Ragusa—we'll spend the night. This hilltown feels like Sicily as I imagined it—provincial, and so privately itself. Like several other towns in the environs, Ragusa was rebuilt in the Baroque style after the terrible earthquake of 1693. There's an old town and an older town, Ragusa Ibla. By now we just expect to get lost and we do. We hit Ibla at a moment of celebration. How this many cars can squeeze into streets hardly wider than an arm's length, is hilarious. We crawl, turning a dozen times, trying to get out. We glimpse the church of San Giorgio, more fanciful than a wedding cake, which seems to be the focal point of whatever is going on. Is the Saturday before Palm Sunday a special day? Finally, we escape Ibla and find our way to a pleasant hotel in the upper town, which is newer but looks old to us. It's drizzling. We sit in the bar with espresso, looking at books and maps. Americani are a novelty here. Two men in suits come up and speak to us, obviously intrigued when we say we're from San Francisco. They want to know if we like Sicily, if we like Ragusa. “Sì,” we both answer. They insist on buying the coffee.
Walking in the rain, we admire iron balconies and watch the locals dashing into the cathedral for Saturday mass. Surrounding the great carved door are displays of intricately woven palm fronds for sale by boys. Everyone buys one so we do, too. Ed sticks it behind the mirror in our room. Because today is my birthday, we set out for a special restaurant ten or so miles away. Soon we're lost on unmarked roads. The restaurant seems to be an illusion. We turn back and have dinner in a fluorescent-lit pizza place with orange plastic chairs.
Meandering, we stop at a cypress-guarded cemetery near Modica. Extravagant tombs are elaborately carved miniature houses laid along miniature streets. Here's the exuberance of Modica's art of the Baroque in microcosm. Through the grates or gates, little chapels open to linen-draped altars with framed portraits of the dead and potted plants or vases of flowers. At thresholds, a few cats sun themselves on the warmed marble. A woman is scrubbing, as she would her own stoop. With a corner of her apron, she polishes the round photo of a World War I soldier. A girl weeds the hump of earth over a recent grave in the plain old ground. These dead cool off slowly; someone still tends flowers on plots where the inhabitants have lain for fifty years.
Cortona's cemetery, too, reflects the town, although not as grandly. A walled city of the dead situated just below the live city, it glows at night from the votive lights on each grave. Looking down from the Piazza del Duomo, it's hard not to imagine the dead up and about, visiting each other as their relatives still do right up the hill. The dead here probably would want more elaborate theatrical entertainments.
Next on our route, Avola retains some charm. One-room-wide Baroque houses line the streets. Could we take home at least a dozen of the gorgeous children in their white smocks? On the corners men with handheld scales scoop cockles from a mound on the sidewalk. Open trucks selling vegetables attract crowds of women with baskets. We keep turning down tiny roads to the sea. We can't find the beaches we expect—the unspoiled littoral dream of the island's limpid waters—only bleak beach towns, closed and depressing out of season.
It's only in Siracusa that I finally fall in love. In my Greek phase in college, I took Greek and Roman History, Greek and Roman Drama, Greek Etymology. At that point, my grandfather, who was sending me to college, drew a line. “I am not paying for you to stick your head in the clouds. You should get a certificate for teaching so you have something to fall back on.” The message being, if your husband—whom you have gone to college to acquire, and no Yankees, please—dies or runs off. Meanwhile, I was loving Aeschylus, the severe consequences of passion, pure-as-milk marble sculptures, the explorative spirit of the Greeks. Siracusa, therefore, is tremendously exciting to visit. Mighty Siracusa, ancient of ancients. Second to Athens in the classical world. We opt for a super-luxurious hotel on the connecting island of Ortigia, with a room surrounded by views of the water. We're suddenly not tired exactly, but saturated. We spend the afternoon in the huge bed, order coffee sent up, pull back the curtains and watch the fishing boats nosing—isn't that a Greek blue—into the harbor.
After siesta, we find Ortigia in high gear for Easter. Bars display chocolate eggs two feet tall, wrapped in purple cellophane and ribbons. Some are open on one side to reveal a marzipan Christ on the cross. Others have a surprise inside. I'd love to buy marzipan doves, lambs in baskets, chocolate hens. The lambs are like stuffed animals, large, decorated from nose to tail with fanciful marzipan curls. At the Antica Dolceria, they've gone into marzipan frenzy: Noah's ark complete with animals, the Greek temples, olives, pencils. Marzipan—called pasta reale—we realize is a serious folk art form. For me, three bites will suffice; maybe you have to have been born in Sicily to be able to eat more.
