The ANNOTICO Report

Sicilian Grandmother's traditional cooking of sweet and sour combinations
is being addressed in  lighter and more creative ways.

The old ways, of long and slow cooking, in vast quantities of olive oil,
seasonings applied with a heavy hand are slowly fading, and being replaced
by adding of additional local ingredients long overlooked, and new
adventurous combinations of traditional ingredients, thus Not straying too
far from the Sicilian roots, but soaring with imaginative touches.

Do not fear, it does not appear to be the "fou fou" dishes of the "nouveau"
chefs, but interesting and fun combinations, that are familiar, yet daring.

IN SICILY, AN APPETITE FOR THE NEW

New York Times
By Marion Burros
March 30, 2005

SICILY is fast becoming the next culinary destination as its imaginative
chefs deconstruct generations of grandmother's cooking, reinvent the
island's tradition of sweet and sour combinations and serve local
ingredients in lighter and more creative ways.

"Our passion for food and palate are different than it was in the 10th
century," said Corrado Assenza, the chef and an owner of Caffè Sicilia in
the gorgeous hilly Byzantine town of Noto. Mr. Assenza, the fourth
generation to run the cafe, is among the most creative practitioners of the
new Sicilian cooking, glazing capers with honey, turning bergamot into
marmalade.

"We need to have new traditions to be in touch with our land, new kinds of
combinations of ingredients, new fragrances," he said. "One side of our
tradition is that the best recipes are made with the best ingredients. The
other side applies to thinking with the modern brain what the food means
today."

So the eggplant Parmesan of my childhood has become an eggplant flan with
Parmesan fondue and velvet tomato sauce at Il Mulinazzo, a restaurant with
two Michelin stars in Villafrati, just outside Palermo. The elegant French
quenelle has been reinvented as fish gnocchi at the Sheraton hotel in
Catania. Chocolate sauce, traditionally served with rabbit, is now gracing
pork at Il Duomo in Ragusa, and basil has been given new life as a filling
for chocolates and a flavoring for sorbetto at Caffè Sicilia.

This tipping point in Sicilian history, culinary and otherwise, is
described in Nino Graziano's cookbook, "My Sicilian Cooking" (Bibliotheca
Culinaria, 2003). Mr. Graziano, one of the foremost practitioners of the
new Sicilian cooking, is the owner of Il Mulinazzo.

"After the dark years in which the island was associated only with the
Mafia, people have begun to associate it with something positive," Mr.
Graziano wrote. "Rather than ask who was killed where, tourists are now
more likely to inquire about a particular grape variety, the late ripening
peaches or a rare cheese. We have extraordinary ingredients at our
disposal, transformed by artisans and not by agribusiness."

And some of the island's young chefs, having traveled the world, now
realize how blessed they are at home. They are harvesting wild ingredients
like fennel and saffron, there for the taking in the hills and fields.

"A few years ago you couldn't pay people to harvest the almonds," said
Faith Willinger, the Italian food expert, writer and cookbook author, who
lives in Florence. "Now Sicilians realize theirs are the best. Like the
oregano, the capers, the grapes - everything is so vibrant. The vegetables
are amazing because they are grown on volcanic soil."

These new chefs are also bridging the gap between peasant cooking and that
of the monzù, the French-trained chefs the aristocracy employed in the 19th
and early 20th centuries. Monzù is Sicilian for monsieur.

There are at least a half a dozen places like Il Mulinazzo where the food
reflects this innovative cuisine. When I visited Sicily at the beginning of
the year, we made it to only four, whetting my appetite to someday go back
and try the rest.

I found chefs who are putting together foie gras with pine nuts and basil
sauce, and raw chopped tuna with olive oil flavored with green oranges.

The menu at Il Mulinazzo has many French touches: Mr. Graziano worked for
several years in France. But the dishes highlighted on the menu are taken
from the Sicilian tradition, like purée of fava beans enriched with scampi,
ricotta and extra virgin olive oil. The earthiness of the beans and the
sweet creaminess of the ricotta play off the ocean flavors of the scampi.

