Lindsay Marie Morris

Harper Alexander had little experience with Italian food before traveling to Italy and meeting his wife Eva Santaguida, who is from Calabria. But today, as co-founder of the Pasta Grammar YouTube channel and co-author of The Italian Family Kitchen: Authentic Recipes That Celebrate Homestyle Italian Cooking, he's doing his part to educate the masses about the food and culture that's inspired him. 

I sat down with Harper and Eva to discuss their new cookbook, why and how they started Pasta Grammar, what goes into recipe writing, the biggest misconceptions about Italian food, which Sicilian recipe is their favorite, and more. 

 

 

How and why did you start Pasta Grammar?

Harper: We started shortly after we got married and right as COVID hit. It was one of those COVID hobbies that a lot of people did during the pandemic when they weren't working.

 

I'd been to Italy a few times to visit Eva when we were dating, but food wasn't something I deeply cared about or knew very much about. And so, at first, I made these videos joking around with her because she was new to America and getting her reactions to American food, whether it's Domino's Pizza or the prices at Whole Foods, whatever. At the end of every video, Eva would cook to show how she would do things. And more and more people started asking for recipes. As we did more of these videos, I realized something I didn't even know when I married her: "Oh, you're a really amazing cook, and Italian food is very different from what I thought." and "I really like it, and I want to know more about it."

 

For me, it was an evolution of not really understanding what I had at home, which was a very talented cook and discovering this whole world of Italian food.

 

Behind the scenes of a Pasta Grammar video.

What goes into writing your recipes?

Harper: As the native English speaker, it is always kind of a fun challenge because part of my job is translating what Eva does, which is a very home-cooked Italian style. Nobody measures anything. You ask any Italian cook how much cheese they use. And they'll look at you. You're absolutely crazy for even asking such a silly question. But of course, when you publish recipes for people unfamiliar with that kind of food or write a cookbook, you have to translate something she does intuitively into a recipe. So we work very closely together when we're developing recipes. And so obviously, she's doing the cooking and coming up with the food, but then I'm measuring, seeing how much cheese she actually used, and then translating that into a recipe.

 

Eva: This is also very useful because if I write the recipe, I write from my point of view, whereas Harper's recipes are very detail-oriented. He writes for every kind of home cook.

 

What are common misconceptions about Italian cooking?

Eva: What I discovered coming here is that people think we love garlic. Yes, we do love garlic in Italy, but we don't love garlic as much as Americans think. In Italian food, the taste of garlic is very, very mild. Even if we cook with a lot of garlic, we usually remove it or let it cook for such a long time that it becomes completely delicate.

 

Harper: Another big misconception that a lot of people have is that Italian food even exists because Italy is so regionalized. When people visit Italy, they think, "I'm in Italy. I am going to get good pizza at every restaurant."

 

You sometimes need to go to a specific town to get a dish made properly. Don't go to Sicily and order a carbonara. It's not the place for that.

 

Our second-highest viewership on our channel is Italians. They watch the channel to learn about food in other regions they don't even know about. Someone from Naples might not even know what they eat in Milan. So, a lot of people need to disabuse themselves of the idea that there is Italian food. 

 

Which kitchen skill should everyone master?

Eva: The first thing people should understand is that you need to put salt in the food and taste it. You need to taste everything you cook to understand if you made a mistake and if it actually needs more salt or spices.

 

Harper: Unless it's a very specific baking thing where you kind of need some specific chemistry, we never give an amount of salt to any recipe. It's always to taste because that's a really important skill. When you see a recipe that says "a half teaspoon of salt," it is like, "Well, what kind of salt are you using? Some salts are saltier than others. Are you using professional Diamond Crystal salt?" 

One of our biggest pet peeves is recipes that give specific salt measurements. You really need to learn from every step. Also, with pasta, people are used to following the package instructions, where you just put a pinch of salt into the water. But people don't understand that you need to actually taste the pasta while it's boiling and make sure that it's properly salted even before you incorporate it into the sauce. So, we put all of that in the cookbook because I know, as someone who knew nothing about cooking before I met Eva, my approach to salt was always, "I just have to put a pinch of salt in my dish. It's just a mandatory thing." But I never tasted it and never added nearly enough to make the ingredients really stand out.

 

You feature several Sicilian recipes in your cookbook. Which is your favorite?

Eva: One of my favorite recipes in the cookbook is pasta alla Norma. 

Harper: Pasta alla Norma probably takes the cake because we consider it to be the perfect pasta dish. When we talk privately about trying a new pasta, our conversation always ends with, "Well, it was good, but is it pasta alla Norma good?" On an objective level, it's just kind of the perfect pasta, and that's why it's actually on the cover of the book.

It is just the balance of flavors. It's a tomato sauce in which you incorporate some of the oil you use to cook the eggplant. The combination of eggplant, tomatoes, ricotta salata (dried grated ricotta), basil, and olive oil just sums up that southern Italian flavor.

 

Why is incorporating the historical and cultural context of recipes important to you?

Eva: This is very important because if you understand the history of a dish, you can appreciate the dish by itself. A lot of people think that we Italians don't like to change our recipes. That's not true because what we have today is just the evolution of what we've discovered through tradition.

So knowing why, for example, they use these ingredients more than others makes sense in the dish. For example, the food of Venice: In the Veneto region, they use a lot of spices like cinnamon and cloves. Venice was one of the main cities during the medieval age that had the availability of all these spices. So they started to use them, and what we have now are spiced dishes that you don't have in other regions. Knowing the history gives the food a new meaning.

 

Harper: I have a dish that is tremendously important to me, which is just a really crappy grilled cheese on white bread, like Kraft American cheese dipped in Campbell's tomato soup. It's not that the food is particularly good, but it brings back memories that I had as a kid out in the snow in Maine. You would come back in from the cold and have this hot grilled cheese and tomato soup. So, the story informs how we eat and changes how the food tastes. I don't think food is ever objective. Those stories matter a lot.

 

You introduce people to experiences on tours. Tell us about them.

Harper: We do a couple of different tours. The one we started doing years ago is a more traditional tour through Southern Italy. We start in Naples and go all the way down through Calabria and into Sicily. What makes it unusual is that we wanted to make a tour that took people off the beaten touristy track. I'd actually visited Italy before I met Eva, so I thought I had the place figured out.

 

But then, when I started traveling with a local, she would take me to the places she wanted to go, and it was a completely different experience. So when we started that tour, the idea was to share a lot of those experiences that most tourists would never have, but in a way where it was accessible to someone who doesn't speak the language and doesn't even know about these places or foods to try or things to see.

The second one that we do is expanding off of that idea. We do something called the Week in Dasà, which is where a group of people come to Eva's small village in Calabria and spend a week living there with us. We cook together, we eat together, and we party together Calabria-style. It's a project that we're really proud of, something that's very unusual. People come to a place where there's never been any tourism, and they get the real deal of what it's like living in a small Calabrian village.

 

What experience do you hope people take away from Pasta Grammar?

Eva: What I see right now is that a lot of people treat food like something just to put in the stomach. It doesn't matter where you are or where you are eating. This is very bad because it's a moment that you need to use to take care of yourself and of the people that you actually love. So I hope they understand spending more time in the kitchen is a very important time of your life.

 

Harper: I went from being someone used to convenience food culture where I would say, "I'm busy. I'll just grab a sandwich or get takeout." And now I've gotten to the point where I can't imagine not spending time every night cooking food and eating together. It's something that is very important. And I didn't realize how important it was, and now I can't imagine going back.

 

 

 

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When speaking about Sicilian cuisine, one frequently encounters the phrase cucina povera. Beyond its literal "poor cuisine" translation, this concept speaks to working with what you have. You can also apply it to life, says award-winning author, podcaster, former executive chef, and ambassador to Milazzo, Sicily, Carmela D'Amore.

As a Sicilian Australian, Carmela grew up in Melbourne's southeastern suburbs with a foot in two different cultures. It wasn't easy. In Carmela's Cucina Povera, she details her experience and her journey to finding herself through Sicilian cooking, along with a collection of 75 recipes.

 

I recently had the opportunity to meet with Carmela, who shared her background and connection to Sicily, the challenges she faced, and what cucina povera has meant to her.

 

 

What is your background?

I was born in Australia. My parents migrated to Australia just after World War II when there was the call.

My paternal side is from Falcone, about half an hour from where my mother lived, Milazzo, in the Messina Province. My husband is from Palermo, so I've got a taste of both East and West Sicily.

 

Why did your parents move to Australia?

It was just after World War II, so most Sicilian towns were very poor. They were bombed during the war. The economy was bad; they had no food, even though they were all fishermen or had other trades. 

My father came with five of his brothers and my grandparents. They were all fishermen. My grandfather was the president of the town's fisheries and wildlife organization. But still, they couldn't foresee a future, something for their children and grandchildren. And it was something that I think war does to you: You think, "How will we get through something like this as a family or as a community?" 

