The Sweetie’s Fave Southern Italian Meals
Written by the Sweetie (aka Steve Kest)
It is a truism of course that there is no such thing as “Italian food” – something that we realized 10 years ago on our first of many trips to different regions of the country. In Rome every restaurant had the same half dozen Roman dishes – none of which appeared on menus across the border in Umbria, much less in the Dolomite Mountains in the north. The fact that each region – and in many cases each village! – has its own unique cuisine was brought home to us with every meal we ate during our recent trip to Sicily, Naples, and Puglia. As one food expert we talked to in Lecce put it, the neighborhood you can see from a single church bell tower has its own unique culinary styles and traditions… and the next church overlooks an entirely different cuisine! That may have been a slight exaggeration, but the essential truth is that local styles of cooking have developed over millennia based on what crops grew best in the soil and climate; what animals thrived; what forms of land ownership, tenure, and relative power characterized the relationships between landlords and those who worked the land; and, especially important in southern Italy, what foreign invaders and conquerors set up shop and brought their own foods into the mix. Once a particular set of ingredients and cooking styles gelled, and proved to be tasty, readily accessible, and economically advantageous, the recipes were passed down over the ages within families and villages… to the great benefit of hungry travelers like ourselves!
In 6 weeks, we ate SO MANY amazing meals, but here is some of what stood out:
** The Arab influence, especially in Sicily: From the 9th to the 11th centuries various parts of Sicily were conquered and ruled by Arabs from Syria, Egypt and Tunisia; and for a century or more after that Sicily’s Norman rulers coexisted with local Arab-Sicilian communities. And even after Arab political power on the island was overthrown, Sicilians enjoyed trade relations with Arab communities throughout the Mediterranean basin (it turns out that Sicily is closer to North Africa than it is to Rome!). One consequence of this deep connection can be seen in Sicily’s food culture. One of my favorite dishes in Palermo was pasta with sardines and fennel, capers, pine nuts, and pistachios – a dish which has its origins in Arab cuisine. According to some scholars, so does arancini, the fried and stuffed balls of risotto that we ate throughout Sicily, which is closely related to middle-eastern kibbeh. (And, although various types of arancini are now easily acquired throughout Sicily, we learned that each region had its own variety: mozzarella and tomato in Palermo; eggplant in Catania; etc.). One day we drove an hour from Palermo to visit Trapani, on the far northwest corner of Sicily, and stuffed ourselves on Couscous Trapanese, a sort of fish stew with couscous. You can just about see Tunisia from Trapani, and the couscous that substitutes for pasta in the local specialty is evidence of longstanding cultural exchange.
Speaking of which, cultural exchange is still part of Palermo’s self-image. The city, Sicily’s largest, has long welcomed immigrants and refugees (and many local elected officials and community organizations are proud to stand in opposition to the xenophobia of Italy’s national political leadership). One of our favorite meals in Palermo was at Molti-Volti, a restaurant and community space run by and for local African and Middle Eastern immigrants, where we enjoyed a Senegalese Maafe and Couscous Trapanese that reunited a 1000-year old dish with newly arrived chefs who have brought their own couscous traditions to Sicily.
** Seafood, and “The Sea Itself”: So much amazing seafood (we were almost never more than a few minutes from the sea during our whole trip)! One favorite dish, at Antiche Muro in Polignano a Mare in Puglia, was poetically named “Il Mare in Persona” (“The Sea Itself”): a pasta dish coated in sea urchin roe and lightly baked oysters. So good!
** Local appetizer specials: We haven’t run into this in other parts of Italy, but in Puglia almost every restaurant had an antipasti dish called some version of “local assorted specialties”. We first saw this item in a restaurant in Matera, and of course ordered it. The waiter then came back with 5 of 6 dishes: fava beans with chicory; amazing cured meats; balls of mozzarella and tubs of ricotta; and more. We stuffed ourselves on all sorts of deliciousness, and then the waiter came back with another 5 or 6 dishes. We said no, we hadn’t ordered another set of appetizers… but he told us this was the second course of starters! This one was all hot foods: meatballs, grilled shrimp, baked tuna and tomatoes, etc, etc. It turns out this restaurant was stingier than others: we ate at one place with four separate appetizer courses, each with multiple dishes, and another, on the island of Ischia, had I think 5 or 6 courses of starters, each with 4 or 5 dishes. No wonder we spent most of our trip in a food coma!
