This post, focusing on Blood Oranges, is the first in a series of Ingredient Posts. I welcome your thoughts on ingredients that you are curious about, love or hate, use frequently or have never tried.

The fields outside of Siracusa are filled with citrus groves. The distinctive dark green, round trees that grow in orderly rows were visible when my plane circled Mt. Etna. Some of trees are so full of uniformly yellow fruit that it is possible to identify them as lemon trees from the air. Although Arabs are creditedwith bringing lemons and bitter oranges to Sicily sweet oranges were brought to Sicily in the15th century by Portuguese crusaders.

I have been taking full advantage of the possibilities that fresh lemons and oranges in the market offer.

Today, I am celebrating the blood oranges that fill the market.

I eat a blood orange before my morning cappuccino, I drink blood orange juice at lunch.

Insalata Fantasia di Arance is what I order if I want a salad of blood orange segments simply dressed with olive oil, salt and pepper at dinner. It may be topped with onion, anchovy or olives but however it comes, it is delicious.

Freshly squeezed, pink, blood orange juice, with or without a splash of vodka, is toast worthy. Salute!

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Blood oranges, salami, carrots, olives, bread and cheese from the market made an easy lunch for a sunny day. On my mid-morning walk I bought a roasted artichoke at the panetterria/bakery near the duomo/cathedral. A simple dipping sauce of olive oil and lemon juice made the vegetables sparkle and wedges of blood orange rounded out lunch nicely.

The fruit of a blood orange may be orange flesh splashed with dots of red or be totally garnet red.  My favorite orange juice is made from blood oranges and is nearly peppermint pink in color – but not in taste.

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