What to Eat in Sicily: Typical Sicilian Food and Specialties | Page 2 of 2
Ballarò Market: Where Palermo Eats Breakfast
The oldest and largest of Palermo's historic markets reaches your ears before it reaches your eyes: the vendors hawk their wares in a singsong chant called abbanniata. Panelle sizzle among the stalls, boiled octopus is sliced to order and oysters wait on ice. You can put a whole breakfast together here, from raw shrimp to baked ricotta with honey - all you have to do is walk from stall to stall.
Caponata: Sicilian Sweet-and-Sour Vegetables with Eggplant
Caponata is a Sicilian sweet-and-sour mix of fried eggplant, celery, olives and capers in a tomato sauce with vinegar and sugar, served cold as an appetizer. The name supposedly comes from an expensive fish the barons ate, though linguists trace it to a galley capon instead. Why the eggplant is fried on its own, why caponata is best on the second day, and how it tasted in a Palermo restaurant devoted to the local football club.
Al Vecchio Club Rosanero Restaurant: A Soccer Trattoria in Palermo
A small trattoria in a side alley off via Maqueda has handed its whole interior over to Palermo's soccer club - and sends out huge portions at prices that are hard to find in the city center. Why a half portion here means a normal one, what the pink and black shirts have to do with the Florio family's liqueurs, and what a seven-dish dinner for two came to?
Arancini: Sicilian Fried Rice Balls
Arancini are fried balls of saffron-tinted rice, filled with meat ragù or something else and rolled in breadcrumbs - the best-known street food in Sicily. Palermo makes them round and calls them arancina, Catania makes them pointed like Etna and calls them arancino; the island has been arguing over a single letter for decades. And the oldest Sicilian dictionary lists them as a dessert.
Cannoli: Sicilian Pastry Tubes with Ricotta
Cannoli are crisp fried tubes filled with a cream of sheep's milk ricotta, the best-known sweet of Sicily. The name comes from the reed the dough was once wound around, the history from legends about a harem in Caltanissetta and from convent pastry shops. They are filled only just before they are sold, otherwise the shell goes soft - and that is exactly how you spot a good pastry shop.
I Segreti del Chiostro: A Convent Pastry Shop in Palermo
The only clue to the I Segreti del Chiostro pastry shop in Palermo is a sign outside the Santa Caterina convent. Inside, cannoli, cassata and the breasts of Saint Agatha are baked to the recipes of enclosed nuns - sweets that were sold for centuries through a revolving box in the wall. And the pastry comes with a cloister garden and a view from the convent roof.
Stigghiola di Vitello: Sicilian Grilled Veal Intestines
Stigghiola di vitello is thin veal intestine wound around a skewer and grilled over charcoal, street food from Palermo that today belongs to all of Sicily. Off the grill it gets cut into pieces, salted, finished with a squeeze of lemon and eaten with your hands, with nothing on the side. The name traces back to the Latin word for a little gut, the history to the "fifth quarter" - everything left at the slaughterhouse for the poor.
Stigghiola: Sicilian Grilled Lamb Intestines
Stigghiola is a Sicilian street food made from cleaned lamb or kid intestine, wound around a spring onion and parsley and grilled over charcoal. It's part of quinto quarto cooking, the fifth quarter, and it's grilled all over the island - in Messina it's called tajuni. It's served hot, with nothing but salt and lemon, most often in the evening at a stall you find by the smoke.
Vucciria Market: Where Palermo Stays Up Late
The Vucciria isn't the oldest or the biggest of Palermo's markets, but it's the only one that made it into a proverb and into an art gallery. Sleepy alleys with a handful of stalls and permanently wet flagstones by day; grills, smoke, music and crowds after dark. Why the proverb says the market's flagstones never dry, what Renato Guttuso has to do with it, and why I prefer Ballarò.
Cartocci Siciliani: Fried Yeast Tubes Filled with Ricotta
Cartocci siciliani are fried tubes of yeast dough, rolled in sugar and filled with sweetened ricotta studded with chocolate chips. They are cannoli's Palermo cousins, bought in the morning at a bar or a bakery to go with coffee, and in Palermo they also go by the name Macallè - after an Ethiopian town, though nobody knows why. Today you'll find them all over Sicily.