Ingredients
Sicilian cuisine
Cannoli, a highly popular pastry associated with Sicilian cuisine.
The island has a long history of producing a variety of noted cuisines and wines, to the extent that Sicily is sometimes nicknamed God’s Kitchen because of this.[65] The ingredients are typically rich in taste while remaining affordable to the general populace.[66] The savory dishes of Sicily are viewed to be healthy, using fresh vegetables and fruits, such as tomatoes, artichokes, olives (including olive oil), citrus, apricots, aubergines, onions, beans, raisins commonly coupled with sea food, freshly caught from the surrounding coastlines, including tuna, sea bream, sea bass, cuttlefish, swordfish, sardines, and others.[67]
Perhaps the most well-known part of Sicilian cuisine is the rich sweet dishes including ice creams and pastries. Cannoli, a tube-shaped shell of fried pastry dough filled with a sweet filling usually containing ricotta cheese, is in particular strongly associated with Sicily worldwide.[68] Biancomangiare, biscotti ennesi (cookies native to Enna), braccilatte a Sicilian version of doughnuts, buccellato, ciarduna, pignoli, bruccellati, sesame seed cookies, a sweet confection with sesame seeds and almonds (torrone in Italy) is cubbaita, frutta martorana, cassata, pignolata, granita, and cuccìa are amongst some of the most notable sweet dishes.[68]
Like the cuisine of the rest of southern Italy, pasta plays an important part in Sicilian cuisine, as does rice; for example with arancini.[69] As well as using some other cheeses, Sicily has spawned some of its own, using both cow's and sheep's milk, such as pecorino and caciocavallo.[70] Spices used include saffron, nutmeg, clove, pepper, and cinnamon, which were introduced by the Arabs. Parsley is used abundantly in many dishes. Although Sicilian cuisine is commonly associated with sea food, meat dishes, including goose, lamb, goat, rabbit, and turkey, are also found in Sicily. It was the Normans and Hohenstaufen who first introduced a fondness for meat dishes to the island.[71] Some varieties of wine are produced from vines that are relatively unique to the island, such as the Nero d'Avola made near the baroque of town of Noto.
Unique dishes by region
Sicily
* Tonno alla palermitana - tuna Palermo-style; tuna marinated in white wine, lemon, garlic, rosemary and broiled, then served with pan-seared sardines
* Il timballo del gattopardo - Sicilian pie; pastry dough baked with a filling of penne rigata, Parmesan, and bound a sauce of ham, chicken, liver, onion, carrot, truffles, diced hard-boiled egg and seasoned with clove, cinnamon, salt and pepper. Gattopardo (the Serval) makes reference to the arms of the Lampedusa family and Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s well-known novel Il Gattopardo. (The dish does not contain catmeat.)
* Caponata - eggplants with tomatoes and olives
* Maccu di San Giuseppe - bean paste with fennel
* Panelle - a Sicilian chickpea fritter, often eaten as a sandwich and popular as street food
Sardinia
* Porcetto - Small pig cooked with myrtle
* Malloreddus - semolina gnocchi with saffron
* Sa fregula - couscous
* Culurgiones - A kind of ravioli
Directions
Notes
Image: flag of Sicily. For original Wikipedia entry see Wikipedia, "SICILY."
|
