When I was shopping in the market on Friday, I bought a chunk of flavorful, slightly aged provolone at the stall that also sells fresh mozzarella, ricotta, cannoli, ricotta salata and other cheeses that I look forward to being introduced to. Gaetano, the man behind the counter with a scruffy beard and fairly good English, saw me looking at the cauldrons in the small, utilitarian workroom behind the counter.

He explained that most mornings, he and his father Andrea Borderi, the man with the blue silk tie, the sunny smile and the big knife, made ricotta and mozzarella.

I hesitated for less than a minute before I asked if I could watch the next time they made cheese. He frowned, shook his head and said “No,” and then with a smile he said, “Ma (but), you can come and work if you come at seven on lunedi.” I said yes, of course, I would come. A quick check in the Italian/English dictionary confirmed that I had a date for Monday morning at seven.

I started the day by watching the sunrise over the sea. The colors would have inspired Maxfield Parish. Then, Charles and I had to hurry across the empty Piazza Duomo to the cheese shop. We were greeted with smiles, and with a sweep of his arm, Andre invited us into his kitchen. He quickly looped an apron over my head and tied it around my waist. Charles stepped back from the action, camera poised so as not to miss a shot. I washed my hands and was ready to work.

My first task was to help with the caldron of ricotta. We used ladles to skim the warm curds into slotted, one liter, plastic containers that were then put on trays. When full, the trays were put into the refrigerator. When ricotta is sold, the slotted container is put into a double plastic bag and the whey continues to drain from the curd making it thicker each day until it has all been eaten.

The curds for the mozzarella had been started before we arrived. Whole milk and rennet had been mixed in a huge stainless steel pot and then heated slowly until it reached 32 degrees centigrade or 88 degrees Fahrenheit. It took about 15 minutes for the curd to form. The curd was in a bucket, a dense mass covered with whey. It was large as a watermelon with texture similar to raw liver. Andrea handed me a knife with a blade that was at least two feet long. To cut the curd, I held the knife with its blunt tip resting on bottom of the pail and pulled the blade through the curd again and again. When it had been to cut it into irregular pieces that were about the size of walnuts, it was drained and put into a large basin.

Andrea asked me to knead ottocento (800) grams of sea salt into it.

When he decided that it had been sufficiently kneaded, the curds were rinsed with  water until his taste test determined that enough salt had been washed away.

The next step involved stretching and shaping. The curd was covered with very, hot water and I was given a three-foot long wooden tool. I mistakenly thought that what looked like the handle was a handle.

After Andrea turned it around, he placed my hands on it, put is hands over mine and together we stretched and squeeze the curd until “Ecco!” The curd had become stringy, tender, fresh mozzarella.

With amazing speed and skill Andrea stretched, cut and braided cheese to form ten braided loaves called treccia. It would be smoked later that morning and offered for sale as affumicata the following day.

Then he pulled a coconut-sized piece of cheese from the mass still in the basin and indicated that I should flatten it into a disc as thin as I could manage. My memory of Lucy and Ethel trying to twirl pizza dough in the air provided the restraint that kept me from trying to do the same thing with this piece of cheese.

I patted, poked and pulled it until Andrea indicated with a quick nod that it was a good size.

I followed him and the cheese to the large cutting board where he handed me two tomatoes, a handful of mixed olives, a few sprigs of flat-leaf parsley and a knife longer than my arm. He covered the cheese disc with two thin slices of ham, used signs and smiles to indicate that I should cut the tomatoes, seed and chop the olives, chop the parsley and put it all on top of the ham.

When I had finished, he splashed it with olive oil, and it took four hands, his and mine, to lift the cheese and its toppings onto a large piece of foil. The last step was for me to tightly roll the cheese into a cylinder with the ham and vegetables inside. That done, he put the cheese roll in a bag and gave it to me.

I shared it and the story of its creation with two new friends who came to our first dinner party in Sicily.

If you would like to recreate the tastes without the travel you could make a mozzarella torte by layering the freshest mozzarella you can find, with the tastiest bits of vegetable and/or cured meat you can imagine, in a straight-sided bowl. Covered, weighed down and chilled it will be perfect served with a smile and a toast to Andrea, THE premier cheese artisan of Siracusa.>> Print This Post <<

I bought 300 g, a bit more than a quarter of a pound, of fresh swordfish at the market and brought it home is an insulated lunch bag that was extra cold because I remembered to freeze the insert that came with the bag and then to take it all to the market.

