Sicilian Odyssey

by Francine Prose

  In a restaurant in Cefalù—perhaps my favorite of all the places at which we ate in Sicily—the problem was solved for me. An extra page had been added to the menu, a list of specials entitled, “Il chef consiglia.” The chef advises! Without my even having to ask, and with everything printed out, so I could read it at my leisure, with time to understand, and even to look up the few words I didn’t recognize. And what delights the chef advised in this seaside paradise that had managed to broker a happy marriage of innovation and tradition, to retain the sapori di Sicilia, the flavors of Sicily, the particularly Sicilian mix of sweet and sour and salty, to serve them in the large, traditional-sized portions (no stingy nouvelle cuisine presentation-is-everything theater here) and at the same time refine and readjust the recipes according to the most up-to-the-minute notions of la cucina stagionale, seasonal cooking.

  Many of the dishes contained in their titles the word invernali, winter, which in this case (it was mid-February) meant artichokes, prepared in every imaginable fashion. The antipasti plate included freshly cooked and marinated artichoke hearts, arranged among leaves of wild greens and radicchio and huge shrimp, gamberoni, boiled red. Shrimp and artichokes reappeared atop the homemade tagliatelle, black with cuttlefish ink, and in ravioli—the pasta stuffed with artichokes and sauced with shrimp and fresh tomatoes. But the standout, the menu’s most inspired creation, was a new take on involtini di pesce spada, rolled swordfish, a Sicilian standard, cooked, in this case, all’ arancia, with wedges of orange and an orange sauce, stuffed with breadcrumbs and parsley, and seasoned with capers, raisins, anchovies, pine nuts, and orange zest.

  In the absence of such cross-cultural culinary thoughtfulness (il chef consiglia!), another approach to ordering without the preliminary conversation is to linger over the bread and wine long enough to see what other people are eating—and then just point. This works particularly well in a neighborhood restaurant, during a leisurely weekend lunch.

  On a Sunday afternoon, in Syracuse, we watched large families ordering one dish at a time: first a plate of fried shrimp, then bowls of fat mussels steamed with garlic and parsley, then a portion of grilled calamari. We did more or less as they did, all the time longing for a big Sicilian family of our own, or at least enough people to expand the range and scope of what we could sensibly order. What makes this method possible is that, in Sicily as in most of Italy, no one cares much if you order everything at once, or in stages; if the swordfish in the pasta with eggplant and pesce spada is particularly good, go ahead and order swordfish for your second course, sliced thin and grilled, or lightly breaded and fried, alla palermitana.

  Still, the learn-by-watching-your-neighbors approach requires a certain amount of attention and vigilance, however relaxed. It took a few tries to figure out that the plates of shellfish were not appearing automatically, by magic, on the tables of the patrons at the restaurants in the little harbor of Capo di Molino. As they’d walked in, they’d made their choices from the displays of seafood on ice outside on the sidewalk: oysters, shrimp, and fresh sea urchins waiting to be sliced open and scooped out. We watched and learned, and did the same.

  But it’s not precisely the same as having that long, sustained consideration, that relaxed introduction to the joys of the meal before us. Partly, our problem is simply that we aren’t from the neighborhood; many of the waiters and customers know each other, they’re friends, they went to school together, they exchange warm handshakes, local gossip, or even hugs as they walk into the restaurant and ask after the health of one another’s families. This is especially true of those solitary men—a widower who lives nearby, or someone who works in the neighborhood—who come in alone. The prelunch conversation lasts longer than it takes to eat the meal, which is slapped down, consumed at breakneck speed, and the diner leaves as quickly as he arrived.

  Another thing that keeps us from having that preprandial conversation is, obviously, cultural. Americans aren’t used to it; at home, we just don’t do it. At good restaurants, waiters recite the list of specials and then, more often than not, take a deep breath of relief at having successfully got through their personal mini-ordeal. The especially daring or altruistic waiter may suggest that this or that dish is particularly good tonight, but in general that’s the end of it—not the beginning, as it would be in Sicily.