Ortigia is fantastic. The vague, intuitive sense of oppression I've felt in Sicily entirely lifts. Is the Mafia not in control here? People seem more lighthearted, playful, and swaggering. They look you in the eye, as people do in the rest of Italy. In the late afternoon, we walk all over the small island. It has its own Greek ruins just lying in a grassy plot at an intersection. An inscription carved into steps identifies the site as a temple to Apollo. Dense ficus trees along a walkway bordering the water are home to thousands of birds singing their evening doxology. Views across the water, Baroque iron balconies, Venetian Gothic windows, boarded up palazzi, and intricate medieval streets—layers and layers of architecture and time. Suddenly the streets intersect and widen at the Piazza del Duomo. The Baroque facade and entrance of the church in no way prepare you for the stunning surprise inside. Along one wall, the building incorporates a row of twelve majestic columns from the fifth century B.C. Tempio di Atene, Temple of Athena. At evening, spikes of sunlight fall across the piazza, lighting the faces of those having an aperitivo at outdoor tables. Ordinary people, with the sun, like the sheen of gold mosaics, transforming their faces.
Unlike the Lotophagi—lotus eaters—Homer wrote about, I have not tasted anything that would make me lose the desire for my native land, not even the tomato sauce, which is the best in the world. The food, everywhere we've eaten, is great, the best. The coffee simply exists in a league by itself. Those who love seafood never will get over Sicilian food. Ed researches restaurants thoroughly before we go somewhere, not wanting to waste a precious night. But tonight we're drawn into a trattoria simply because it looks like someone's Sicilian aunt's funky dining room, with painted cupboards, bits of old lace, family photos. We're waved to the last available table. No menu arrives. Carafe wine is plunked down on the table. A woman and her daughter are in animated conversation in the slot of a kitchen. The husband tends the dining room. He's holding a glass of wine aloft as he floats from table to table, taking a few sips as his customers order. Soon a plate of antipasti appears—little squid, a vegetable tart, olives. We eat everything then wait. And wait. Ed holds up the small carafe. More wine? The husband is flustered; the wine has not been delivered. He scurries around to other tables and scrounges from half-filled carafes. The diners look somewhat astonished. “Soon it will come,” he assures us. Suddenly three men in dark suits arrive and the husband practically bows. They enter the kitchen. The women stand at attention. We can see them from our table, drying their hands on their aprons, rolling their eyes to heaven. Is this a Mafia visit? A demand for payment? But the men open cupboards, bend to the floor, lean over the stove. One takes out a notebook and confers with the others. For a moment they seem to argue. One looks sullen. The wife piles something on plates and hands them around. Everyone goes silent while they eat, then they shake hands with the husband, give him a slip of paper, nod to the women and exit. The dining room is hushed. The husband watches them disappear around the corner then lets out a whoop. A stooped man about four feet tall with a demijohn of wine enters. The husband whoops again, uncorks the bottle and fills the pitchers of all the tables. He lifts his own glass and the women emerge from the kitchen, laughing. The health inspectors have made a surprise visit and everything was O.K. We all toast a
nd more wine is poured. Service after that is chaotic. The vegetables appear ten minutes before the main course. We get someone else's grilled fish but by then we don't care. It's all good anyway.
The next morning when I am out walking alone early, a car whizzes by me and stops. The woman chef from the restaurant jumps out of her car, takes my hand, and tells me how lovely to see me again, that I must come back. She has trailing scarves and stacks of jewelry on her wrists. I definitely would go back.
We're ready to put in a full day on foot. In the museum on Ortigia, Caravaggio's painting of the burial of Santa Lucia, a local virgin martyr in 304, who cut out her own eyes when a suitor admired them, occasioned a lecture from the guard worthy of any docent. And where are we from? Ah, he has a cousin in California; we should meet him when we return. Ed loves Annunciation paintings and the peeling one by da Messina enthralls him. Small local museums are my favorite kind. They stay close to the source, usually, and deepen a tourist-level connection with a place.