** Il Focalare: Speaking of Ischia, our favorite meal on the island was at a restaurant deep in the island’s interior called Il Focalare, where in addition to the local appetizer assortment we ordered the specialty of the restaurant (and, as it turns out, of the island), a roasted and stewed rabbit. It came in a giant clay pot, which was filled with tomatoes, garlic, and an entire rabbit, head and all. Our host told us to use our hands and pull the meat off with our teeth – which we did until all that was left was a pile of bones. Then, as we were finishing our digestifs, the host came by and invited us to join her in the wine cellar (an actual cave below the restaurant), where she told us the story of the restaurant (started by her father and now run by her and her brothers), and explained how the tradition on Ischia is for families to gather on Sundays and eat rabbit together. (We first heard this story on Stanley Tucci’s TV show “Seaching for Italy”, which is how we first heard about the restaurant!)
** Mimi alla Ferrovia: Naples was a culinary highlight. We stuffed ourselves on Neapolitan pizza (our favorite pizzeria, Da Concettina ai Tre Santi, had lines down the block even at 10pm at night), but we especially loved Mimi’s. We had gotten several recommendations to go there from people we trusted, but then found they didn’t take reservations for parties of two. No problem, said Ines, the owner of our wonderful B&B, Atelier Ines: the chef, Salvatore, is one of my best friends! So off we went, our name was on the the list at the door, and prosecco was waiting for us at our table. We put in our order… and then dish after additional dish arrived at our table, compliments of the chef. I think we ended up with twice as much food as we would have normally ordered, and all of it was delicious, especially the whipped ricotta and Pasta Genovese, a Neapolitan specialty (despite the name), a very slow cooked onion and meat sauce.
** Local street food tours: A highlight of our recent travels, we took tours in Palermo and Naples, both with a street food tour company called Streaty. Again, each city had its own chewy specialties (most of which I enjoyed more than Kemi): a sandwich of fried lungs and spleen, and another of fried and grilled tendons, both in Palermo; fried and doused–in-lemon tripe; giant paper cones of fried sardines, squid, and shrimp; and fried pizza, all in Naples. (A feature of street food tours: frying, which makes everything more palatable!)
** Equine specialties: Horse meat is a traditional food in Puglia, where many restaurants served it as stewed chunks or as meatballs served over pasta. I found it to be a somewhat gamier version of beef, and delicious! I also enjoyed a highly recommended donkey-burger at a restaurant in Catania – although I’m not sure I could have distinguished it from a regular beef-burger if I hadn’t known I was eating donkey.
** Vegetables too: It wasn’t all horse and organ meats; one of the specialities in Puglia was pureed fava beans topped with wild chicory, and soaked in olive oil. And we were in both Puglia and Sicily as wild fennel was coming into season. We saw many people out foraging for fennel, and we ate so many dishes that were topped with the fragrant fronds.
** Gelato: Of course we had to try all the gelato options! Our favorite was in the tiny Salento (the southernmost section of Puglia) town of Tricase, Gelateria G&Co, where we loved the local pistachio and wild fruits. (After our gelatos, which we enjoyed in the hopelessly picturesque town piazza, we stopped for an aperitif at an old drug store turned bar, Farmacia Balboa – which we learned was owned by Helen Mirren, who has a house in the area. Tricase is one of the many towns in Puglia and Sicilia that we decided we wanted to return to, for weeks or years! Thanks to our friend Mary for the tip!