Australia was calling migrants, and there was work. One of my uncles was the first to test the waters, and he said, "There's plenty of us to work all around, and we can make a future." They weren't thinking of staying for too long. 

Sicily is in us. Even though I wasn't born there, I'm very much Sicilian. So, I can imagine what that felt like. Being in a place where you don't know anybody, you don't know the language, you don't know the culture, and yet all you want to do is work. So, you really don't know how you will face the challenges.

 

They worked and settled, and one of my uncles returned to live and stay in Sicily. The other four decided to stay. 

I've struggled myself to think, "Should I go back home and stay in Sicily?" When Sicily is somewhere in your DNA, I think you are always thinking, "Where do I settle?" 

 

What challenges did you face as a Sicilian Australian?

It was tough. It was probably one of the toughest times and a time of shaping and molding. There was already a culture in the southeast suburbs of Australia. So, any new people coming in weren't easily accepted. You had to earn your way in. 

It was nothing like today, someone who doesn't fit in, we call "unique," whereas, in those days, you had to fit in with the crowd, or otherwise, you were out of it. So that causes a split in your personality, where you are one thing at home and one thing in another. I think many children today are finding that even in the cyber world that we live in, in social media, there is a need for acceptance.

 

What does cucina povera mean generally, and what does it mean to you?

Cucina povera is the staple diet, working with what you have and within the seasons where you live. Cucina povera has different shades in every region of Italy. In Sicily, we have nine provinces with nine different dialects. So, there are nine staple recipes. If you have, for example, a recipe that's tomato-based with fennel, in a different province of Sicily, it could be with wild asparagus or with wild rappi, which are rapini greens, depending on which season. It's all about preserving and utilizing your ingredients with the seasons. It's making the best of seasonal ingredients and working with fewer ingredients. 

 

I called my book Carmela's Cucina Povera because my identity is in cucina povera. It is in my DNA; it is who I am. I've been in hospitality for 50 years and an executive chef for over 45 years. I've just retired, but it still is in everything that I do.

 

People use all these different ingredients to make something delicious, but cooking is a way of expressing love. My grandparents, my mother, and all that generation never told us they loved us. They expressed it through food. Cucina povera came through them and gave me a sense of belonging, being, and knowing who I am. 

 

You're a storyteller. Tell us about a classic Sicilian dish.

What I will share is a story that I think will resonate with many people. It starts in the 1800s when we had Queen Maria Carolina and King Ferdinando of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

Our queen had French chefs, so her French chefs went out and got a wild bird, called beccafico, in the region of Palermo. You can imagine all these French chefs and the contadini, the farmers that are coming in, and the women that are helping them. They're cooking and stuffing the beccafico, and they put the tail up. (The beccafico looks a bit like a robin, so it's got a beautiful tail.)

They cooked it with all the spices: saffron, lemon, and bay leaves. Then, they gave it to the queen. 

The contadini went out and talked to one another. They could not eat that because those wild birds cost a lot of money. But they did have an abundance of sardines coming from the Tyrrhenian Sea. So they decided to make a replica and create it with sardines. Today, sarde a beccafico is world-renowned.

In my mother's town, they make it with anchovies because they don't have the sardines. When Mum made the dish, she would tell me the story of how her grandmother and her grandmother's grandmother made it. Those stories become part of your life.

 

How do you hope your book and cooking will impact others?

I hope my book inspires many people. I'm 65, and I overcame these challenges 55 years ago. So, it's about the resilience of the human spirit.

 

If you really want to change and get better in anything you do, you can always do better. The sun always shines in life. There are always storms and difficulties, but you can realize that you can grow from them. Instead of being a victim, say, "How can I learn from this? What can I learn from this? How can I shape myself and be a better person from this?" 

This is what I found while writing this book. It was to help people if they've had challenges and maybe through the cracks of the pages and the recipes to find more love and concentrate on the love, not the challenges. Because we all go through challenges. We never stop going through challenges in life, but it's where we decide to focus ourselves on what's important.

I'm sure everyone has recipes from their grandmothers. Take them, put them together, and make a little book. You don't have to publish it, but you can create something for other generations to find. I'm sure that in generations to come, someone in the family will say, "I wonder where that recipe comes from." 

We live in a world that is becoming very isolated. I don't come from that world. I come from a world where family and community are the essence of our lives. So, writing this book was important to me because I wanted to embalm the recipes, the people, and the sacrifices they made for their families. It was to honor them because who will remember them if I'm not to talk about them?  

 

>>Get Carmela's Cucina Povera here!<<

 

 

 

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Cooking Italian doesn't have to be complicated. In fact, some of the best dishes are among the simplest, featuring fresh, seasonal ingredients and key pantry staples. Unlike certain cuisines with complex sauces and overwhelming techniques, Italian cuisine is just as approachable as delicious.

That idea inspired Domenica Marchetti's latest cookbook, Everyday Italian, her eighth book on Italian cooking. Domenica, who has a ninth book on the way, has Abruzzese roots and a home in Abruzzo. The region formerly known as Abruzzi just so happens to have been part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, so it's no wonder many of our cooking traditions are shared. 

Domenica took time out of her busy schedule of writing, teaching, and leading culinary tours to chat with me about her influences, favorite techniques, must-have staples, and what she hopes readers will take away.

 

 

Tell us about your background.

I am based outside of Washington, D.C., in Northern Virginia. But we also have a little house in Abruzzo.

 

I grew up spending my summers in Italy on the Adriatic coast of Abruzzo. We had a beach house there for many years, and that's really where my love for Italy just grew. I was spending all that time there.

My mom was from Chieti; her mother was from the city of Atri, which is also in Abruzzo. Her dad was actually from Perugia in Umbria. Her family stayed in Abruzzo. 

On my dad's side, his parents came from Italy. His mother was from Isernia in the Molise region, which is attached to Abruzzo, and his dad was from Fondi in the Lazio region, which also includes Rome. But my main attachment is to Abruzzo because I spend a lot of time there. 

My mom was a wonderful cook. Like many Italians, she came to the U.S. in the 1950s. She was kind of in love with post-war America and ended up meeting my dad on a blind date in New York City and staying.

When she got married, she taught herself how to cook because she grew up in a family with a cook. So she didn't need to learn anything when she was growing up, but she loved cooking and was a fantastic home cook. So she's really my number-one kitchen muse.

 

How did you get into food writing?

My background is in journalism. I went to Columbia Journalism School and was a newspaper reporter before becoming a freelance writer. So, when my kids were little, I transitioned to freelance writing and reinvented myself as a food writer because that's what I was interested in doing. 

I used my connections in newspapers and magazines to start freelancing. And then that eventually led to books and cooking classes and doing book tours. More recently, with COVID, I started teaching online. I also do occasional culinary tours in Italy, which I've been doing for about a decade.

 

You've been to Sicily. Describe your experience.

It's been quite a few years, but I have been. We had family friends from Sicily who lived in Rome, but they also had places in Palermo and the coastal town of Mazara del Vallo.

It was before I was a full-time food writer. I remember walking through a citrus grove in this family's yard and just being completely enchanted.

I grew up in central New Jersey, and we didn't have those there. 

Of course, there are all the sweets and confections, the cannoli, the marzipan, the sweet ricotta, and the stuffed treats, and it's just such an incredibly flavorful cuisine.

I also remember the first time I had pasta with eggplant, which was basically pasta with tomato sauce and fried eggplant on top. I can't think of anything simpler, but it was absolutely delicious.

I was thinking about these assertive flavors in Sicilian cuisine: the fish, either dried or tinned or even fresh, the sardines, the anchovies, the swordfish, the tuna, and then the vegetables, the peppers, eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, artichokes, winter squash. I mean, just all of the colors! 

One of my favorite cookbooks on the food of Sicily is this book by Anna Tasca Lanza, The Heart of Sicily. It came out in the early 1990s, and I was in Los Angeles, of all places. My husband and I were coming back from our honeymoon, and his mom lived in California. We were walking around L.A., and we happened upon this cookbook store. Anna Tasca Lanza was there signing copies of her book. This was before the cookbook craze, so nobody was there except those who worked in the bookstore. So we sat down, chatted with her, and bought this book.

Outside of my mom's cooking, this book has been such an inspiration to me because it really did introduce me to Sicilian cuisine. In the introduction, she talks about the many cultures that passed through Sicily: the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the Normans, the French, and the Spanish.

She said all those conquerors and the wayfarers made an imprint on Sicilian cuisine without altering its basic character. The main element of Sicilian cooking has always been the sun. And that is so true if you think of the way they sun-dry tomatoes, the way they make the tomato paste, estratto, by spreading it out under the sun, the way they sun-dry vegetables like eggplant and zucchini and then preserve them in oil. The sun just brings out the colors and the flavors of all these vegetables and foods. And I really think that quote encapsulates Sicilian cuisine beautifully.