  And who can blame American waiters for their hesitation? Americans make fun of servers who are perceived to be excessively outgoing or chatty. Their personalities are considered too big for their jobs, their friendliness inappropriate, intrusive, an invasion of the diners’ privacy, an abrogation of our God-given individual American freedom to choose for ourselves. It’s almost as if the waiter had followed us into the election booth and was telling us how to vote. And though I have heard the waiters in my neighborhood coffee shop in New York say that that day’s chicken noodle or pea soup is particularly good, it rarely happens that your counter person at the roadside diner or local lunch joint will be asked about, or spontaneously begin to praise, the virtues of the grilled cheese or the hamburger deluxe.

  And so it’s only natural, or in any case, cultural, that something of that reticence and anxiety should persist among Americans abroad. We think of ourselves as decisive people, we’re wary of uncertainty, of seeming not to know what we want, of taking up a waiter’s time, of seeking and taking advice. Suppose he suggests some delicacy we can’t afford, or some ingredient we don’t like, or are allergic to? (One thing that does seem to make this easier for the Sicilians is the fact that their food tastes are, in general, so much broader, so much less picky than ours, and also that their menus list so little that hasn’t been familiar to them since childhood.) We Americans can’t help but worry: Will the waiter be insulted if we ignore his suggestions and shake our heads and return to our strained perusals of the menu? Will the whole conversation turn out to have been a mistake, a source of misunderstanding and embarrassment that will linger throughout the meal?

  In any case, I gradually come to realize that my difficulty in having the conversation is not entirely a matter of culture but also of gender. For in Sicily the waiters are nearly always male, and though you do see women working in the kitchen and managing restaurants, it’s mostly in places run by entire families. Female chefs certainly exist, but—just as in the United States—they’re much more rare than their male counterparts. And while women may be dining alone in restaurants in Milan, or ordering the wine for their entire party in Rome, or chatting up the waiters in Venice, the fact is I’ve rarely seen this even in northern Italian cities (except when the customer is a female foreign tourist) and almost never in Sicily.

  Anyone who doubts that Sicily is still a patriarchal society should note how rarely women are entrusted with the job of preparing and serving food, or encouraged to work outside the home in such an intimate relation with strangers. Because the fact is, it is intimate: Two men talking about the food about to be served resemble, in more than casual ways, two men talking about women, or sex. There’s that same sense of appreciation, of remembered or anticipated enjoyment, that shared knowledge of pleasure.

  Which all contributes to the reason why I find the conversation so difficult. As flawed as my Italian is, I’m more comfortable speaking it than Howie is. And though any waiter can quickly figure out why I’m the one doing the talking, it still seems to unnerve him to be having the conversation with me when there’s a perfectly intelligent man sitting right there at the table. Will my husband be affronted, will his honor be insulted as he witnesses this intense, focused exchange between his wife and another man? No doubt there were men, in the Sicily of just a few generations ago, who were killed for less.

  One consequence is that I’m always extremely happy on those rare occasions when I find myself being cooked for, and brought food by, women—with whom, in theory, it might be possible for me to have the conversation. And so perhaps the most gratifying and enjoyable—if not exactly the most exquisite or refined—meal of our stay takes place
in Scopello, a tiny fishing village on the northern coast, an hour or so from Trapani.

  With its bleached craggy boulders and palm trees, its deserted white beaches bordering an ocean striated into bands of green and blue, Scopello looks, in photographs, almost like a Caribbean resort. But the day we arrive is freezing. A light drizzle had begun to mist the windshield on our drive from Palermo. And by the time we pull into town—a single cobbled street lined with quaint shops and fishermen’s houses, all closed for the season, shuttered to keep out the winter cold—a driving rain is lashing the village, and the wind is blowing so fiercely that our umbrellas keep folding up and turning in on themselves.

  Howard Michels and Francine Prose, Scopello

  Fortunately, I’ve called ahead, to a place called Torre Bennistra, where a sweet-voiced woman has informed me that she has no bread, she’s closed, but…how many people are we? Two? All right, come on. Va bene.

