A Trip for Two to Sicily

Perrine and I have been looking forward to spending some time together discovering Sicily for a long time, and we finally had the chance when Maminou Françoise volunteered to take care of her grandson for a week in Brittany while Perrine and I went off for a (what we hoped would be romantic!) trip to this vast and amazing island off the coast of Italy.

Perrine and I love Italy, and after our honeymoon in Tuscany and our wonderful stay in Lazio/Umbria with our Gingold/Gerhardstein cousins, we thought we were starting to become rather familiar with the country. But from the moment we stepped off the plane outside of Palermo, and saw the mountainous cliffs everywhere diving straight into the sea, we realized this was going to be very different from all the places in Italy we'd seen before.

Our entire trip would be spent in a relatively small area of northwest Sicily. We found out after our trip that some people call this part of Sicily, which is generally less touristic, the 'real Sicily'! In any event, we found it beautiful, at times confounding, but always fascinating. The whole ancient Mediterranean world came through Sicily at different points in history, Greeks, Phoenicians, the Moors. Tunisia is less than 100 miles away, and something about the country often feels more African than European (couscous is the local specialty in cities like Erice, you see a lot of cactus and arid climate plants, etc.).

We were lucky enough to have a number of contacts from our friend Cedric who imports olive oil from Sicily to Paris – through them we chose our lodgings, and at different points throughout our stay we met up different friends of Cedric. We starting out at a coastal suburb of Palermo called Mondello, which has a fancy hotel but a little fishing village as well. We stayed at the B&B of the very sweet Rosanna.

View of our bungalow and a lemon tree from Rosanna's patio where we had breakfast in the morning

Coming in Spring was an inspired idea, while it was a little cool for swimming, the weather was lovely and the whole country was blooming with flowers everywhere which made everywhere you go smell absolutely heavenly. Mondello was no exception!

In the hills over looking the town were what Rosanna said were totally illegal housing, a whole gated neighborhood built by people who were indifferent to the law, and apparently able to get away with this anyway.

It was our first whiff of the complex and lasting place the mafia has in Sicilian society. Our second whiff came soon enough – a trash collection strike. Sicilians told us the mafia has a big stake in trash collection, and was trying to create a state of emergency to be able to raise their fees. We saw trash like this along roads all over, and unfortunately sometimes not in such orderly piles.



Our first night in Mondello, we walked form Rosanna's down to the beach and went looking for a seafood restaurant in the village.

When we stopped to get a beer on the beach before dinner, we asked for something to nibble on – instead of chips or peanuts, they gave us Bruscette al Pomodoro (Tomato Bruschetta). It was so simple and SO delicious, and came from just this little beach-side sandwich vendor, that we realized then and there we were going to eat VERY well in Sicily!







That night we had a very good seafood dinner on the terrace of a nice little restaurant in the village.

Perrine had tomato and mussel soup - wonderful - and I had a seafood antipasti

Sicilain gnocchi pasta with sea urchin

We rested up in Mondello, and took walks on the beach and in a nearby nature reserve.

We might have felt a little guilty about enjoying Sicily without Milo, if we didn't know that meanwhile he was having a lovely time with Maminou taking in the first sun of the Spring in Brittany.

Palermo

We visited Palermo twice as well while staying in Mondello, and enjoyed exploring the streets and parks, churches and restaurants.

San Giuseppe dei Teatini church in the Sicilian – considered one of the most outstanding examples of the Sicilian Baroque in Palermo.

As Baroque as it gets...

On the Sunday we went, few restaurants were open at noon, but we had a great recommendation from the flight attendant - a simple workers cafe which had all the great Sicilian street foods (like Arancini–fried rice balls coated with breadcrumbs and filled with cheese/meat/mushrooms/etc, said to have originated in Sicily in the 10th century) and antipasti like eggplant and artichokes – which supposedly originated in Sicily – and of course cannoli filled with sweet ricotta cheese with our coffee.

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Arancino

artichokes and eggplant - divine

prosciutto and ricotta cheese

The graffiti was interesting, it was almost all either poetic/philosophical or very political.

"Revolutionary Plaza"

"This is not art"

"Journalist Bastards!"  – right around the corner from the local newspaper office

There were lots of cats and dogs in the street...

Buildings that looked like they were about to fall down...



... had beautiful renovated restaurants inside.