 

You highlight some of those techniques in Preserving Italy.

My grandmother from Abruzzo used to sun-dry sour cherries so that she would do the same thing. She would dry them in the sun until they were half-dried, not completely shriveled. She would put them in jars with brandy and sugar. She would make these boozy preserved cherries. 

That really was the impetus for Preserving Italy because I wanted to recreate those sour cherries. In the introduction, I tell how when my sister and I were little after our grandmother passed away, there were still a few jars of those cherries in the pantry. My mom and her sisters—she had three sisters—were very, very parsimonious about doling out those cherries. And they made them last for years.

The only way we could ever get cherries was if we told them we had cramps. When we had cramps, we were allowed to have a little spoonful of these really alcoholic, boozy, sour cherries. And then they were gone. 

Years later, the more I started getting into Italian food, the more I thought about the foods I grew up with. So, I wanted to recreate those cherries. 

Living in northern Virginia, it's very humid, so I can't sun-dry anything without it turning into mold. So, I did a version of oven-drying the cherries and then giving them a long marinating in spiced, sweetened alcohol.

There are other things like candied citrus peel, which is one of my favorite things to make. I always make it for the holidays because it's got so many uses. For one thing, it just makes your kitchen smell wonderful when you're cooking down orange peel and then cooking it in syrup until it thickens and nicely coats the fruit. You let it dry, then roll it in sugar, and you've got this wonderful confection that you can dip in chocolate or mince and put into cakes and cookies or use as a garnish for cannoli.

 

All these wonderful traditions are preserved throughout Italy. I mean, Italy has so many foods that grow well, such as hazelnuts, pistachios, almonds, and vegetables. There are just countless ways of preserving them.

 

Abruzzo was part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, so there are likely shared food traditions.

I think that's absolutely true. What's interesting about Abruzzo is that it is central, but because it was part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, it is identified with the South, and a lot of its cuisine is associated with the South. 

I liken it to the Missouri of Italy. Missouri is kind of the gateway to the Midwest, but you think of it a little bit like the South. It's kind of in the middle of the country, but it's a little bit west if you think of Kansas City, Missouri. So it's got all these different cultural influences.

I feel like Abruzzo is the same thing. But yes, because it was part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, I do believe it does have strong ties with southern Italy. So, some of the same foods are prepared in similar ways, like peppers. The cover recipe for Preserving Italy is peppers preserved in olive oil, which I absolutely love. They basically get a bath and sweet and sour vinegar brine with capers and garlic, and then you drain them after they've marinated a good long while in this sweet and sour brine, and then you top them off with olive oil and just pop them in the fridge. You don't even have to can them. And they're just such a wonderful thing to have around either to put on pizza or crostini or as a side to roast chicken. 

 

That's a very Sicilian thing, actually, this idea of sweet and sour, they love their agrodolce. They do it with fish; they do it with vegetables. One of my favorite treatments for agrodolce is winter squash, the zucca agrodolce, which is a Sicilian dish. It's thinly sliced pumpkin or winter squash, fried with olive oil, and then just sort of plunged into a sweet and sour vinegar dressing or brine and other vegetables. You can do that with eggplant with caponata, but I really love it with the winter squash.

 

My mom used to make that when I was growing up. It was a Sicilian dish, but she really liked it, so she used to make it, and that remains one of my favorite dishes. A couple of years ago, I ended up making a winter squash version of caponata instead of eggplant, but with the celery and the tomato, and it was so good. 

I really love the sweet-and-sour tradition of Sicilian cuisine. One of the things that Anna Tasca Lanza points out in her book is that the Arabs who came over introduced the planting of sugarcane to Sicily. Ever since then, Sicilians have had a sweet tooth. So they like the sweet and sour, and also all of the sweets and confections, too. I think they can thank history for their sweet tooth.

 

In Everyday Italian, you share must-have Italian staples. Which are specific to Sicilian cuisine?

When I think of Sicilian cuisine, the first thing that comes to mind is nuts. They have the wonderful Sicilian almonds from Noto. And if you've not tasted a Sicilian almond side by side with, say, a California almond, you might not even know there's a difference. But there's a real difference. If you taste a good Sicilian almond, you understand almond extract all of a sudden because some people don't necessarily like almond extract; they find it bitter and strong in flavor. But if you taste a Sicilian almond, you will taste a tiny bit of that aroma from almond extract, and you understand what almond extract is. It really has that almond flavor. 

I occasionally splurge on Sicilian almonds. I buy them online. Last year, my daughter used Sicilian almonds to make these almond crescent cookies for Christmas. She's not as big a fan of the almond flavor as I am, so she doesn't ever use almond extract, but she used these Sicilian almonds.

 

We tasted the cookies fresh from the oven, and I asked, "Did you put almond extract in these?"

She said no. And it's because she used these Sicilian almonds.

Pistachios, too. If you take the time to peel them, they have this incredible green color. And that rich, nutty, sweet pistachio flavor or pine nuts, which are very Sicilian and buttery. 

For other ingredients, I think of capers, capers and caper leaves, brined capers, and salted capers with those punchy flavors.

Then there are anchovies, bottarga (the dried tuna roe), and colatura (the liquid from preserving the anchovies). All of these really strong flavors contribute to the richness of Sicilian cuisine.

There's vinegar, of course, and herbs. When I think of Sicilian cooking, I immediately think of mint. We were talking about winter squash and agrodolce; mint is the herb you sprinkle in that. 

 

What advice would you give to home cooks?

I would just say that it's pretty easy. Italian food is all about ingredients. And I know people have said this before, but it's not like trying to master fancy French sauces or overly manipulated food or trying to transform one thing into another. It's really about giving ingredients the best expression you can give them so that their own flavors shine. 

I would say the most important thing is to choose good ingredients that are the best you can afford. It's worth it because you really understand Italian cuisine. It doesn't have to be overly complicated. 

I mentioned pasta with eggplant. It's really just a simple tomato sauce made with either fresh or canned tomatoes, fried seasoned eggplant, and good-quality pasta. When you're buying pasta, buy the best you can afford. The same goes for good olive oil.

Be open to different ingredients and flavors. You will be successful if you work with high-quality ingredients and have reliable recipes. 

For example, maybe you don't know too much about artichokes and think it takes a lot of work to peel them. Once you've done it, it's like anything. You just roll up your sleeves and do it, and it becomes easier. So, if you happen to find good whole artichokes in the market, don't shy away from them. Buy them. Find either a video or a description. You'll see that the more you do it, the better you get at it. It's just a process, a learning process, and don't be daunted because Italian cuisine and its essence really is simple.

 

>>Get your copy of Everyday Italian here!<<

 

 

 

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Director and food stylist Victoria Granof is well aware of America's love affair with Italy. It's something she shares, but one region of Italy particularly inspires her—and it's not the one at the tip of your tongue.

 

"I get so frustrated when people start talking about Tuscany," she says. "I mean, Tuscany is really nice—really nice. But Sicily is more my style; it's so different from any other part of Italy. People just think it's mafia, mafia, mafia. And it's so much more than that. I am on this mission to show people the Sicily that I love and that it's fabulous and different from the rest of Italy."

 

One of Victoria's obsessions is the aesthetic beauty of Sicily's famous sweets, which inspired her latest project, Sicily, My Sweet: Love Notes to an Island, with Recipes for Cakes, Cookies, Puddings, and Preserves.

Victoria and I recently sat down for a conversation where she shared her surprising Sicilian connection, her favorite recipes, what she learned working with photographer Irving Penn, the fascinating and sustainable way Sicilians make cannoli, and what she hopes book readers will take away. 

 

 

Tell us about your background and connection to Sicily.

My father's side of the family is northern Italian, and on my mother's side of the family were Sephardic Jews from Spain before the Spanish Inquisition.

We always thought we originated in Spain and landed in Turkey for the last 400 years. But the language, dialect, and food that we took with us, as well as a lot of the traditions, were not Turkish. 

When I went looking for my roots and to feel a connection, I went to Turkey, and it was like, "Oh, this is nice, but this is not home."

It wasn't until I read an article about Maria Grammatico, who owns a pastry shop in Erice. She said she was getting older and was afraid that none of the younger generation wanted to keep the tradition of Sicilian pastry alive because it was just dying off. All they wanted to do was move to a big city or out of Sicily and do something else.

I was really drawn to this because I was a pastry chef then, and I thought, okay, I'll go, and she can teach me. So that's what first brought me there, and I felt this really strong connection as soon as I went. 

Fast-forward to maybe five years ago, when all my family did our DNA and found out that we're Sicilian—57% Sicilian. Then I started really researching it. 