  When I ask directions at the local bar, a woman tells us that Torre Bennistra is definitely closed for the season. But we persevere and find it, and knock on the door of the obviously deserted restaurant. Through the window, we watch a small, stocky, old woman with curly hair and glasses, wearing an apron, get up from her chair in front of the fireplace where she has been sitting, weaving a basket. She opens the door. Ah yes, we’re the ones who called, she’s apologizing for something, we’re apologizing, the wind is blowing so loudly we can hardly hear, yes, she’ll cook us lunch but it will be very simple. Naturale. Fine, we say, simple is good, naturale is fine.

  She waves at the empty restaurant and laughs. Have a seat, it’s our choice, we can take any table we want. When Howie goes off to the bathroom, the Signora sits down at the table with me, takes out a pencil and a pad of paper. The conversation is about to begin.

  She asks if Howie is my husband, if we have children, if my parents are Sicilian. She says that the weather is awful, una giornata brutta, a nasty day, just yesterday it was beautiful. Then she asks what we want to eat. Antipasti? Yes, I say, and she writes down, two antipasti. Pasta? Yes, I say. It’s the ideal conversation, because there are no choices, she knows what we want, she knows what she can make—it’s what she might make for family lunch if we weren’t there. It’s what she has in the house. The only choice is between more and less. So fine, let’s have more. Meat or fish? Fish. Fried fish? That will be fine. Tomato salad? She writes it all down and disappears into the kitchen.

  By the time we’ve finished our antipasti—olives and marinated raw tuna preserved by the Signora herself, a slice of salami, fresh bread—a French couple has come in, and the Signora brings out four plates of steaming pasta with a sauce that’s a local specialty, alla trapanese, made with chopped uncooked tomatoes, basil, parsley, good olive oil, and more minced raw garlic than you could dream of serving, at home, to your most intimate friends. But of course it’s marvelous, as is the fish, a whole fish for each of us, cut into three large sections, lightly breaded and fried, head, bones, tail, and all. Part of what makes this simple meal taste so especially good is that it has been prepared with such affection, and for us alone (or almost alone). It is the fulfillment of a certain sort of travel fantasy: the Sicilian mama who cooks for you, just as she would cook for her own children.

  We thank the Signora profusely, we tell her it was the perfect meal for una giornata brutta, we take her picture, she insists we go out on the rainswept terrace to look at the stormy ocean, she swears that it’s usually beautiful, bello, she points to the poster on the wall that makes Scopello look like a beach in the Bahamas. We assure her that it doesn’t matter, that’s how good the food was. She wipes her hands on her apron.

  “Tutto semplice,” she says. “Tutto naturale.”

  But of course it’s naturale, semplice. That’s the secret of Sicilian food, it’s all in the ingredients, the very best, the very freshest elements prepared with the minimum of needless complication, pretension, or fuss, and with the maximum personal style. The Sicilian culinary palette, the vocabulary of its kitchen is—as any Sicilian cook will tell you—a relatively limited one. Olive oil, garlic, flour, eggs, ricotta, fish on the coast, meat inland. But every cook prepares every one of those same dishes just a little differently so that no two tomato sauces are the same, one cook’s pasta con sarde (that sublime, uniquely Sicilian concoction of sardines, pine nuts, raisins, fennel, and bread crumbs) will never be mistaken for another’s. It’s thought that the sweet, salty, and sour flavors in pasta con sarde are (like the regional passion for ice cream and sweets) a legacy of the Saracens. Indeed, much of Sicilian cuisine is the fortunate result of centuries of foreign invasion.

  In her cookbook, La Cucina Siciliana di Gangivecchio, Wanda Tornabene remarks that the “painful defeats” suffered by her country are responsible for the variety of its cuisine. “Each culture—from the Greeks, Romans and Arabs to the French and Spanish—has left behind its own imprint on our eating habits.” The Greeks brought their grapes, olives, and honey, the Romans their wheat and grains, the Saracens their “love of all things sweet, from sweet-and-sour dishes to sauces and candies.” Moreover, the characteristic dishes of each part of the island have been heavily influenced by the culture that dominated that region; thus the Arabs bequeathed couscous to the citizens of Trapani and western Sicily.