Our refrigerator is tiny, and I am trying to be mindful and use every bit of food I have before it gets green and fuzzy with mold. Everything is wrapped in either paper or a white plastic bag and that means that I frequently unwrap and rewrap the same leftover more than once. I have augmented the minimun number of bowls and containers by re-cycling the blue and green plastic cups from the gelateria and four of them where filled with the remainder of a steamed potatoes aand carrots from our first dinner party and there were also bits of mushroom salad and artichoke salad.

I thought that swordfish carpaccio would  pull all of the odd bits of food together. When we had finished lunched and washed up there were fewer packages in the fridge and more empty small bowls in the cuppboard. Lunch was a culinary success, a successful use of leftovers and certainly a dietary success. We ate a small amount of swordfish seasoned with lemon and olive oil and lots of vegetables. The carpaccio was a breeze to make. Here’s how I did it: … read more

Today I bought fava beans at the market. Legend has it that fava beans saved the Sicilians from famine when all other crops had failed. There is no possibility of famine in Sicily this month but since these beans that have been eaten in the eastern Mediterranean since around 6000 BC and are in season, it seemed appropriate that I try them.

Some people believe that if one carries a fava bean, they will never be without the essentials of life. The name fava comes from the Latin fabe, the word that means bean. Fava beans may also be called broad beans, pigeon beans, horse beans, and Windsor beans.

The vegetable vendor explained with a mixture of Italian, Sicilian and sign language how to separate the beans from the pods. First, the five or six fava beans must be taken out of the pale green outer pod that looks like an overgrown green bean, and then, before it can be eaten, each bean must be stripped of the thick, tough skin that encloses it.

All of the shelling can be done by the cook, or the shelled beans can be left inside the skin, sautéed in olive oil with or without garlic, salt and pepper, and served – leaving the task of popping the beans from their skins to each diner.

I opted for the easiest preparation of all. I held each pod in the fire of the kitchen cook top until I could see steam puffing out of the pod.  When I had cooked a few pods, I poured olive oil onto a small plate, ground salt and pepper into it and proceeded to pop the beans out of the pod. I put them into the oil and ate them, using my teeth to separate each bean from its wrapper.

I don’t know if it was the fava beans, the fava bean pod or something else that made me feel unsteady on my feet and my lips tingly. It took a walk, half a liter of water and a dish of gelato to set me right.

Although the fava beans had a mild and pleasing flavor, a creamy texture and were a lovely shade of green and I think I give the rest of them away.
>> Print This Post <<

This  post is out of order – I blame it on jet lag. After a long night of travel, we finally arrived in Siracusa. We took a nap only to wake up and sleep for ten hours. The following morning, we crawled out of bed into the welcoming sunshine. Charles unpacked suitcases while I checked out my Sicilian kitchen. I found a small refrigerator, a cook-top with three burners, a tiny sink and a window with a view of the blue-green Mediterranean.

There was plenty of space in the nearly empty drawers for my arsenal of can’t-cook-without-it tools I had packed. My knives, the immersion blender that also functions as a mini food processor, the coarse and fine micro planes, a scale, measuring spoons and cups, and an instant read digital thermometer made my Sicilian kitchen seem a bit more like the one I left behind in Vermont. Even with these additions, the kitchen was not as well equipped as I had hoped so we had to set out in search of other kitchen essentials including a small toaster oven.

Life in Sicily is full of serendipity and detours. Our first detour was a stop at the Caffe Minerva for a macchiato and a ricotta filled pastry. Delizioso! Our second detour involved the open-air market. It was already noon, we had slept until ten, and the vendors would be gone long before we got back from our search for the super mercato. We needed food and since all of the fresh food we eat will be from local vendors, I had to shop for food before I shopped for the tools that I would need. The vendors’ stalls line both sides of the street for two blocks along Via Benedictine. My stomach was still on Vermont time, 5 am, so I was drawn to the fruit rather than to the squid and cuttlefish.