Spain wasn't Spain as we know it now at that time. It was the Spanish empire, which included a lot of South and Central America and from Naples down through Sicily. 

That's where we started from, who knows how long ago, but we were in the Sicily of Spain. And so there are still traces of the dialect in what we brought from 500 years ago, just like Sicilian Americans whose families came here a hundred years ago or 200 years ago with that same dialect, they will be speaking that same dialect for another 300 years. That's what they brought with them, and that's what gets passed down through the family. 

 

Is there a recipe in this book that has special personal significance?

I think everybody's grandmother makes biscotti Regina, the cookies with the sesame seeds. I remember my grandmother had a cookie tin of those on top of her refrigerator. Honestly, now that I think about it, it was kind of rusty inside. Those cookies probably took years off our lives!

When she died, I remember taking the cookies off the top of the refrigerator and thinking, "These are the last ones she's ever going to make with her hands."

I had one in my freezer for the longest time. Then we had a power outage last summer, and everything had to go. I forgot that the cookie was in there, so it went with it. It's very heartbreaking. 

 

You were a pastry chef and now a food stylist. How did that influence this book?

I had to go against all of my pastry-chef training, make it approachable and easy, and simplify it for home cooks. So, that part didn't come into it other than I love making pastries. 

The book's aesthetics were really important. In the end, two publishers were interested in it. (There were others, but these were the two that I was considering.) I went with Hardie Grant Publishing because they were willing and eager to have me not only design the book but also guide its aesthetics. 

I worked with a designer in Sydney, Australia, on the book design. When I saw her very first designs, I was like, "Oh my God. I love this so much."

Then they went through a couple of iterations, but just the colors! It was really important for me to have those colors in the book and on the book. It wasn't those earth-tony Tuscan things, so people would really understand that Sicily is different from the rest of Italy, period, and why it's so fabulously different. So the color had a lot to do with it—the graphics, the photographs, everything. 

 

Describe those colors.

I used pinks and greens and oranges and blues: the colors in the tile work and those on houses. There are pink houses in Sicily and raspberry-colored houses in the country. And I just love that color. So a lot of that; not millennial pink, but a lot of that kind of Sicilian country house/raspberry pink and the green of pistachios, I really leaned into that. And the orange of orange peel and yellow of lemons—just the colors in the ingredients, really. 

 

You worked with the late Irving Penn. How did he influence you?

I worked with him for 10 years. The funny thing was that I met the Vogue photo editor at a party, and it was a very short, cordial conversation. I handed him my card, and that was it. 

Then, a few months later, he called me and said, "Mr. Penn is looking for a collaborator. And I remember meeting you at the party, and you were very reserved and quiet, and that's what he likes. That's the vibe he likes, so I think it would be a good match."

So, for 10 years, I had to keep my mouth shut and not chat. It was a little bit torturous from that point of view. But you know what? I learned the economy of everything. There was nothing extra in anything. None of his output, none of his persona, none of his words, none of his anything were extra. Everything was essential. So he never had superfluous anything anywhere around him. 

I learned what is important in a picture and what is not necessary. I learned when to stop because several times, he would set up the shot, do a Polaroid, and take a picture. He would do a Polaroid first; if he liked it, he would take the picture, and then we would leave.

We'd be done before lunch. And it was never like, "Alright, let's do some variations," or "Let's do five more just in case," or "Let's see; do we think we have it?" No, after many years, he knew what it took to get a good picture and how to recognize it when he got it. And that was huge. 

It's a practice and a discipline. I'm so grateful for that because I've used it in all aspects of my life, including personal relationships. It's really important to know when to stop.

 

Which Sicilian desserts should everyone experience?:

Well, anybody who hasn't had a really good cannolo is… I mean, forget it!

I learned the last time I was in Sicily that they use bamboo as cannoli-shaping tubes. It was kind of a revelation for me. If you've ever done that with the metal tubes and fried the shells, the first thing it does is sink to the bottom. And then the bottom of the shell gets a little bit darker, which nobody notices, really. And then you have to keep turning them around and everything. With the bamboo, it floats. So not only does it just float and turn around by itself, but it's porous. So it cooks from the inside out and the outside in, and it allows air bubbles to come through and make the dough lighter. It's really an amazing thing. They turn black, but they are used over and over, and it's sustainable.

 

I'm also really obsessed with St. Agatha's breast cakes. I do them a couple of different ways, but the way I really love them is just with the pastry dough, the ricotta inside, and the icing on top. I love those symbolically—and just about anything with almonds and pistachios.

 

Most of my recipes are traditional, but some of them I developed that are just in the spirit of Sicily using Sicilian ingredients. I have shortbread cookie recipes, and one has sun-dried tomatoes and anise seeds. It's treating the tomatoes like dried fruit because that's what they are. Then, the other one has dried figs and oil-cured olives in it. It's really treating the olives and the tomatoes like the fruits they actually are. And it's really, really good. You could just keep the rolls of the dough in your freezer and then slice and bake it as you need it.

 

What do you hope readers take away?

I want them to appreciate this on so many levels. I want them to open their eyes and minds and appreciate Sicily for the multicultural, fabulously weird, and delicious place that it is.

In the book's introduction, I really talk about how if you go to other parts of Italy, they look like postcards. Everybody brings the same pictures back from Rome. There I am, throwing the coin in the Trevi Fountain. There I am in front of the Coliseum. They're all the same pictures. And the takeaway is the same. You can go to those places passively. You can just observe.

But what I love to say about Sicily is if you are there, you're in the game—not just enjoying it passively. You're not just looking at it. You're experiencing it. And some of it is funky, and there's garbage on the side of the road. There's some funky stuff there. But it's worth it because being there is such a heightened sensory experience. 

After so many centuries of being dominated and controlled by all kinds of different civilizations, people, empires, and all of that, it's just turned into this really strong, strange, wonderfully mixed-up, and beautiful place. It's not in spite of having that history; it's because of the history that it's so great.

 

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Restauranteur's daughter and former restaurant owner Suzanne Lo Coco doesn't recommend people get into the restaurant business.

 

"You need a lot of raw talent, and you need to be willing to put in all that time and hard work and long hours and miss weddings and parties and everything else and have your hands burned several times over and still work through a shift," she says. 

 

She's done all that and then some, having run the popular La Fornaretta in Pasadena, California, for nearly ten years before new landlords purchased her lease in order to repurpose the building. She also watched her father's challenging rise from immigrant to successful owner of Lo Coco restaurants. 

 

Still, despite their mother's misgivings, Suzanne's sons, Gian Luca and Gilberto Di Lorenzo, have carried on the tradition at La Fornaretta in Newcastle, California. And Gian Luca has invited Suzanne to join him in a new pasta-making venture he's started with her brother Frank.  

 

"I feel very complimented that they asked me to do that," Suzanne says. 

 

There will undoubtedly be more stories to tell for this Washington resident, who recently published the deliciously entertaining memoir Secret Dough. Drawing from the wit and wisdom of her late father, Giovanni Lo Coco, Suzanne shares her journey to self-discovery flavored with Sicilian traditions, relationship drama, and humorous stories. She's even thrown in a handful of recipes to savor between page turns. 

 

Suzanne is what we call a paesana. Giovanni came to the U.S. from Porticello, Sicily, the same village as my grandparents, and Suzanne has returned often.

 

We sat down for an entertaining chat about Porticello, the book's namesake dough, her writing inspiration, balancing personal and professional life, her favorite Giovanni aphorisms, and what she hopes readers will take away.   

 

 

What are your memories of Porticello?

The first time I went there, I was a baby. My parents drove across the United States and took the Michelangelo ship to Napoli and then to Sicily. They were there for two months, and I have absolutely no recollection of this trip whatsoever.

 

When I was 10, I returned with my dad for two weeks. When we got on the plane and took Alitalia from San Francisco to Rome and then Rome Palermo, he ordered me my own bottle of Asti spumante as soon as the plane lifted off the ground.

 

And he says, "This is an Italian plane, and now you are in Italy. The air… It's not America anymore. The air doesn't belong to anybody. Now we are on an Italian plane, so we are in Italy. You can drink with your papà."

 

The flight attendant didn't even bat an eye. He brought me my flute and bottle, and I drank that whole thing. Then, I crashed for several hours.
 

Every day when we were in Sicily, we'd drive from Palermo to Porticello and hang out. And everything is kind of mind-blowing to an 11-year-old who has only ever been in America, and all of a sudden, you're in Sicily.

 

I remember that at that time, there were a lot fewer cars and less traffic. And there were still women laying out those giant pieces of plywood propped up on sawhorses used to make tomato paste.

 

I remember swimming in the sea with my dad every day and him diving for ricci, sea urchins. I couldn't believe how long he could stay underwater! His cousins made pasta con ricci with his catch.

