Author Archives: hungryenglishman

sapore divino, ganzirri, messina

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Every now and then I win against my family. I mean, it’s bound to happen occasionally, isn’t it? As the great e.e. cummings wrote, “nobody loses all the time”. Of course, the odds are stacked against me, with a lawyer wife, a teenage daughter who could teach Lucrezia Borgia a trick or two, and a son whose evil grin would impress an assassin from one of the bloodier Renaissance tragedies. And in perhaps no area Continue Reading →

peperoncini sott’olio – chilli peppers in oil

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This is an illegal substance, or at least probably should be. It definitely looks like a by-product of chemical weapons manufacture. I am, of course addicted, as I am to anything that contains chillies. I have a number of varieties growing in pots on my terrace, and these are my very local source for the raw materials.  You’ll find recipes for chillies in oil/chilli oil elsewhere, but the crucial difference here is that the chillies Continue Reading →

spaghetti alle vongole – spaghetti with clams

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This is not specifically a Sicilian dish, and other regions of Italy have their own versions (although variation is minimal). Anyway, it’s served in most seafood restaurants here, and is a favourite in my house, and that’s good enough for me. This is one of those dishes that I always feel has something of a restaurant aura about it, but I suspect this is simply a hangover from my English upbringing. Anything served in its Continue Reading →

abbuffata di Natale – Christmas blowout

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Well, here we are, back from the hols. As I drag myself away from the scene of carnage that is my kitchen, I feel just about ready to write about food again, after three weeks doing nothing but cook and eat it in what I would like to think of as heroic quantities. You will no doubt be expecting a blow-by-blow account of my culinary escapades, but that would be like asking Homer if he Continue Reading →

spigola con salmoriglio – sea bass with Sicilian vinaigrette

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This is so easy to make that it’s hardly a recipe at all, but then again it’s such a crucial part of Sicilian seafood cookery that I could hardly leave it out. Salmoriglio is the fundamental condiment for grilled fish here, be it swordfish, tuna, sea bass, gilt-head bream … With something so simple, the quality of your raw materials is what makes all the difference. Now, I’m obviously spoilt here, as you would expect. Continue Reading →

cavolfiore affogato – braised cauliflower

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Of course – and those of you who have read other posts will realise there’s a pattern emerging here – Sicilians have a different name for it, and not only a different name for it, but a name that everyone else uses to indicate something different. In this case, similar, but nevertheless distinctly different. Because they often call cauliflower broccolo. So if a Sicilian says he’s cooking pasta con i broccoli, you might get pasta Continue Reading →

pasta al sugo di capone – pasta with dolphinfish

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Not for the first time, and not for the last either, I’ll warrant, we come up against the problem of names. This time in both English and Italian, just to make things fair. In English, these creatures that look like they’ve swum into a wall nose-first are called dolphinfish or mahi-mahi (which of course is not English, but Hawaiian, for the record). I don’t know why, and as you can see, they’re not likely to Continue Reading →