  To understand why Sicilian food is so good, just visit the markets. Whenever we arrive in a new place, the market is frequently our first destination, because each market is unique and tells you something about the character of the city. Located in the semicircular arcade of the Piazza Mercato del Pesce, with the ocean just behind it, Trapani’s market is small, sweet, and low-key, though it’s the only one in which the vendors call out to us and expend some energy on trying to sell us something. Perhaps it’s because the city gets so few tourists in midwinter—perhaps they imagine we’ve moved into town and might actually be able to do something with a half kilo of monkfish liver or a chunk of pressed bottarga, tuna roe.

  It’s partly because of architecture that the fish market in Catania seems so raw and primal that it’s almost scary; it’s the kind of place that you hope your vegetarian friends—the ones who still eat fish—never get around to visiting. A sort of balcony or balustrade runs along one side of the market, from which you can look down on the action below—which, from that angle, suggests a killing floor or the site of some ancient, bloody sacrificial ritual being enacted by members of a secret cult or guild. The faces of the vendors are reddened by the wind, their hands scarred and thickened. The smell is powerful, to say the least, and the light takes on a silvery-blue cast as it shines on, and is reflected by, the scales of the fish; the silver-blue is intensified by contrast with the red blood and the red tarpaulins stretched over the stalls.

  At the same time, everything seems clean and orderly, aesthetically arranged, the garfish and the eels in silvery rings, the small pink rouget in tidy rows with their heads up, like the glittering tiles of a mosaic. It’s as if each vendor is trying to outdo the others with the beauty of his presentation, the perfect color coordination of each display. And it’s remarkably educational. From watching the fish sellers in Catania, we learn how to bone sardines (by hand, pulling the skeleton out with your thumbs) and how to open sea urchins (cut the top off with scissors and, with one flick of the wrist, shake out the dirt and sand, leaving the sweet center inside). And so the market begins to seem less like a sacrificial blood feast than like an anatomical dissecting theater, a temple of science and study.

  We eat lunch at the small trattoria right in the market. From our table, over plates of pasta ai ricci and grilled swordfish, we watch a fishmonger slice into a tuna that must weigh eighty pounds, a creature so impressive and awe-inspiring that the other vendors gather around with their hands behind their backs and just stand there staring reverently at the tuna. Eventually, without leaving our table we watch the whole thing break down, as the lunch hour begins, and each stall shuts up, the men go home—and the market disappears completely, as
if it had all been a mirage.

  Market, Catania

  The markets of Palermo are—like its people—the most varied and the most fascinating in their variety. Though some southwestern cities—Mazara del Vallo, for example—host sizable numbers of Tunisian fishermen and guest workers, only the capital has a population of recent immigrants from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East substantial enough to create a visibly diverse community, notably different from the rest of Sicily, where generations of assimilation have mostly homogenized the identifiable differences between the groups who have inhabited the island, though from time to time you will see a particularly Arabic face or, alternatively, one with the fair hair and blue eyes of the Normans.

  Market, Palermo

  Most travelers head for the Vucciria, the oldest of Palermo’s markets, so it’s common to see busloads of tourists gingerly picking their way over the stones slimed with vegetable peels and slicks of offal. But my favorite market is the Ballaro; it’s larger, at once friendlier and more serious, and certainly more theatrical. Advertising their wares, calling out to prospective customers, the vendors sound like exotic birds in a tropical jungle. It’s a real cornucopia: mounds of artichokes with their leaves and stems still attached, piled three feet high; truckloads of broccoletti the size of basketballs that, with their odd purple and lime green coloring, look more like space aliens than cultivated vegetables. Each lemon and almond has its proper place, every olive stall—decorated with stalks of rosemary—is unlike any other; the conical heaps of spices, herbs, and dried legumes resemble something you’d find in an Asian bazaar. There’s so much bounty on display and for sale that even though you know that the Ballaro is located in the center of one of Palermo’s poorest neighborhoods, you can almost—at least for the time it takes to walk through the market—believe there is enough food in the world.