 

I remember going to the open fish markets—those giant swordfish on display made such an impression on me. Every town had its own frutta e verdura guy and fresh fish stand. And then, just randomly, there's this popup with a very round man under the tent tossing fresh octopus into these giant vats of boiling water with lemon halves bobbing around on the top. There are no women, just men at the counter that is set up with beautifully painted ceramic plates, lemon wedges and salt shakers. They are all spouting off in Sicilian, yelling and talking all at the same time while eating their octopus.

 

My dad stuffed things in my mouth throughout that whole trip. He stuffed a piece of octopus in my mouth, and I was horrified. They cut into the brains and that brown mushy stuff… Oh my God! I just remember swallowing it whole.

 

I remember the first time I had pane e panelle, and then I had to have it every day. I just loved the arancini and eating ice cream every day.
 

So, for me, when the plane lands in Rome… Sure, you're in Italy, and you're excited. But when the plane flies into Palermo, I feel like I'm at home. It really does pull on your heartstrings to go there, to be there—the sights, the smells.

 

After my dad retired, he spent half the year in Sicily. He happened to be there when he passed away, so we buried him there. Now, when I go to Sicily, I feel like I am visiting him. I'm so happy that he introduced us to this magical island and that it is part of our lives.

 

Tell us about your family. When and why did they leave Porticello for California?

My grandfather Gaetano Lo Coco was a professor of philosophy, but he was also, I guess, very instrumental in local politics and trying to advocate for the fishermen. His father was a fisherman. 

 
My grandfather used to own the land where Solunto is. It was full of olive and citrus orchards, climbing up the mountain behind Porticello. He was not a businessman or materialistic in any way—he was a true philosopher. 

 

Before selling the land, my dad's dream was to build a pizzeria and nightclub at the top of the mountain. My grandfather did not support this idea, which was very upsetting to him. For this reason, he decided to leave for America to pursue his dream of owning his own business. Funny—eventually, someone opened a pizzeria atop that mountain and became very successful!

 

When my father left, he ended up living with cousins for a couple of months in San Francisco's North Beach, where he had to teach himself English. He worked three jobs, seven days a week, both lunch and dinner shifts at various Fisherman's Wharf restaurants.

 

He met my mother about a year after he came to the States. They ended up getting married very quickly and starting a family. Shortly after they married, his cousin Domenic, whom he had lived with, recommended, "Giovanni, if you could come up with a really great pizza recipe, you will be very successful." 

 

Domenic planted the seed in his head: "I need to come up with a pizza recipe."

 

After a visit to Jackson, California my dad fell in love with the town, as it reminded him of scenes from old Western movies he had grown up with. So they moved there and opened their first pizzeria. That's where his secret dough recipe was born.

 

Let's talk about the significance of that dough; it's what you named your memoir.

So, there is a whole chapter on that in the book.

 

My parents divorced in 1977, maybe '78. Afterward, a gentleman named Eugene deChristopher came into the restaurant. He had been eating Lo Coco's Pizza in Marin County. He actually first approached my uncles, and they sent him over to my dad. So, he came into the restaurant in Pleasant Hill.

 

So Eugene comes to the restaurant and tells my dad, "This is a great product, and I think we can do something with it. Have you ever thought about marketing it like this or that?"

 

Initially, my dad thought, "Well, maybe we should open up franchises."

 

At the time, you had places like Pizza Hut and Shakey's and this and that. But still, if you go in and order a pizza, it's going to take some time. You can't get a pizza at the same time as a hamburger, right?

 

But my dad thought we could cut some of this production time in half by having a crust that's already half-baked and ready to be topped. He came up with this idea to speed up the pizza process.

 

He originally thought, "We'll start with universities and make all these really small, self-serve pizzerias."

 

The idea evolved from there.

 

Then Eugene said, "Well, we could package it. And then what about selling it in grocery stores?"

 

They created a company that was originally called PizzAmore.

 

Meanwhile, they are still in the developing phase, coming up with packaging ideas and reaching out to different companies for meetings. Eugene is sending in his son all the time, who hangs out at the pizza counter and watches night after night. One night, he was watching my dad make pizza and asked, "I don't understand, Giovanni; how do you get those bubbles on the crust?"

 

My dad, with his thick accent, responded, "That's the boboli—the cheese—it melts on the crust and makes the boboli."

 

The Boboli chapter of my book illustrates the "origins" of the pizza shell and the partnership between my father and Eugene. The company has since sold many times, and we wish them well.

 

What inspired you to write your memoir?

I was in my first marriage, and we were going through a very rocky time. Someone gave me Ruth Reichl's book Comfort Me with Apples, and it really inspired me.

 

I thought, "I have stories like this!"

 

So, I started writing, having been inspired by her books and also just as an outlet. And I always enjoyed writing.

 

I always enjoyed creative writing classes and writing term papers in school. I enjoyed the whole process of crafting a good story. Growing up in the restaurant business, one is naturally groomed to become a storyteller.

 

I interviewed my dad a lot when I started that process over twenty years ago. But this book is not that book. I did finish that. Many years later, I went back to school, and with all the required writing and reading, I sharpened my skills.

 

A couple of instructors had pulled me aside and said, "Do you do a lot of writing? I have to tell you, it's really a pleasure reading your papers."

 

I went back to school at 42 years old. I had an AA degree, but it still took me four years to get my BA.

 
I was raising kids and working, so I couldn't take a full load. I'd take three or four classes at a time.

 

Two years into school, I divorced but continued working at the restaurant until I got my degree. A few months before graduation, I met and started dating Stuart, who I eventually married. After we married, we moved to Tahoe and bought these two little houses. We lived in one of them, and I rented the other on Airbnb. Early on, one of my first guests was Cheryl Angelina Koehler, from the Bay Area, who was the publisher, editor, and designer for Edible East Bay Magazine.

 

Having had many false starts on writing a book, now that I had the time, I once again started dabbling in writing. I held so many stories in my head. I said, "I really want to do this."

 

So when Cheryl checked in, my mind went immediately to" I've got to meet this lady!"

 

But something about having her land on my doorstep ignited this hope and excitement within me.

 

I thought, "Somehow, this lady is going to help me in this process, to get this going, and to get this moving in the right direction."

 

I was dying to say something to her, but I didn't know how to approach the subject of my writing. Finally, just as they were checking out, she asked, "Can we meet your dogs?"

 

We got into this conversation, and I asked Cheryl, "You're from the East Bay. Well, do you go to Lo Coco's?"

 

We got into this discussion about Lo Coco's and then into a discussion about my dad. When I get into Giovanni Lo Coco's stories, I become very animated. I mean, there are so many good stories. He really was such a unique character.

 

She says, "That is pretty incredible. You should really write down some of these stories. Just start writing. I would love to help you. You can send me what you have, and I'll read it over."

 
I couldn't believe my good fortune. Of all the places in Tahoe she could have rented, this was the one. It was a sign! I needed to finally write and try to publish my memoir.

 
It took me months. I wrote about four chapters and then sat on them for months. I didn't have the nerve to send them to her, and I didn't think they'd be good enough.

 

Finally, my husband was like, "You've got to send this to her. Just send them. What do you have to lose?"

 

I sent her what I had, and she encouraged me to keep going. I continued sending bits and pieces and then decided to hold off until I finished the book. 

 

After three years, I forwarded her the final chapters, and she said, "Oh my God, you finished!"

 

That really excited her, and she went through it. Then suddenly, our process and our relationship shifted, and it really turned into a writer-editor relationship.

 

Tell us about your book's cover.

Well, as you can see on the cover of the book I sent Cheryl, I wanted to incorporate a lot of these articles. It was her brilliant idea to plaster them all over the book in a collage-type way. That basically makes up the cover. And then I wanted to include an "I like Lo Coco's Pizza" pin on there.

Whenever my father's restaurant was written up, they always wanted a photograph of our Lo Coco's special, which was pepperoni, artichoke heart, green onion, and anchovy, because it was such a pretty pizza—just aesthetically, it's just the colors.

So, I said it has to be the Lo Coco special on the front. So, last spring, I went into my boys' restaurant and made a pizza. My husband, who is actually a professional photographer, took the picture of the pizza.

There are many old family photos peppered throughout the book. They help tell the story.

 

You sprinkled pearls of wisdom from your father throughout the book. Can you share a couple?

Each chapter starts with something that my father used to tell me, using sayings or dictums instead of telling you straight what you need to do, like "You always leave the taste of honey in the mouth," meaning don't burn bridges.

 

Or "Be stupid inside and smart outside." My dad was of the philosophy that the world was out to get you, so you need to stick together.

 

How do you balance life's personal and professional aspects in your storytelling?

When I knew this book was complete and we were going to launch, I was overcome with a panic I did not expect to have when I started this process. It had been a pipe dream for so long, and now it was really happening. I was second-guessing myself. Maybe it's not good enough; maybe people will hate it; maybe my family will be upset.

