always allowed to eat their own donations to the gods, since the offering is more metaphysical than literal. The way the Balinese see it, God takes what belongs to God—the gesture—while man takes what belongs to man—the food itself.) To meditate, only you must smile. Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy. Even smile in your liver. Practice tonight at hotel. Not to hurry, not to try too hard. Too serious, you make you sick. You can calling the good energy with a smile. The word paradise, by the way, which comes to us from the Persian, means literally “a walled garden.” The four virtues a person needs in order to be safe and happy in life: intelligence, friendship, strength and (I love this one) poetry. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. Once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.

The precept of Italian cooking is that the ingredient must always be respected and appreciated in its own right. Respect for ingredients is common to most Mediterranean cooking. It is also ancient, as can be seen by reading the Sicilian cookery writer Archestratus, who lived in the fourth century BC, when Sicily was part of the Greek empire. He writes: ‘Sauces of cheese or pickled herbs are added to inferior fish, but in general this cooking is not based on sauces, the preference being for the addition of oil and light herbs to the fish juices. Meats are prepared with equal simplicity. Ingredients are cooked with few flavourings.’ Such flavouring as there is comes from the beginning of the cooking, often in the form of a battuto or a soffritto, which together form the point of departure of most dishes. Many dishes from these northern regions are ‘slow food’, cooked at length to suit the long cold evenings by the fire.