** Wine and more: Speaking of aperitifs, whenever we are in Italy we become big fans of the pre-dinner drinking ritual of ordering aperol or campari spritzes, along with just about everyone else in town. And then a bottle of wine with dinner (no one orders just a glass!), and on most days another bottle at lunch. We almost always had the local wine – often from a vineyard we could practically see from the restaurant. (Which makes sense, since the wine almost by definition goes with the food that was grown or raised in the same fields.) And then a digestif (often homemade in the restaurant), which Kemi in particular argued we needed for health reasons, to help us digest our huge meals. Fortunately, now that we are home and paying NY prices for wine, we are back to our much more moderate habits!
** Restaurant culture: Bottles of local wine with every meal was just part of the distinctly Italian restaurant culture that always amazes us, no matter how often we visit. For one thing, dinners are rarely less than 2-3 hours long (and often longer), and lunch is rarely shorter than 2 hours. (We still remember an evening in Tuscany 10 years ago, when the owner of our inn made a reservation for us at a nearby restaurant. We asked him what time our reservation was for, and he looked at us with surprise: the table is yours for the evening, show up at any time, and stay as long as you want!) And no dinner is complete without a precisely choreographed post-meal ritual: first the dessert, then the espresso, then the digestif. Finally, it is almost impossible to get your check. No restaurant would ever think of bringing a check until you ask for it (that would be the height of rudeness), but then even asking for the check wouldn’t guarantee that we’d get it. Usually we had to ask 3 or 4 times, and we learned to budget at least half an hour for the whole process. In the end, we came to believe that for many restaurant owners and workers, the whole point was to welcome and feed their guests, and the check (while necessary – no one was doing this work for free!) sort of destroyed the illusion that you were a guest at someone’s home.
** Masseria Le Stanzie: Probably our favorite example of “dinner as guest” took place deep in the Salento, an hour south of Lecce, at Masseria Le Stanzie, a centuries-old stone farmhouse turned into a restaurant. We arrived a little early (8pm, which no Italian would consider a civilized hour for dinner - too early!), and the hostess told us that the kitchen was still doing prep, but she offered us prosecco and suggested we wander the grounds of the farm while we waited for the kitchen to get ready for dinner service. Gradually other guests arrived (many of the tables didn’t fill up until 10:30 or so), and we were led to our table. The waitress came by, and instead of offering us a menu she suggested a few starters (which of course turned out to be the multi-course mixed appetizers we were used to by now), and said we could discuss the pasta dishes and the secondi after we finished our starters. She came back after we finished our 8 or 10 appetizers, and suggested a couple pasta dishes (one of each!), and then a roast lamb secondi, which she thought would complement the pastas. The food was great, but the feeling – of being taken care of – was what stuck with us. Thanks to Micaela for the recommendation!
** Good food everywhere: We loved so many of the restaurants we ate at, but we also loved the fact that we found good food at some unexpected places. One day we took a hike through the Vendicari Nature Reserve, a regional park by the sea outside Noto, in Sicily. A beautiful beach, sea grasses, ponds, and hundreds of flamingos – one of our favorite walks of the trip. Then, as we headed back towards the trailhead and parking lot, we came upon the local park concession food stand. We were thirsty so we thought we’d pick up some water… but then we saw the menu, which included multiple freshly prepared dishes. We ordered the “Scaletta dei Sapori”, the “ladder of flavors”, with 9 different finger foods, including olive pate, local tuna, artichokes in oil, breads with honey and fruit marmalades, sausages, and more. Plus our choice of several local wines. I repeat, this was at a park concession stand!
** Awaiting Table: Finally, a shout-out to Silvestro Silvestri, owner of this award-winning cooking school in Lecce where we spent a day. Silvestro met us in a piazza and took us to his favorite vegetable and fish markets, where we learned about local cuisine & shopping habits, loaded up on ingredients, and then brought them home to his kitchen - to make pasta with octopus; mussels in wine; grilled prawns; broiled fish; and so much wine! All while learning about Puglia food culture, about olive oil and wine, and about the history of this beautiful region of Italy.
Buon Appetito!!
As always… If you want to see more photos or read brief missives on different areas we visited and things we experienced, please check out my instagram posts from April and May.