 

This book is so different from my first few attempts. I was sort of all over the place—mingling dad stories with my own stories. After reviewing some of my work, my sister commented, "I don't hear your voice." She asked, "Is this about Dad, or is this about you?"

 

I didn't have much confidence in telling my story. I never even thought about that. But then I thought, well, actually, there is a lot to say and a lot to tell.

 

I didn't write the book to bash anybody, and I don't bash anyone. But sometimes, people, including myself, are not shown in a good light because if you're writing a memoir, you can't just talk about the good things; that's not realistic. Life is messy.

 

What do you hope that people take away from reading your book?

Well, I hope it humors and entertains people, and I hope it's relatable. I hope it reminds people to treat themselves with more kindness and forgiveness. We all have dark periods in our lives; we make mistakes. I strived to be very authentic and offer readers an intimate glimpse into the life of a Sicilian-American restaurant family. I introduced intriguing, fun characters, like my immigrant dad and my ex-husband.

 

There are so many misunderstandings about Sicily and Sicilians, and I hope this book helps Americans gain more appreciation for this place and its people whom I love so dearly. Finally, I hope that Secret Dough inspires people. As illustrated in the book, one can walk through a lot of crap and still come out smelling like a rose.

 

I hope it makes people laugh and feel many emotions. It's just a good, fun read.  

 

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Tomatoes have become almost synonymous with Italy, but they had a long, incredible journey before they reached European plates. 

It's a topic that fascinated writer Clarissa Hyman, whose book Tomatoes: A Global History charts the origins of this vibrant and juicy fruit while covering topics such as tomato varieties, breeding and genetics, nutrition, and tomatoes in art. It also includes tomato recipes.

 

Clarissa, who previously published Cucina Siciliana, a "cook's tour" of Italy's largest island, got her start as a TV producer, working on factual programs, documentaries, educational programs, and adult education. 

She isn't Sicilian (or Italian, for that matter), but she's earned a reputation and awards for her skills in marrying food writing with lessons in history. At the heart of all of her works is a sense of curiosity and wonder: Just how did these foods make their way to global cuisine?

 

I recently had the chance to chat with Clarissa about tomatoes. We discussed the tomato's origins, the ways it spread, how the perception of the tomato has changed, and the fruit's influence on food and culture. 

 

 

Tell us how the tomato found its way to Europe.

I became fascinated by the Columbus Exchange, of which tomatoes were a part. I was also fascinated by what happened even earlier: how tomato seeds traveled from mostly Peru and the northern part of South America up towards Mexico. How did they get there? 

Once they got to Mexico, they found a home, a climate that really encouraged their growth and proliferation. Clearly, the Aztecs didn't seem concerned about whether or not they were going to be poisonous or inedible in some way, and they took to them very readily.

Franciscan Friar Bernardino de Sahagún wrote in a journal about all the different tomatoes he came across in Mexico. He went with the conquistadors as a missionary and wrote about hundreds of different sorts of tomatoes in different colors, sizes, shapes, and attributes. 

When I read what he wrote, I thought, "This is so sophisticated, this understanding of the tomato's potential and how diverse and varied it could be."

This is not something we think about in terms of the 16th century. We're very arrogant in our day and age about how advanced we are. But in fact, there's very little that's not been done before. So that very much engaged me. 

How the tomato actually got to Europe, to Spain, again, is another story in itself. How did the sailors and the ships actually transport these tomatoes? I mean, they were out to sea for such a long time, and tomatoes weren't going to last. So, did they dry them? Did they preserve them? Did they just take the seeds? 

I suppose anything that came from the Americas to Spain and Portugal was going to be precious in some way. It was going to be valuable; even if they didn't know just what that value was, you couldn't just throw it overboard. 

History is never simple. It never works on one track, or often, tracks run in parallel. 

Some explorers gave the royal families of Spain just about everything that they found. It was part of their job to bring everything over. Some people in the aristocracy were very interested in botanical things, cultivation, and horticulture, and they had beautiful gardens and skillful gardeners who were ready to experiment with plant things and see what happened. 

Once tomatoes started to grow, there were others who wouldn't eat them or weren't interested. But there were also some very poor people who were grateful to eat anything, even if it was going to be a little bit dodgy. They were prepared to give it a go if it was cheap and easy and grew well.

So, there were different roots for tomatoes becoming increasingly available in the marketplace in Spain. That's where it all started in terms of European consumption of tomatoes.

One of the main drivers of tomatoes being incorporated into European gastronomy and culinary culture was the monasteries and the friars and the priests, who had an amazing culinary dimension to their lives. A number of priests and monks wrote cookery books or recorded what they did in the kitchens of the monasteries. Because a lot of monks traveled around visiting different outposts of their particular order, they took this knowledge with them.

One of the main ways that tomatoes started to spread around the Mediterranean basin was through trade, but there were certainly other roots in religion. The Jewish communities took this vegetable knowledge with them, even when other people were still reluctant. 

 

Tell us about that reluctance.

It was very pervasive and lasted a long time. A lot of people thought, "Well, we know it's part of the nightshade family, so maybe it could be poisonous."

Early tomatoes were probably rather acidic and didn't really have the sweetness that was bred into them eventually. So they didn't like it. People didn't know what to do with it. I think a fear of poisoning really prevented its rapid adoption.

But bit by bit, people became a bit more adventurous. It's so interesting how gardeners have been able to improve plants and turn them into something a bit more palatable, as well as cross-breed and encourage certain characteristics. 

There are always a few brave souls somewhere who are going to try something new and radical and say, "Hey, look, I'm still standing. I ate a tomato."

 

How did tomatoes return to the Americas?

The technological advance of canning again gave a huge impetus to how tomatoes could then spread back to the Americas in the form of tin tomatoes. And it was, again, the whole story of Italian tomatoes and Italian-American communities, which is a big story on its own because the canning came from a time when a lot of Italians emigrated to America at the end of the 19th century. There were a lot of Italian producers and merchants in Italy who saw that they could supply the Italian immigrants, particularly on the East Coast, with some of the foods that they remembered from their homelands, and tomatoes came full circle.

However, there was also another route for tomatoes to become so popular in North America: people planted tomatoes or took tomato plants from Central America and Mexico up to California and Louisiana, often through the missions in California or through the French influence in Louisiana.

Tomatoes were found to flourish in those more northern regions. And so that was another route, helped by the development of the railways, which could transport fresh tomatoes.

 

How have tomatoes influenced global cuisine?

You certainly can't think of pasta without tomato sauce or a pizza without tomato sauce in some way. 

The influence of tomatoes on global cuisine is incalculable. Where would we be without tomatoes? I can't think of a cuisine or a culture that doesn't use tomatoes in some important way now, which is extraordinary when you think the world ate perfectly well before the Columbus Exchange took place. And certainly in Europe, North America, and Asia, I mean, there was a very good diet. There's a very good culinary culture in virtually every country in the world without a tomato. So it's really quite extraordinary, the power that the tomato has had to transform virtually all our lives. And I think it's because it's something that can be consumed in so many different forms, and it's worked its way into lots of different aspects of our life for good or bad. 

You can think of some hideous tomato things: tomato-flavored crisps and even tomato ice cream. But overall, tomatoes have been a force for good when it comes to the food on our plates.

I don't mean to say every dish we eat has a tomato in it or is tomato-connected. Of course not. But it's such an integral part of our lives now. It's very hard to imagine it not being there. Certainly, when it comes to Italian food, it's a marriage that has lasted for a very long time in terms of pasta and pizza.

 

What are some varieties unique to Sicily?

There is a variety called Siccagno that grows in western Sicily that isn't watered. Any moisture comes from rain. They are the most amazing-tasting tomatoes. Then, there is a place in eastern Sicily where a very tiny tomato called Pachino is grown virtually on the beach in very sandy soil. They say they get their flavor from the sea, somehow from the aromas of the saltwater. The winds and the waves somehow infuse these tomatoes, and they're brilliant.

The Sicilians really appreciate different varieties and sizes and understand their uses. Some tomatoes are just for use in a sugo, and some tomatoes can be eaten in a salad with a little bit of oil.

 
Pachino tomatoes photo by Salmassara

You've mentioned that one shouldn't refrigerate tomatoes.

I met an Italian tomato grower, and he said to me, "You English are terrible. I really can't believe it. You murder your tomatoes."

I said, "What do you mean by murder? How do you murder a tomato?"

He said, "You always put them in the fridge. That's the worst thing you can do with a tomato."

He said the cold destroys all the flavor and aroma. He said he'd never forget going to an English home. He went into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door, and saw half a tomato wrapped in cling film. And he said his heart nearly stopped. 

