La Sicilia I
I really don’t know where to start, we spent the weekend in Sicily and between the baroque churches, greek temples and amazing countryside, we had incredible meals OR shall I say that we had our touristic jaunts between meals!
I can’t put all of the goodness into one post, so I’m splitting them up into three different posts, antipasti and pasta in one, sweets in the next and the last will be dedicated to hand food.
The antipasti were incredible, we were in Agrigento, which is close to the coast and we had one meal in Trapani, famous for its salt mines, so our focus was mainly on seafood.
The first photo is a plate of marinated fish, all raw and marinated in fresh lemon juice and a little bit of olive oil. White shrimp, scampi and swordfish tripe (the stomach lining of the swordfish, I never thought that tripe could taste so good).
The second is octopus salad, sarde alla beccafico, a fried fish fritter and steamed mussels. There were also little fish meatballs, but we ate them before I had a chance to take a picture!
Swordfish cannoli with swordfish carpaccio filled with ricotta mixed with radicchio and topped with a pepper salsa, mussels gratin, smoked tuna on a grilled piece of pecorino cheese topped with honey, marinated mackerel on a grilled carrot and in the middle is an octopus and potato salad.
Sarde alla Linguata, which were fresh sardines fried with a corn flour breading. The 2nd picture is a mix of tuna. Bottarga di tonno which is cured tuna roe, is the piece that is lighter in tone. Tuna salami, which is the darkest of the bunch and smoked tuna. Amazing.
Pasta cone le Sarde
We didn’t have a meal where one of us didn’t try pasta con le sarde. In Agrigento they make it with tomatoes, whereas in Trapani they make it without. This is made with fresh sardines (not in mustard sauce, like the ones that we ate in college!), wild fennel leaves, raisins and pine nuts. It is so delicate, but incredibly rich at the same time, a marriage of so many different flavors, creating delicate layers of flavor. Wild fennel leaves are so difficult to find in Rome, I am kicking myself for not buying some before we left on Monday morning. Fresh sardines are also difficult to find, but after the 13 hours car ride back to Rome they would have started to smell!
Pasta alla Norma
one of Sicily’s most famous pastas, eggplant and tomatoes with ricotta salata grated on top.
Casareccie con pesce spada, pistacchi e pachino
This pasta was the star of the weekend: swordfish, pistachios and tomatoes over casareccie pasta. The mix of ingredients created this amazing pulp that was almost creamy and so delicious.
Casareccie con pesce spada e radicchio (swordfish with radicchio)
Italicious 