Cooking of the Sicilian Provinces

Introduction

 

The Roman proverb ”Siculus coquus et Sicula mensa” literally translated means: Sicilian cook and Sicilian provisions and in classical Rome for the upper class and for the rich families, to employ a Sicilian cook besides the advantage of eating well cooked and tasty foods, it was a status symbol.
Before and after the Romans’ rule, all the people that lived or governed Sicily appreciated the island’s cooking and exported the food and the cookery of Sicily to their own land.

It is a fact that those who came to Sicily fell in love with the land and brought their families to live there to become part of the melting pot, which today is the population of Sicily.
The Phoenicians introduced the use of salt to preserve and cure fish and food. The Sicilian cooks used salt to conserve provisions and added honey to make the food more palatable. The new salty-sweet sauce added to the other popular sweet-sour sauce, made with sour wine and honey, gave the possibility to conserve food for long trips and export to distant places.

The Sicilians mastered from the Carthaginians the grain farming. It is believed that in this period, a rudimental form of flat bread, like a thick cracker, was made and later on transformed to sfincione.

The Greeks called Sicily Megale’ Hellas (later the Romans called it “Magna Grecia”) meaning Great Greece, they settled in this luscious and fertile land with mild climate and founded many cities and trading posts. They incremented the production of wine, the cultivation of artichokes and introduced the olive trees. For many years, long after the Greeks left Sicily, the Island was the olive oil capital of the known world.
The Greeks sponsored the rearing of cattle to increase the manufacturing of dairy products. The Sicilian farmers generated many varieties of cheeses, typical of the territories of production, each with a different taste due to the manner of preparation and conservation process. More importantly, the wealthy Greek families employed local people as workers in their kitchens to take the place of the slaves and a new craft was born, namely the cook.
The cooks made the pickled vegetables for their Greek employers, also they pickled cooked assorted vegetables, added capers, olives, spices, honey and fried artichokes and an archaic version of caponatina was born.

The Romans did little to enhance the eclectic Sicilian cooking. They built beautiful villas for their vacations and infrastructures like aqueducts, theaters and roads, to make their life comfortable.
They imposed heavy taxes on the population, monopolized the commerce of wheat, to provide for the Roman people and for their soldiers.
The aristocracies used “Sicilian cook and Sicilian provisions” to celebrate their feasts.
In Rome or in their vacation retreats, expert Sicilian cooks prepared their banquets with Sicilian supplies, fruits, vegetables, games, honey and wines.

Roma dominated Sicily until the forth century AC. and the Byzantines settled in Sicily from 525 A.C. to the year 827 A.C.
The Byzantines were never accepted by the population. They imposed heavy taxes, established the military draft and imposed the Christian religion on the population.
Their contribution to the Sicilian culinary art is minimal or not existent; in fact it is believed that they introduced the “pastfeli” a honey and sesame seed sweet later called cubbarda or cubbaita.

The Arabs inhabited Sicily for about 200 years and during their rule, Sicily achieved a stage of welfare, order and prosperity. As a result of this wealth, and the introduction of new farming products coupled with exotic spices, many different dishes were made-up and diverse cooking techniques were devised.
One of the new products manufactured in this period was pasta, the food that since than has influenced the eating habits of the entire world.
The first pasta factory in the world was established in Trabia, a small town outside Palermo. It was selected for its slightly humid climate, for the mild temperature, for the crystalline spring water without calcium or any other impurities and for the quality of the local grain, the durum wheat: these are necessary attributes to make good pasta.
Today in Trabia, pasta is made on a smaller scale, but the system and the art of making pasta from Trabia spread all over Italy and now Italy is the world’s biggest producer of pasta.

The Sicilians used their skills, combined with the expertise of the Arabs and the addition of  new ingredients to create new procedures and combinations whose influence, after 1000 years, is unmistakably present in today’s Sicilian cooking. The tastes of sour, sweet and salty were paired or combined to create new dimensions in the savor of food and raisins, pine nuts, almonds and pistachios were extensively used.

The Sicilians combined the snow of the Etna with honey and enjoyed this cold treat in the summer: the Saracens improved this dessert by adding sugar cane and fresh juices to the snow and called it the “sharbat”, the sorbet. A dessert like the cassata, was modified by adding the marzipan, a mixture of almonds and sugar cane and decorated with fresh fruits dipped in sugar syrup, candied to preserve and sweeten them. During this time cookies and cakes made with candied fruits, pistachios and cinnamon were baked and sugar was added to the cubbarda, originally made only with honey and sesame seeds.
The Normans introduced the salted cod, in Sicilian baccala’, the dry cod, the stockfish called stoccafisso and the smoked herrings; elements often found on Sicilian tables.
In the following five centuries many people touched our shores.

The numerous Jewish populations living on the Island could not cook on Saturday for religious reasons. They were skilled in food preservation and cooked the food in advance to be eaten for their Shabbats.
Using their ability and the local expertise they mastered their cooking which was later popularized all over the Italian peninsula as “cucina ebraica”, Jewish cookery. 
They introduced a line of baked and fried pastries, in the shape of a half moon, stuffed with salty or sweet ingredients to make a brackish snack or a tasty dessert.

In the 13th century, the French were unwelcome guests and ruled Sicily until the uprising known as the Sicilian Vespers that started in Palermo in March 1282.  Beatrix, the daughter of Raymond-Berenger IV, Count of Provence, married Charles I d’Anjou, king of Sicily and Naples. When she lived in Palermo, she made an effort to Frenchify the court and to teach the Sicilian cooks the Provencal way of cooking. The olive oil, garlic, olives and anchovies, staple ingredients in the Provencal style of cooking, also are fundamental in the older and much more complex Sicilian cooking schools. The Sicilian ways of cooking were valuable to the Provencal style of cooking which acquired knowledge of sauces made by the paring of different tastes - sweet, sour, salty-, learning new recipes which the French called with fancy names and made them their own.
Effectively the improvements were limited only to the appearance of a few dishes and the only noticeable influence was in the semantics. Oh, yes: they called the cooks Monzu’, a contraction of Monsieur!

The Spaniards introduced the “empanadas”, in Sicily called impanata, schiacciata, pastizzu or fuate, which are a turnover, made of bread dough and usually stuffed with vegetables, meat or fish. Their long occupation of the Island contributed to and increased the ability of the Monzu’ and the general population to experiment and try new dishes, especially when  new products like cocoa,  potatoes, peppers, squash and tomatoes were introduced from America. The tomatoes were not fully appreciated and consumed as food until the seventeenth century.
In this period the taste of bitter-salt-sweet was successfully experimented with when the “impanata” was served stuffed with bitter spinach, sweet raisins, regular and bitter almonds, and salted anchovies.

In the late eighteenth century, an English trader John Woodhouse discovered a wine, made in the town of Marsala, aged in oak casks, with the same characteristic of the fortified wines imported in England and produced in Spain and Portugal, the Madeira and the Port. In 1796 John Woodhouse opened a winery for the production of Marsala wine in large quantities which were successfully exported to England and all over the world.
In 1860, Garibaldi started the military operations that successfully unified Italy.

At present Sicily is an autonomous region, divided into nine provinces: Agrigento, Caltanissetta, Catania, Enna, Messina, Palermo, Ragusa, Syracuse and Trapani.

 

 

 

 

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