He said that in Italy, you buy a tomato and eat it. You don't leave it in the fridge for a week until you're ready to eat the rest of it.

 

So I tell everyone that if they've got tomatoes in the fridge, take them out.  

 

What do you hope people take away from your research?

It's such a fascinating story and one that is so largely unknown. It's actually a little miracle, a little red round miracle, and we should respect it a lot more than we do. 

 

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In the wake of the popular series From Scratch and season two of The White Lotus, Sicily's having its moment as a destination. But that wasn't always the case. Little was known of the region in the U.S.—except for its ties to organized crime and mobster movies. 

Writer and native New Yorker Mary Taylor Simeti had a different view. Living in Palermo and working on her husband's family farm, she sought to share insights into the island's sacred festivals, colorful residents, and vibrant produce.  

The result, On Persephone's Island: A Sicilian Journal, transported to a whole new world, rich with introspection into what it means to be both a foreigner and a resident on Italy's largest island.

Mary spoke to me about the challenge of publishing such a book in the 1980s. Thankfully, the former regular contributor to the New York Times and Financial Times persisted and followed up with Pomp and Sustenance, the first English-language Sicilian cookbook.

 

Read on for our chat about the fascinating history of Sicily's food and how, at Bosco Falconeria, she and her husband paved the way for the island's certified organic farming movement. 

 

 

Tell me about your background.

Well, I am American-born and grew up mostly in New York City. But as soon as I finished college, I came to Sicily to work as a volunteer for Danilo Dolci, who had a center outside of Palermo for development work. Sicily was still extremely poor, and there was still a lot of bomb damage and other damage from the war and also from centuries of invasion and exploitation. I meant to stay for a year. I've been here now; well, it'll be 62 years next month.

 

Where in Sicily are you?

I started out in Partinico, and then I spent 25 years in Palermo. And then we moved out once our children had finished high school in Palermo and were off studying elsewhere. We moved out to my husband's family farm, which is halfway between Palermo and Trapani, which is the westernmost point of Sicily.

 

What drew you to Sicily, and why did you stay?

Well, what drew me was the possibility of doing volunteer work with a development organization. This was 1962. It was the period of the big period of the Peace Corps. I didn't want to join the Peace Corps. I wasn't sure that I wanted to work as a representative of the American way of life. I thought everybody was entitled to their own way of life. I thought I wasn't going to stay very long, but I met my husband, I married him, and we thought we were going to be traveling around the world.

 

He was an agronomist (an agrarian economist), and he had applied to the FAO. We imagined a sort of itinerant life in the developing world with our basis here in Sicily. But then, two years after we were married, his oldest brother, who was running what was left of the family farm and taking care of the aging parents, died very suddenly. And we were left holding the bag, so to speak, and it became a passion. We were reluctant in the beginning but very glad in the end. The whole thing is, my whole life has been sort of serendipous. It's not planned.

 

How has your perspective on Sicilian culture evolved since you first arrived?

I was a medieval history major in college. And so I knew that sort of Sicily. I knew very little about modern Sicily. I came with curiosity, and I had the good luck to work together for a couple of years with an American anthropologist who was also volunteering at the center. She gave me tools to read what I was seeing. I don't think I had a very clear idea in the beginning, but I was open to finding out. 

I didn't have a stereotype. Sicily was off the charts those days. People, it was considered a black hole of mafia and poverty and dried out wheat fields. I mean, a lot of people didn't have any idea of the enormous cultural heritage that is. And still, when my first book, On Persephone's Island, was published in 1986, the first editor I talked to about it in New York said to me, "Well, of course, you realize nobody wants to read the book about Sicily, but I like this idea… Why don't you develop that?" I said, well, I'm not interested in developing that. I'm interested in writing about Sicily. And I went elsewhere. I was lucky, but I managed to find people who were curious.

 

What was your goal with On Persephone's Island?

Well, I had always loved writing, but I had this feeling that I couldn't write a book about Sicily unless it were a definitive work, and it was obviously beyond me. I don't think there's anybody who could do the definitive work on Sicily because it's such an ancient and multifaceted place and culture. But I started writing the book because I had been asked to accompany a group of alumni from my American college around Sicily. Though I wasn't prepared to be an art history guide, I started telling people about what they were seeing in the fields, what was growing, how it was used, and how it was harvested. A lot of information that I had gained simply by living on a farm and because of what my husband did, but information that's not included in guidebooks. And I discovered that people were really interested. 

 

What unique aspects of Sicilian cooking have you shared over the years with your books?

Well, for one thing, its antiquity. I mean, it is fusion cooking over the millennia, basically because it was conquered many, many times. What are considered the indigenous people of Sicily were not. People were living here at the end of the Ice Age. 

There were three different peoples that came in: The Greeks came, and then the Romans came, and the Phoenicians were already here. Then, the Arabs came in and took over Sicily in the ninth century, and they were kicked out by the French Norman, a small colonizing force of roving knights. The Normans built a magnificent civilization that synthesized the great works of Norman architecture, the cathedrals, called the Arab-Norman Cathedrals, which have a combination of recycled Greek or Roman sculptures and mosaics from the Byzantine with Arab motifs. And they were glorious mixtures of all these traditions. And then we had the French, and then we had the Spanish, and then we had the Northern Italians, and so forth and so on. It goes on and on and on. Each of these people brought in not only new ideas and new art forms but also new plants and new vegetables and new fruits and new methods of cooking them. 

 

How was Sicilian cuisine influenced by its diverse historical rulers and cultures?

I do know that in a cave, in a cavern on the western shore of Sicily, they've found lentils, chickpeas, and farro, which were developed in Anatolia and the Mesopotamian Highlands around 10,000 B.C. So people came and brought with them the foodstuffs. The known prehistoric peoples that came to Sicily were probably eating much the same basic diet as the Greeks. 

One of the things that has determined Sicily's importance in history and how things have played out is the fact that it is mostly volcanic, extremely fertile soil. It's a big island. It's the biggest island in the Mediterranean, has a very central position, and very, very fertile soil yields much greater than anything the Greeks had ever seen in Greece, for example. Whereas classical Greece was praising the "Golden Mean" moderation of all things in terms of food. That was an invention of necessity. They couldn't indulge enormously because they didn't grow enough food. 

One of the reasons for Greek colonization across the Mediterranean was the search for new sources of food. When they got to Sicily, they went a bit wild and started developing a very elaborate cuisine. The first cookbook in the Mediterranean world was written in Syracuse, and the first school for professional chefs was in Syracuse. There are certain traits that are still very common that come from the Greeks, such as the use of dried currents together with pine nuts, which is often attributed to the Arabs but was in the Roman cookbooks, which were, in turn, inspired by the Sicilian chefs.

Sicily is famous for its pastry traditions, and there are two very different traditions. One is the simpler cakes and biscuits, and very often with a fig filling using sesame seeds, but the Greeks sweetened with either honey or had vincotto, a boiled-down grape must.  

When the Arabs came, they brought cane sugar, which arrived in Europe first through Sicily and then through Muslim Spain. It gave a much wider range of possibilities because it crystallized and remained crystallized, which honey or vincotto didn't. 

They brought in almond paste, and they brought in crystallized fruit, and together, with the sugar, a whole tradition that became in the 12th and 13th centuries an important economic export of Sicily, famous for the sweet stuff that they sent north.

Then, they brought in new vegetables. They brought in the artichoke as we know it today, probably the lemons and certainly the bitter orange. The eggplant was brought by the Arabs, but whether they came here first or whether it came back here later from Spain with the Spanish Muslims is a question.

The Arabs were the first people to bring in and produce dried pasta as we know it today. The Romans had things they did with wheat and water that were similar, but the idea of a dried thing that you then boil came here thanks to the Arabs. 

 

Tell me about your farm, Bosco Falconeria.

It's on the edge of the boundary between the territory of Partinico and the territory of Alcamo. But it's an area in which most of the land belongs to people from Alcamo. 

This piece of it was bought by my husband's grandfather in 1930. So it is close to a hundred years we've been here. My husband and I rebuilt the farmhouse, which was not in good shape but was quite badly damaged in the 1968 earthquake. And we used the government subsidies for earthquake damage to rebuild the frame of the house.

My husband's grandfather was a wine merchant maker. The wine that was made here on the farm was wine that came not only from his own grapes, but in that era, this was an area of small farms; there were no cooperative wine cellars. So, the small peasant with a few acres of vineyards was at the mercy of a middleman who would charge him outrageously high interest on the money. They advanced him so that he could get through the next year's cultivation. 

 

My husband's grandfather was a wonderful man, and he loaned money to anybody who asked him without ever charging any interest. So he had a fairly good-sized clientele; people who came brought him their grapes. The wine was made here and stored here. And then most of it was taken down in barrels, mounted on Sicilian carts, to the port, where there were the warehouses of the big vermouth companies. Because in those days, most Sicilian wine was not table wine. It was a very strong wine that was used either to make vermouth or was sold in Europe to be taken to Northern Europe to bring up the alcoholic content of the much weaker northern wines.