I filled a canvas shopping bag with blood oranges,  green skinned mandarines, one very large, lumpy skinned lemon, a pair of tomatoes shaped like deeply fluted pumpkins, garlic, a head of fennel and a container of olives. At the last stall, I bought a roasted red pepper from a vendor who had a small charcoal grill. He wrapped the still warm pepper in a bit of foil, and after I had paid him thirty Euro cents for it, he took the last onion from his grill, wrapped it and tucked it into my bag with a smile. After sampling the fresh mozzarella and buying a liter of fresh ricotta we were ready to go in search of the super mercato.

The third detour of the day occurred when Charles reminded me that since we didn’t have a car and we had to carrying everything we bought, we should take the food to our apartment before we tried to find the super mercato.

Our shopping bags emptied, we boarded the free public bus and confidently set off. An hour later, with a few missteps along the way and the help of three girls riding on the bus we arrived at the SUPER super mercato. It was farther than we expected and many times larger than I had imagined. It had everything I needed – staples including dried pasta, salt and pepper, olive oil, tomato paste, butter, honey and even a toaster oven!
It was raining and we were tired when we got back to our apartment. When I turned on the kitchen light and saw the olives and tomatoes on the counter, I knew that I had everything I needed to make crostini and pasta for our first meal from my Sicilian kitchen. Here’s how I did it: … read more

My son Noah and I made sushi for lunch the day before we were to fly off to Sicily for our two month adventure.

Noah cooked the rice and cut the carrots and avocado and I went to the market to get yellow tail tuna and ‘crab with a k’.  Crab with a k or krab is also called imitation crab meat or seafood sticks. Krab originated in Japan and is a type of processed seafood made of ”Surimi” or finely pulverized white fish.

Along with the fish, I found pickled ginger powered wasabi and seaweed sheets called nori in the Asian Food aisle of the well-stocked grocery.

Ella made sushi hand rolls and Dylan opted for peanut butter. Noah and I made sushi for everyone else. Here’ how we did it .

… read more

Sunday is Super Bowl Sunday, the day that many Americans have been anticipating since this time last year. For most Americans, Super Bowl Sunday is celebrated with an all day party and an unending spread of finger food.

Pre-game activities begin after lunch, the game, liberally dotted with commercials, starts at six, is interrupted by the half-time show, then more of the game, and finally the wrap-up. It’s no wonder that most hotels offering Super Bowl packages have a four-day minimum stay – it must take at least two days to recover.

I’m not a football fan. My mind wanders with the interminable delays. I worry about mortal injuries to the referees and camera operators when I see enormous bodies, protected by even more enormous plastic helmets and shoulder pads flying through the air and landing in heaps. I’ve been told that the creative commercials that debut on Super Bowl Sunday are enough reason to watch but I’d rather be putting finishing touches on Super Bowls, Super Platters and Super Sweets to sustain Super Friends who are eating and drinking, cheering and booing in front of the television.

One Super Bowl party website suggested, “serve everyone’s favorite high fat, finger-licking snack foods. After all, your television set is the focal point, not the food.” (Those are fighting words to a cook.) Another site suggested serving “salami, pepperoni, cheese whiz, chips and dips, beer and hot sauce, zingers like salami & cheese stuffed pepperochini.” (I wonder if beer and hot sauce is new mixed drink?) Tailgate classics like Buffalo wings, chili, and layered dips are all possibilities, but I want Super Food, healthy food that is not fussy to prepare and has enough flavor to be a bit of a distraction from the game.

Chickpeas and chickpea flour, also called besan and gram flour, are on the Super Food team I’m inviting to be part of my Super Bowl menu. They taste good and are an excellent source of protein, fiber, iron, potassium and B vitamins. It takes only a minute to make the batter for Besan flatbread that can be served either hot from the oven or at room temperature. It meets my requirements for a super finger food.

Hummus, a party regular at my house, is also a Super Snack. This blend of ancient ingredients – chickpeas, sesame seeds, lemon juice, garlic and olive oil is readily available at the market but when made at home it is absolutely fresh, with a minimum number of ingredients and is preservative free. When combined with warm pita bread, it is a complete protein that will build muscles so necessary for passing and blocking on the gridiron. (Not bad for a non-sports writer!) Best of all, homemade hummus costs half as much and is at least twice as good as store bought. I took a bowl of hummus, surrounded with carrot sticks to a potluck lunch last Sunday and it disappeared before the chocolate chip cookies.

Here’s how I made Besan Flat Bread and Hummus: … read more