Erica De Mane

Eat Smart in Sicily, by Joan Peterson and Marcella Croce, published by Ginkgo Press in 2008.

Recipe: Penette con Pesto di Pistacchio e Mandorle

Considering the size of my apartment, I have to say my collection of Italian cookbooks is almost out of control. But whenever I try thinning it out, I find there’s a fine and true reason to keep every one of them. They’re a family, and I can’t break them up. These books comfort me when my sense of identity slacks off. They remind me of things I need to remember, of specific dishes I love and want to cook again, and of flavor combinations I shouldn’t forget to play with. Most of all they bring back to me all my trips to Italy that can sometimes feel so far in the past. I especially treasure the little regional Southern Italian cookbooks and pamphlets I’ve collected from various excursions into Sicily, Campania, Puglia, Basilicata, and Calabria. Those are my people, that is my food, and now these are my books. They are where I find recipes for the home cooking in little corners of the world, for traditional dishes that may be fading out of people’s lives. These little paperbacks, often sold in the town hall or visitor center of a village (a room in a church), written by local cooks or historians, their covers decorated with illustrations of elaborate pastries or coiled sausages, or people picking olives, or a photo of a lady in a ridiculous regional outfit, complete with wacky headgear, taken during some sagra, make me cook with heart. When I cook from one of these books, I travel back to a place no big chef’s book can take me to.

Recently I entered “Sicily” in the Barnes & Noble search window, as I do from time to time, just to make sure there isn’t something new needed on my shelves, and up came Eat Smart in Sicily, part of an Eat Smart travel series published by Ginkgo Press. With its generic-looking travel-guide cover, I imagined it would be the opposite of the pinpointed, regional ones I love. But since I have to keep nurturing my big collection, I ordered it anyway.

In format the book turned out to be what I expected , but its content was much more involved than I’d imagined, more homey and intimate, with no slick edges. In fact it was like my beloved little regional books. The dishes and the names of the dishes, often presented in Sicilian dialect—a kind of Arab-looking and -sounding form of Italian—were truly foreign and distinct, drawing me right in with their poetry.

The book begins, as it should, with a rundown of Sicily’s checkered past, with all its Greek, Roman, Arab, French, and Spanish invaders, and how each contributed to what Sicilians eat and why. Interesting, but I’ve been there before. Once I got past that, and the authors started talking about the food, I was knocked out by its richness.

The next chapter is called, plainly enough, “Local Sicilian Food.” Just  scanning through it, picking out words on the pages, got me really tasting true Sicilian food. Some of the words that popped out at me: sesame seeds, swordfish, tuna, capers, fichi d’india, citrons, pine nuts, tomatoes, artichokes, sheep’s milk ricotta, olives, eggplants, cipolle, zucchina lunga, tenerumi, peperoncini, ceci, fiori di zucca, lumache, mint, parsley, wild fennel, saffron, maiali, agnello, capretti, horse meat, gamberi, calamari, seppie, polpo, fava, ricci (I love sea urchin), sarde, lenticchie, blood oranges, limone, aceto, chestnuts, caciocavallo, tuma, primosale, pecorino, honey, vino, acqua minerale, espresso, wild asparagus, almonds, figs, pistachios. What a glorious jumble.

Which leads to what in my opinion is the best part of the book, its “menu guide.” This is an extensive alphabetical list of Sicilian dishes that reads like a great nonfiction book (at least to me). Here’s a sampling of the names of some of the amazing dishes that it covers (for a description of what these things actually are and how they’re made, you’ll have to look at the book itself). I love the sound of ammogghiu, babaluci con aglio e prezzemelo, cappidduzzi (my favorite), ericini, filetto di suino, frascatole in brodo di pesce e gamberi, gelo di melone, impanatigghi, latte di mandorla, minne di vergini, olivette di Sant’Agata, pane e panelle, quaresimali, rosolio, salame di cinghiale, tagliancozzi, uva al liquore, vurrania bollita, zucca all’agrodolce, and zuppa di crastuna, to name a few.

And just to hep you up further, and get you wondering why you’re not booking a trip to Sicily right now, the authors include a handful of recipes, both traditional home-cooking types and contemporary restaurant dishes. I’ve always been fascinated by Sicilian nut pestos, the classic one being a mix of almonds, tomato, garlic, mint, and basil. But evidently the pure nut pestos like the one I made from this book, which contain almost nothing but ground pistachios and almonds, are more contemporary (you’d think it would be the other way around, since tomatoes came along relatively late in Italian history, but that’s evidently not the case).

Pennette with pistachio and almond pesto, the recipe I chose, turned out to be a great dish, but I do have a few things to say about making this opulent pasta outside of Sicily. As with all pestos, this one is best when prepared no more than about an hour before serving, so that it stays fresh and brightly colored (and it’s really quick to make, just a few ingredients thrown into a food processor). I did, however, have to make several changes to the original recipe, because the nuts I find here at not all that flavorful. I can sometimes track down Sicilian Bronte pistachios and decent almonds, if I run all over town, but I usually have to make do with nuts from a health food shop, which seem to have more flavor than supermarket ones. At any rate, I found I needed to toast them a little to bring up their taste. Even with the toasting, I found I needed to add a little garlic, which is not present in the original recipe. I didn’t cave in and add cheese or black pepper, though, two ingredients most Americans seem to think belong in every Italian dish.

I have to say, this pesto was delicious. If you find the freshest, best nuts you can, and use good Sicilian olive oil (I would suggest Ravida), you’ll get excellent results. Maybe not quite as wonderful as you could get in Sicily; for that, you’ll just have to book a trip.

Penette con Pesto di Pistacchio e Mandorle

This recipe is my adaptation of one in Eat Smart in Sicily. The authors got it from Giovanni Farruggio, chef at the Ristorante La Pigna in the Hotel Villa Paradiso dell’Etna, in San Giovanni La Punta in the province of Catania.

(Serves 4 as a first course)

½ cup unsalted, shelled pistachios, lightly toasted
½ cup blanched almonds, lightly toasted
1 small garlic clove, roughly chopped
Extra-virgin olive oil, preferably an estate-bottled Sicilian oil such as Ravida
Salt
About 20 basil leaves
¾ pound pennette (small penne)
A handful of chopped fennel fronds for garnish (if you can find wild fennel that will be best, but I used the fronds from bulb fennel, which weren’t bad)

Put up a pot of pasta cooking water and bring it to a boil. Add a generous amount of salt.

Put the pistachios and the almonds in the bowl of a food processor. Add the garlic, and give it a few quick pulses. Add about a third of a cup of olive oil and some salt, and pulse a few times more. You want to chop the nuts into little pieces, but you don’t want to create a paste. When the nuts are fairly uniformly chopped, add the basil, and pulse once or twice more, just to break it up. The texture should be pebbly.

Cook the pennette al dente, and drain, saving about a cup of the pasta cooking water.

Pour the pennette into a warmed serving bowl. Add the nut pesto and a few tablespoons of the cooking water. Toss well. Add a drizzle of extra olive oil if needed for texture. Taste for salt. Garnish with the fennel fronds. Serve.