Quinoa is the seed from a plant related to beets, spinach and tumbleweed. Who knew? Tumbleweed makes me think of Gene Autry singing ‘… rolling along with the tumbling, tumbleweed’, but quinoa originated in the Andes Mountains where it has been an important food for more than six thousand years.

A gluten free, complete protein it was called the ‘mother of all grains’.

With all of this to recommend it, I decided to add it to my pantry. My first quinoa creation was a resounding failure – a mushy mixture that tasted like wet laundry, (Actually, I have never eaten wet or dry laundry, but that’s the best description I can come up with). … read more

I couldn’t ignore the colors of the fruits and vegetables piled high in boxes and baskets at the open-air market in Ortigia. I shopped as if I were in an art supply store choosing tubes of paint.

Watercolor by Carol Egbert

I bought a deep violet eggplant,

Watercolor by Carol Egbert

a sweet pepper that was sap green on one side and cadmium orange on the other, white cippolini onions with forest green leaves, a bunch of celery with chartreuse leaves attached to leaf-green stems,

Watercolor by Carol Egbert

blue-black olives cured in oil, a scoop of grey-green salt cured capers, six Windsor yellow lemons and two kilos of blood oranges.

I created an ad hoc still life as I unpacked the market bags and thought about what I would cook. The caponata I had eaten in Taormina earlier in the week came to mind. Considered a Sicilian classic, caponata, like pasta, couscous, oranges and lemons, was brought by the Arabs when they conquered Sicily in 827 AD. The Arabs, then called Saracens, also introduced sophisticated methods of irrigation that made vegetable farming possible. Making caponata, a salad of cooked vegetables with a sweet and sour sauce, is an opportunity to combine colorful vegetables and Mediterranean history. Here’s how I did it:

… read more

I’ve begun gathering souvenirs to bring back to Vermont from Ortigia. Not the usual tee shirt or piece of pottery, rather souvenirs in the form of memories of Sicilian food – some simple, others complex, some easy to recreate and others impossible.

Blood Orange Juice and the Ionian Sea

The glass of blood orange juice that Charles makes for me with four fresh Tarocco oranges is my favorite way to start the day. Tarocco oranges grow in the fertile soil surrounding Mount Etna. They are sweet, less acidic than other oranges and have the highest vitamin C content of any orange variety grown. The juice is orange in name only, it varies in color from peachy pink to rose dore to nearly garnet red. I love it freshly squeezed and thick with pulp. Although there are  blood oranges in the markets in Vermont, I’ll miss watching the sun shimmer on the Ionian sea as I sip the sweet juice.  Unfortunately, blood orange juice at the edge of the Ionian Sea must be put into the impossible to recreate category.

Salt cured capers are sold by weight at the market. They are about the size of lentils and have a sharp and sour taste that is lovely with chicken or fish and are a crucial ingredient in the tomato/potato salad I tasted on a recent trip to Marsala. Although it isn’t easy to find salt-cured capers in Vermont, there are jars of vinegar-cured capers in the pickle aisle of every grocery store. Here’s how I made the tomato/potato salad when we got back to Ortigia. … read more

It’s been a week of travel, discoveries, Vermont connections and, of course, food. More on the Vermont connections in my next post. On Saturday, we traveled by bus across the mountainous center of Sicily to Trapani. Military jets, headed for Libya, flew over my head as I explored the salt museum.

Windmills Power Pumps Sea Water into Salt Pans

I saw saltpans along the shore of the Mediterranean where harvesting sea salt has been a tradition since the 8^th century BCE when the Phoenicians established Motya, a small island off the coast a few miles south of Trapani.

Tiles Ready to Cover Harvested Sea Salt

Sea salt obtained from solar evaporation contains a variety of minerals that make it more soluble, more easily absorbed by food and add flavor – all good reasons to use it.

We visited Erice, a medieval village often in the clouds near Trapani.

Every street in Erice is paved with with stones set in this pattern.

Crest on a Wall in Erice

Old and New in Erice.

On Tuesday, we visited the fish market. It bustled with cooks choosing tuna, swordfish, squid, octopus, cuttlefish, mackerel or smaller, unfamiliar fish. Rather than ordering pasta or couscous with seafood for dinner that evening, I ordered pasta with Trapani style pesto. I hadn’t expected the pesto to be red but it was delicious. Donna, the cook, invited us into her kitchen and with Charles as the translator, she shared her recipe and explained that she used a food processor but a mortar and pestle was more traditional. Here’s how she did it: … read more

The negozio alimentare or ‘shop of food’ closest to our apartment is the source of ciabatta. Ciabatta is a broad, flat, crusty loaf of bread. It is also the Italian word for slipper – perhaps Gepetto used his carpentry skills and two loaves of stale ciabatta to make slippers for Pinocchio.  Fresh from the market, sliced horizontally, topped with cheese, slices of tomato and a few drops of oil, it is the perfect foundation for a mid-day sandwich. When I want garlic bread, I slice it, smear it with a mixture of olive oil, minced fresh garlic, dried oregano and ground black pepper and toast it in the oven. I make “toasterless” toast by sautéing it in butter until golden.

