“To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is not to have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything. The purity of the contours, the softness of everything, the exchange of soft colours, the harmonious unity of the sky with the sea and the sea to the land… who saw them once, shall possess them for a lifetime.” I couldn’t help think of this Goethe quote while I was soaking in the sunset views from the corner of Sicily where Adler have their latest resort, Adler Spa Resort Sicilia, perched on a nature reserve in Agrigento province. I’d never before been to this part of Sicily ..read more

When I first walked into the kitchen of Fabrizia Lanza at Anna Tasca Lanza, you could smell the chocolate from outside. She was baking a flourless chocolate cake for dinner — a dinner which was like a warm embrace after all these months of not being able to meet or travel or get together, one of the most welcoming dinners that began with a comforting, steaming bowl of minestra di tenerumi (a minestrone made with the leaves and tendrils of the long cucuzza squash) and ended with this cake, a melt in the mouth flourless chocolate cake, served with simply whipped cream. I knew at first bite I ne ..read more

When I think of cucina povera — literally “cooking of the poor” or peasant cuisine — I think of things like this dish of Sicilian involtini, which are satisfyingly filling and relatively inexpensive to make for a large gathering as a little goes a long way. We got to make and taste these when I was at Anna Tasca Lanza last year for their annual tomato paste making in August with Fabrizia Lanza. I said to myself as I took a deeper second bite, this will be the first thing I make when I get home. It turns out I actually made Fabrizia’s chocolate cake first. But these involtini were so memorabl ..read more

{UPDATE: We have moved the date of this workshop forward to 30 August- 4 September 2021!} If you love cooking and all of Italy’s regional food traditions then probably you have already heard of Anna Tasca Lanza cooking school in Sicily. It is run by Fabrizia Lanza, whose mother Anna founded the school in the 1980s. Every year Fabrizia hosts a number of students from all over the world at Case Vecchie, Fabrizia’s beautiful nineteenth century property in central Sicily with organic vegetable gardens, fruit and olive orchards, wheat fields and 500 hectares of vineyard (the Tasca d’Almerita winery ..read more

It began with 120 kg of tomatoes. Six huge boxes of small, somewhat oval tomatoes of a Sicilian variety called siccagno, from the word secco, dry. They’re grown in tiny bushes, low to the ground, without any water at all. When you cut them open they’re just flesh, no juice, and deep, deep red. They taste almost savoury, as if they’ve been sprinkled with salt. Intensely tomato-y. It’s late August and I’ve arrived (with my special little helper) at Anna Tasca Lanza cooking school , a mecca for food lovers and farm to table cooking (the likes of Alice Waters and Grant Achatz have come here, searc ..read more

If you’ve ever studied art history, you’ll know how to easily spot Saint Agatha in a fresco painting – she’s the one holding her breasts on a platter, a hint at the legend behind her torturous martyrdom where they were cut off with pincers by a powerful Roman suitor when his advances were rejected. The young girl, said to be from a noble family in Catania in Sicily’s east, was buried in her home town where she still watches over the city and guards it from Mount Etna’s volcanic eruptions. Every year, her life is celebrated by the catanese in a centuries-old festi ..read more

In Carol Field’s In Nonna’s Kitchen, this delicious dessert is called a Torta ripiena di mandorle e cioccolato, in other words, an almond and chocolate tart. Or perhaps you could more literally translate it as a tart filled with almonds and chocolate. Field found this recipe in the handwritten journal of Giovanna Passannanti, a Sicilian woman who was in her eighties when the book was published in 1997. Aside from the almonds and chocolate, it has also got an entire lemon – juice and zest – and a very generous handful of candied orange pieces in it. I was so curious about the very simple combi ..read more

It’s taken me some time to sit down and digest (pun intended) our trip to the southeastern corner of Sicily a few weeks ago in early November. The trip that I had been dreaming of taking for about ten years left me surprised and perplexed. We rented a little Fiat Panda and stayed in a beautiful 1920s farmhouse nestled in lush citrus groves just outside of the town of Noto, a great spot to make short day trips and get back to town in time for a long passeggiata down the main street. We managed to visit so much, actually, and I have so many photos to share that I’ve had ..read more

As promised, following my Sicily List: Part I, here’s Part II: Mount Etna and Ortigia. While we spent most of the time around Noto and Ragusa, Marco had his heart set on visiting Mount Etna’s wine region. We made a break there for the day (a two hour drive up the east coast) to meet the folk at the winery Tenuta delle Terre Nere. I highly recommend visiting at least one winery in this area (Girolamo Russo, Alice Bonaccorsi and Frank Cornelissen would be other great wineries to see) to get some more understanding of this absolutely fascinating wine region, which sits on the slop ..read more

While I love summer for its fruit, autumn for its earthy flavours and winter for hearty dishes, spring is my favourite time of year for vegetables – asparagus, broad beans, artichokes. And then there are the wild things – weeds, herbs and vegetables that grow spontaneously, filling up cracks in the pavement or taking over fields or overgrown garden corners. Foraging for edible weeds and making food with wild vegetables is taking a step back in time. Gathering (as opposed to shopping) for your ingredients and making do with what you have is the basis of many traditional dishes all over Italy ..read more