We walk across the bridge, through a park, then through a honeycomb of streets. The Museo Archeologico in Siracusa proper is world class. Intelligently arranged and exhibited, the art and craft of succeeding waves of life in this area are displayed. Beginning with prehistory, we trace the eras through one stunning room after another. Artifacts, statues, lion faces from the temple in ruins in Ortigia, Greek ex-votos, and an amazing bronze horse—oh, so much.
The amphitheater in Siracusa—what fabulous siting. The stone cup of the hill was chopped out into natural seating, a 300-degree arrangement focusing on a stage. Corridors were carved out for gladiators to enter and exit. In summer, the Greek plays are still performed here. What fun it would be to act in one. The ruins we've seen are the major ones; hundred of other temples, foundations, baths, and unknown stones cover the island. This must be the ideal time to see them because hardly anyone is around. The solitude of these places sharpens the experience of happening upon them, the sense of discovery that for me lies at the heart of travel.
We vaguely hear a thunderstorm in the night but are so thoroughly exhausted from our day that nothing really wakes us until about three o'clock. The room's wraparound glass creaks ominously in its frames and the bed feels as though someone is shaking the headboard. Earthquake. We leap up and look out at the harbor, where quiet boats just seem to be rocking with the water. We wait, as we have other on nights in San Francisco, for whatever comes next. We've experienced so many by now that we can judge the force on the Richter scale, although the 7.5 quake of October 1989 was so far beyond what we'd felt before that we had no idea. I think of what must have existed in Sicily before the earthquake of 1693 knocked down whole areas. But tonight's was only a hard jolt, perhaps 3.4, a reminder that the earth has its own rhythms having nothing to do with us.
In the inland Baroque town of Noto, we come upon my fearful fantasy of the Mafia funeral. Maybe it is only a local patriarch laid to rest but we turn the corner and are among mourners with big jewelry and two Mercedes-Benz sedans. A coffin is hauled into the church on the shoulders of men who could play parts in a refilming of The Godfather. Three women weep behind veils. I grab Ed's arm and we turn around quickly.
We've backtracked to visit Noto, not only for another taste of the interior of the country but for the taste of ice cream. A gourmet guide to Italy promises the best ice cream in Sicily is here on a back street. I try the tangerine, melon, and jasmine sorbets. Ed chooses almond, coffee, and pistachio gelato. In Italy, one always orders several flavors in the same cup. He tastes all of mine and I taste all of his. We're convinced. A cold slanted rain begins. We get our raincoats and umbrella out of the car and walk anyway. Might as well get soaked—who knows when we'll ever get back to Noto.
Briefly lost in Catania, we find the airport and fly out. Below us the coast gradually enlarges so that we see a slice of the eastern edge of the island. “What are you writing?” I see Ed is making one of his lists.
“Reasons to come back—we didn't see the mosaics at Piazza Armerina, the Arab baths at Cefalù. I can't believe we didn't make it to Taormina. A week was short. Let's go to the Aeolian islands—for the name if nothing else—and Pantelleria for the moscato dessert wines. What else?”
A wisp of lemon scent escapes from my bag under the seat stuffed with lemon soap, a ceramic platter decorated with lemons and leaves, and a small bag of real lemons. “More of the groves along the coast.” I remember the hills outside the Baroque towns, criss-crossed with intricate stone boundary walls. “More of the inland part. We never even looked at tile for the bathroom. And we have to go back to Siracusa; the map listed forty-eight points of interest. We didn't see half.” I glimpse the slopes of Mount Etna then we bank into clouds, losing Sicily entirely.
A Sicilian Menu
AFTER OUR TRIP TO SICILY, WE'RE INSPIRED TO adapt some of the tastes from that island to our own kitchen. We prepare a dinner for three Cortona friends. Oddly, not one has been to Sicily. We get a glimpse of how they feel about it from Massimo, one of our guests. We use the same plumber he does, and Ed asks him, “You know that man who works for Carlo, the skinny one who talks so fast? Is he Sicilian?”
“Oh no,” Massimo answers, “he's Italian.”
Ed lugged bottles of Moscato and Passito home in his carry-on bag, along with capers, almonds, and the marzipan fruits we couldn't resist. With dessert, we bring out a plate of them. Everyone admires the verisimilitude but at the end of the evening we still have the adorable peaches, pears, and plums.