Ciabatta more than three days old was too hard to eat until it had been softened. I cut it in quarter-inch chunks, added it to a green salad, poured salad dressing onto it, waited five minutes and then enjoyed it. On Monday, Italian French toast was the recipe of last resort to use the stale end of the loaf. Charles cut the ciabatta into four one-inch thick slices and put them into a single layer in a shallow baking pan. I mixed together one egg and two thirds of a cup of milk, poured it over the bread and refrigerated it for three hours while we were at the market choosing food for dinner. When we got back to our apartment, I sauteed the now very soft bread in butter over medium heat until it was golden on both sides. I put the finished pieces into the toaster oven to stay warm while I sauteed one sliced banana in a bit more butter, and made a small fruit salad with the remaining pear, a few strawberries, a teaspoon of orange blossom honey and a squeeze of lemon juice. This meal was sunny enough to counter the gray sky and chilly wind blowing in from the sea.

Our son Matthew arrived Monday evening for a three-week visit and I made dinner to welcome him. Because we had started the Italian French toast before going out, we were late getting to the market and there was less fish than usual. Angelo Cappucio, my favorite fish vendor, waved to me and showed me his last piece of salmon. Timing and friendship are everything at the market.

I bought a bunch of carrots with feathery greens, four tender-skinned new potatoes and a kilo of the fava beans that marked the arrival of spring in the market. Fava beans are in the same category of food as artichokes, corn on the cob, lobsters and crabs – when you have finished eating any of these things, the pile of debris that remains is larger than the initial serving, apparently disproving the law of Conservation of Mass. In any case, after more than an hour of shelling, blanching and husking a kilo, a bit more than two pounds, of fava beans I had 147 grams, about five ounces, of edible beans and a large bag full of inedible pods and husks.

We expected Matthew on the eight o’clock bus, so I put three thinly sliced new potatoes into a shallow baking pan, drizzling on two tablespoons of olive oil, dusted the top with dried oregano and black pepper. I put them into the toaster oven. The temperature dial on the toaster oven is in centigrade so I turned the dial to point to ‘seven o’clock’ and hoped for the best.

I simmered two thinly sliced carrots with a pinch of salt in a quarter of a cup of water. When the carrots were tender and the water nearly evaporated, I added the blanched, shelled fava beans and  a teaspoon of butter to the pan and turned off the heat.

Matthew arrived at 8:20 and after quick hellos and hugs all around I cooked the salmon while Charles and Matthew made plans over glasses of wine. Here’s how I did it: … read more

Our trip to Ortigia was long and uneventful. We flew from Boston to Philadelphia and then on to Rome where we connected to our flight to Catania, Sicily. In Catania, Charles and I shared a simple ham and tomato panini while we waited for the bus that took us to Siracusa and Ortigia. Our apartment was just as we had left it and the Ionian Sea crashing against the sea wall provided the lullaby for a late afternoon nap. We walked to Zsa’s, a trattoria on Via Roma, and shared a mixed salad and pasta alla Norma for dinner.

My first two meals in Sicily, reminded me that a few simple ingredients carefully combined often result in a sublime meal. Pasta alla Norma, a Sicilian classic, is inspired by Mt. Etna. The chunks of eggplant suggest lava and the creamy white, ricotta salata cheese sprinkled on top represents the snow that I saw as the plane circled the still active volcano just before we landed.

Thursday morning, we set off to reconnect with the vendors at the market. With so many tourists passing through the market each year, I wondered if my return would be noticed. I needn’t have worried; we were warmly welcomed with hugs and smiles, bits of cheese, samples of olives and chunks of bread. The bustle of the shoppers, the raucous calls of the fish vendors and the bright colors of the fruits and vegetables energized the market. Inspired by the meals we had eaten since our arrival and by the limited resources in my Sicilian kitchen, I’ve decided to try to live, cook and eat simply for the next eight weeks.

We would begin with a market breakfast. I chose three pale yellow pears touched with pink blush, red strawberries in a bright blue container, three blood oranges with garnet red splotched flesh and three lemons still sporting green leaves. After we had found a loaf of crusty bread, a jar of orange blossom honey and fresh ricotta and yogurt we headed home for a late morning treat. Here’s how I made it:

 Creamy Ricotta with Fruit

I used a fork to combine a half a cup of ricotta with two tablespoons of vanilla yogurt and a teaspoon of honey. When the cheese mixture was smooth, I made fruit parfaits by alternating the ricotta mixture with layers of diced pear, blood orange and strawberries. Combined with the sunshine, a chunk of bread dripping with honey, the roar of the crashing surf and the warm Mediterranean breeze, breakfast was simply perfect.

Download and print creamy ricotta & fruit recipe with an ingredients list here.

Friday we spent the day deciphering bus routes, schedules and tickets so that we could get to the Super Mercato to buy a small toaster oven to go with our very simple, three burner cook top, the small fridge, and the non-existent electric mixer, toaster, blender and food processor. At the end of a long, wet, rainy afternoon we unpacked the oven and walked to the closest pizzeria for dinner.

Saturday, with a clear head and a lovely sunny day, I was ready to make dinner. Vegetables, cheese, fresh tomato paste made with sundried tomatoes and olive oil, all from the open air market, was all I needed to make pasta primavera. Here’s how I did it: … read more