Swordfish Carpaccio, a Sicilian specialty - Marinated in Olive Oil, Mint And Lemon (yummy, and no, we never eat Swordfish usually, though it's not currently on the endangered list, really!)

We met up with Valentina, the rep in Sicily for our importer friend Cedric, who was helping set up a new single table restaurant/table d'hôte based on Cedric's restaurant and table d'hote in Paris, La Tête dans les Olives. It was being set up in a new hotel and art gallery that, as it turned out, was being inaugurated the next day.

Valentina and the two chefs who will be doing the cooking at the new table, Riccardo and Cinzia, took us out to eat at the most amazing pizzeria we've ever been to that night. Dario, the most passionate pizza maker I've met (he's traveled Italy learning all the secrets and specialities of every region) served us several incredible pizzas, covered with things like kale and wild broccoli leaves and smoked mozzarella cheese. Supposedly he may be moving to Paris to open a restaurant with Cedric... keep you posted.

Dario at work

Riccardo and Cinzia

The next night we returned with Rosanna, who is active in the art world in Palermo, to the gallery inauguration, where Valentina and the chefs prepared the appetizers for everyone, to give an idea of what the food at the table will be like when it opens.

The future table, with a film on the wall of Cedric at his place in Paris.

In the kitchen...

Carrot, mint, ricotta cheese

The next day we said goodbye to Rosanna, and gathered our things to move to a citrus farm a bit farther outside of Palermo near a village called Capaci. But first we went and spent a day in the countryside visiting the Doric temple site of Segesta -

The Segesta temple was built in the late 5th century BC, and some say it is the best preserved Greek temple in the world  - it truly was awe inspiring

The wildflowers seemed to be at their absolute peak - needless to say we went gaga about this place.

We walked all around the site for hours, visiting the different ruins, finally reaching the 450BC ampitheatre at the top of the mountain.

Back at the citrus farm of Cedric's friend Domenico near Capaci, we'd be able to explore the farm with Domenico and his old hand (and teacher in many ways for all aspects of farming and citrus and olive tree tending/grafting etc. ) Nene, and enjoy the cooking of Domenico's wife Caterina and mother in law Giacoma.

Grapefruit flower

Nene showing his work, a graft on an olive tree -why, don't ask me, our Italian isn't THAT good!

Perrine with Domenico and Caterina

In traditional peasant cooking, you don't throw anything away – a traditional Sicilian dish, beans (cooked and marinated in oil, mint, lemon) and the pods floured and fried!

Giacoma made wonderful treats of ricotta cheese sugar and lemon, rolled in couscous and fried in olive oil - we later brought some home for Milo, he loved them!

We took a day trip to the beautiful hilltop village of Erice, with its churches, Norman castles and amazing pasteries (which were created originally by nuns).

 

Fruit made of almond paste...

Wait a minute, my god, do you see that canoli!

It's bigger than we thought!!

We worked off that canoli the next day with a long hike in the beautiful Zingaro nature reserve. The huge tunnel at the entrance is a reminder that they were very close to building a highway all the way long this coastline in the 1980s before a protest movement stopped it and saw the creation of a park here.

The coast is a series of paths that lead past old tuna fisherman stations and tiny secluded coves.

We settled down for lunch in this cove -

The flowers were getting to that point again by the time we were turning back and we were getting woozy from all the beauty - talk about Stendhal syndrome, forget Florence, go to Sicily in the springtime!

The last day of our trip, we went to the amazing Vallee del Belice (that's not far from the village of Corleone, Godfather fans!) where many of the olive oil producers Cedric works with live.

The valley was hit by a horrible earthquake in 1968, and has never quite recovered. An artist named Alberto Burri created a giant memorial – Creto de Burri – to one of the leveled villages named Gibelina, by pouring tons of concrete over it but leaving in place all the streets. We were met by Cedric's friend Marco, an olive and wine grower, who took us to visit the area.

We also visited the village where Marco's father was born, Poggioreale, which is now an abandoned ghost town, since the entire place is unstable.

Marco's father's childhood home.

An old theatre

After the visit, Marco took us to have lunch together with his mother - Anita is a fiery and brilliant woman, fluent in French, who cooks amazing calamari (stuffed with bread crumbs and raisins). It was a wonderful afternoon.

We left the next day. We came back to Paris from this trip feeling like we only scratched the surface of Sicily, and hoping to be returning one day soon, this time with Milo!

Home together again