For Sicilian recipes from the source, I've enjoyed La Cucina Siciliana di Gangivecchio by Wanda and Giovanna Tornabene, which is published in English and adapted to American ingredients.
MENU ——
Caponata
I've made caponata for years. The Sicilian version was more flavorful than mine. Why? The concentrated tomato estratto (tomato paste made from sun-dried tomatoes) available in Sicily, a freer hand with seasoning, the saltiness of anchovies. Spread this on bread or crackers. It's one of those perfect hors d'oeuvres to have on hand for guests. At lunch, a couple of tablespoons turns a plain ham or tomato sandwich into something special, and it's also a great pasta sauce—just toss with penne.
— Bake two medium-sized eggplants on a piece of foil in the oven at 350 degrees for half an hour. Coarsely chop 1/2 cup each of pitted green and black olives. Sauté one large chopped onion and three or four cloves of minced garlic. Cut the eggplants into small cubes, add to the onions and cook to blend. Lacking the intense tomato sauce of Sicily, add five or six minced sun-dried tomatoes to 1/2 cup of tomato paste and one cup of tomato sauce. Stir into eggplant mixture. Chop three or four anchovy fillets. Add those, 2 T. of capers, a handful of chopped parsley, and the chopped olives to the eggplant. Season with oregano, salt, and pepper. Like many tomato-based recipes, caponata is best if made a day early. It will keep in the fridge for a week. Makes about five cups, depending on the size of the eggplants.
Olive Piccanti
— Mince two small hot peppers—one red, one green—and sauté with a small minced onion. Mix with two cups of large green olives, moisten with a little olive oil and lemon juice. Let rest in the fridge overnight.
Pasta al Limone
If I had to say what one ingredient I must have in the kitchen, it would be the lemon because the flavor, both assertive and enhancing, is like liquid sunshine going into the food. Anselmo brought me two lemon trees in pots. As an essential of the Italian garden, lemons are so valued that most old houses have a limonaia, a glass-walled room for storing the pots over the winter. Our limonaia functions as a storage room for mowers and tools but this winter reclaimed its function with the two pots taking a sunny spot. In spring we dragged them out in front of the house again, to a place near the kitchen door—very handy for grabbing one for this extremely easy and tasty pasta. When I make this in California, I often add a half pound of crab, but it's a marvelous pasta by itself. With a green salad, it's the lightest dinner imaginable, perfect the day
after a crippling feast.
— Boil pasta—spaghetti or tagliatelle—for six. Squeeze enough lemons for 1/2 cup of juice. Drain pasta, season, and toss with 1/2 cup of chopped Italian parsley, the lemon juice, and grated parmigiano to taste. If you like, sauté a pound of crabmeat in 2 T. of butter or olive oil. Add a big splash of white wine. Bring to a boil for an instant, stir the lemon juice mixture into the crab and toss with the pasta.
Sea Bass in a Salt Crust
Don't expect a salty fish—the crust seals in the juices but only slightly penetrates. In San Francisco, I go to a fish market on Clement Street for sea bass. They net the fish from a tank, then knock it in the head with a mallet. Not my favorite moment of shopping. Here, we are two hours from both the Mediterranean and the Adriatic. Fishmongers come to the Thursday market in Camucia where the fish are safely dead and on ice.
— Ask the fishmonger to clean and prepare for cooking a large sea bass, about 31/2 to 4 pounds. Dry the fish well and stuff the inside with slices of lemon, wands of rosemary, and a few sprigs of thyme. Mix the juice of two lemons with 6 T. olive oil and brush the fish all over. Season with pepper and thyme. To the remaining oil and lemon, add some chopped thyme and parsley and reserve this for serving later. For the crust, you'll need about 5 pounds of coarse salt, depending on the size of the fish. Layer the bottom of a baking dish (one that can go to the table as well) with an inch of salt. Place the fish on top then mound the rest of the salt over the fish, completely covering it. Pat in place around the fish. Make a mask of 3/4 c. flour and enough water to thin the flour. Brush the salt with this mixture. Bake in a preheated, hot oven, 400 degrees, for 40 minutes, or until the salt looks toasted. Present the fish at the table, cracking or sawing into the hard crust, then take it back to the kitchen and remove the fish to a platter for serving. Heat and pour the reserved lemon and oil over the fish. Serves six generously.
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