On New Year's Eve the tasting menu at Il Mulinazzo took its cue from the
plainest of peasant ingredients, artichokes and potatoes. But the potatoes
were coarsely mashed, the influence of Norman rule, Mr. Graziano said. And
the luxurious Beluga caviar topping was an international addition.

In the beginning, Mr. Graziano said, it was difficult to convince people to
abandon the old ways, long and slow cooking in vast quantities of olive
oil, seasonings applied with a heavy hand. But as time passed, the message
got through. On New Year's Eve at Il Mulinazzo everyone in the handsome,
festive dining room, with the exception of our table of four, was Italian.

At Il Timo, the restaurant in the Sheraton hotel in Catania, Saverio
Piazza, the executive chef and food and beverage director, has created what
he calls fish gnocchi, borrowing from haute cuisine and recalling a
quenelle or mousse of fish paste poached in a broth. His featherlike
gnocchi are made with butter, flour, butter and sea bass. They are served
in a sauce of scampi, tomatoes and garlic.

Mr. Piazza says outside influences, including Japan, have increased the
popularity of raw fish in Sicily, where restaurants in coastal towns serve
it just hours old. "The traditional way was fried tuna with onion sauce
with vinegar, a type of sweet and sour," he said. "The first raw fish to be
served were the neo nato, newly born anchovies or sardines. Little by
little we got to swordfish carpaccio. Now there is prosciutto of tuna."

Mr. Piazza loves to play with uncommon combinations of spices and
vegetables, often using them as a base for simply grilled or sautéed fish.
He infuses eggplant with cinnamon and serves it with sea bass; red mullet
rests on a bed of zucchini sautéed with cardamom. "I close myself in the
office, and I imagine the taste," he said.

One of these sessions produced eggplant marmalade made with sugar and bay
leaf and served in a tart shell topped with a lemon twist.

Ciccio Sultano, whose Ristorante Duomo has a Michelin star, was one of the
first local chefs to be noticed abroad for his reinvention of Sicilian
dishes and for returning lost ingredients to contemporary cooking.

Always playful, he serves shrimp and squid fried in a delicate batter of
semolina. It comes to the table wrapped in a paper cone, like French fries.

"I like people to be entertained, to have fun," Mr. Sultano said. "My work
is to rediscover and identify the lost flavors of traditional cuisine and
to renew them, inserting them into a modern and innovative context, while
at the same time remaining true to the historical significance of the
territory."

His dish of octopus, pork and citron seems unlikely until you taste it. The
octopus is boiled and ground "like a salami," he said. The pork is prepared
like headcheese, but with orange and lemon, giving both the seafood and the
meat similar textures. The accompanying salad of citron, onions and parsley
contrasts with and lightens the richness of the octopus and pork.

But the most daring experimenter with the strong sweet and savory elements
in Sicilian cooking is Mr. Assenza of Caffè Sicilia.

As we sat in his wonderful old cafe, housed in a 1749 building, he plied us
with example after example of his startling honeys and jams, cakes and
preserves. "Using a combination of ingredients," he said, "you pass from
low use of sugar to high use at the end of a meal."

For example he marinates raw fish in honey suffused with extra virgin olive
oil and orange, lemon and saffron, and then serves it with lemon granita.
And he pairs oysters with almond granita and what Mr. Assenza calls chili
pepper candy, hot peppers glazed with honey.

The combinations are fascinating and endless, and at times they seem
improbable. But one bite changes all that, astounding and delighting the
palate.

One of Mr. Assenza's gems is a basil marzipan filling for chocolate. The
brilliant creations of his mad genius - dozens of marvelous little boxes
filled with jars containing honey-glazed capers; honey combined with wild
fennel, saffron, white pepper or bergamot - line the shelves behind the
glass counters of the cafe.

"This is my link with the Sicilian tradition of sweet and acid," he said.
"We have the best ingredients and we honor Sicily by amplifying the quality
of the ingredients."

http://travel2.nytimes.com/2005/03/30/dining/30sici.html

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