The alcoholic content of wine depends on how much sun the grapes get. It's the sun that brings out the sugar content, and in northern climates, wines tend to be much lower in sugar content and, therefore, less stable. The stronger the wine, the better it keeps and the better it ages.

So that's what Sicilian wines were: mostly really strong stuff still. The big transformation of the Sicilian wine industry started in the seventies, and now almost all the wine I think that's produced here is table wine. Some of it's still pretty undrinkable, but most of it is really excellent. The wine picture has changed totally since I've been here.

 

Aside from wine grapes, what else do you grow?

We have olives, we have table grapes, and we have avocados, which are a novelty here. We have a small mixed citrus orchard. We sell some grapefruit and some oranges, but mostly, they are for family consumption in one way or another. And we don't do much in the way of vegetables anymore. We used to, but they're so labor-intensive.

 

We went organic before there was organic certification in Italy in the second half of the 80s. And in the beginning, it was worth it. Even though we had to pay a lot in labor costs, it was worth our while to produce organic vegetables because there weren't that many producers of organic vegetables. Nowadays, there's a lot of organic produce in Sicily, more than any other region in Italy.

 

You've written six books. What do you hope readers take away?

Well, in the beginning, I really wasn't thinking about that. I was just hoping that there were some people out there who might be interested in things that I found so interesting about Sicily. I was first told nobody wanted to read about Sicily. And then, when I told my editor I wanted to do a history of Sicilian cuisine, she said, "Oh, is there one?" And Pomp and Sustenance was the first book in English on Sicilian cooking. Americans, for a long time, didn't even realize that there was anything more essential than the difference between the white cuisine of Milan and the red cuisine of Naples.  

 

In the beginning, it was simply to talk about the things that were interesting here and hope I could pay back Sicily for all it's given to me. I felt like a self-appointed ambassador.

I've had so many beautiful letters from people who say, "You gave me back childhood recipes my grandmother used to cook." That has been totally unexpected but very, very rewarding.

 

 

 

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The next time you sip a cup of espresso, consider how it got there. I'm not talking about the production or import of beans. The very tradition of drinking coffee in Italy can be traced to a single source: Queen Maria Carolina of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. A daughter of Austria's Habsburg Dynasty, Maria Carolina, who liked to be called Charlotte, was just as much a trendsetter as her ill-fated sister Marie Antoinette. She championed female artists, supported sciences, and exercised agency as a woman ahead of her time.

Whenever I visit my family in Porticello, I can't help but see the Norman fortress of Castello di Solanto, one of Maria Carolina's holiday homes. It's right across from the port in Bagheria. A self-possessed and highly educated queen, Maria Carolina touched many other places and policies. 

I first learned about Maria Carolina when I read Antoinette's Sister by historical novelist Diana Giovinazzo, who happens to be part Sicilian. I caught up with Diana to discuss what she learned writing her brilliant book and her thoughts on Maria Carolina's life and legacy. 

 

 

What is your background, and what drew you to Queen Maria Carolina?

I'm half Italian. My dad's part Calabrian and part Sicilian. So the Calabrian half that came was, as far as we know, just my great-grandfather and his wife. Nobody else came with them, which was just kind of odd. So we never really understood why that was. And as far as we know, there's family back there that we don't know what happened to them, and we could trace them back to World War II. That's about it. And then my Sicilian side of the family, his mother's side, came here from Sicily (just outside of Palermo, a little town called San Giuseppe Jato). So they're all here.

 

I've always been curious about my family genealogy, how we came here, and where my family fits in the history narrative. There are a lot of people who have families who are still back in Italy. We don't, and it's murky, but I was curious about it, and I started getting into the research of genealogy. The question of how we came to the United States turned into, "Well, why? What was going on during the timeframe of my family coming here?" My family came in the mid and early 1900s. And so when I turned to the question of why, that's when I started learning about historical fiction.

 

The history itself, the historical fiction, is going to come in a little bit later, but I first got into the history of Garibaldi, what Garibaldi did in the country, which led to Anita Garibaldi, which led to my first book, The Woman in Red. 

While looking into that book's history and doing research, I kept coming across sections that talked about the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. I had put some of it in there, but I didn't really get into it in the book itself. And when we went to print, my editor was like, well, I want to know more. Let's put some more of that in there. I did what any writer would do, and I decided I was going to become an expert. And I just studied as much of it as I could. 

At the very beginning, I came across the stories of King Ferdinand. I was like, "Oh my God, who is the poor woman who was married to him and got stuck with this man?" And that's when I came across Carolina.

So, I pitched the story to my agent, and it went from there. I was so just taken by the history and taken by her and her family, and everything that she did, as well as historical fiction, came into play because I've always wanted to be a writer. My path to writing has been very windy, and I've done a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I was a paralegal for a while, and then I started writing The Woman in Red. Then, I said, "Well, this is going to be my new thing." And that's where it came about.

 

Let's discuss the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies since both of our ancestors were touched by it.

It's basically just north of Naples, going all the way to the island of Sicily, and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies is such an interesting name for a kingdom in general. The way it came about was they were both called Sicily separately. Then Spain had control of one portion of it, and Austria had control of another portion of it. And there were wars fought between the two. Spain took it, and they said, "Okay, we're just going to call it the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and we're going to be part of our crown." 

Then Austria took it back, and it became the kingdom of the two Sicilies as well. They kept that. So, it went back and forth for a number of years between the two until Carlos came in. And that's when it became its own country. I say kind of because it was kind of a puppet country of Spain for a number of years until Maria Carolina came in.

 

You talked a little bit about Ferdinand. Who was he?

He was such a character. He was a man-child, to put it in today's terms. One of his favorite pastimes was hunting. He enjoyed playing games, and the games that he played were things along the lines of fishmonger or innkeeper. He really loved the people, and the people really truly loved him. They called him Re Nasone, the big nose king, and he would spend his mornings playing chess with old men out by the sea. That's what he loved. 

He really didn't have an interest in ruling and didn't intend to be king. When Carlos II returned to Spain, he brought his eldest son with him to be his heir, leaving Ferdinand as King of Naples. And Ferdinand just was not fit for it.

 

When he was 18, he married Maria Carolina, who was 16 at the time. He continued to be this man-child, and she had to be the one to come in and take care of it.

 

So now let's talk about Maria Carolina.

She comes into this, and she really wasn't actually intended to be the queen of Naples. Maria Theresa had one of her older daughters who was going to be the Queen of Naples. In fact, Maria Carolina was actually intended to be the Queen of France. That's what Maria Theresa was training Maria Carolina for. And it is interesting because some corners of the web talk about what would have happened if Maria Carolina had been the queen of France. What would happen? Which is really weird and fascinating when you start getting into that.

 

But I digress. Much like the pandemics that we have going on today, smallpox just ravaged Europe. And because [two of her sisters, each assigned to marry Ferdinand, fell ill and died], Maria Carolina found herself getting married to Ferdinand.

 

Maria Theresa was the OG helicopter mom. There were so many ways where she had control over her children in their other kingdoms. Maria Carolina had to write to her mother about everything in her day-to-day life, even when her menses started, their plans for having children, and the policies they were discussing. She was very, very involved with her children. She considered every child she placed, and she had 16 of them [13 survived infancy]. She placed them in different countries. And so she considered those her colonies. They weren't separate countries; they were colonies. So when Maria Carolina comes in here, she's got her mother being controlling, and then she's got Spain. Ferdinand has no intention of being the king. 

So what she does—as a teenager, mind you—is manage to take over control and basically tell everybody to stay in their lanes, pushing out a lot of Spain's influence. She winds up running the kingdom her way. The way she does it is just brilliant. She utilizes her family to help her make the power moves against Spain. And then, she would take advantage of the fact that her husband liked to go out and play, and if she wanted something with him, she would do simple things. She would utilize herself in ways to get him to be like, "Okay, I'll give in." Because he loved things like taking off gloves, he thought that was the ultimate sexy thing. So she would slowly remove her rings and gloves as she talked to him, and he would give in to whatever she wanted. That was the kind of woman she was, and that's what she came into.

 

She's done a lot of things, and when you step back and look at Italy as it is today, you still see those remnants. You see the architecture of Caserta and the art in that palace; she finished a lot of that palace and what she did for the people. She did progressive things, like protecting the coral reefs and utilizing science to plant the olive trees. We have so many olives in Southern Italy; so much of that is because of her, and she never truly got credit for it.

 

She also contributed to the military and defense. Can you speak to that?

She knew they were in a precarious position, so she focused on building that up so that they could withstand themselves. Because even geographically, if you look at Italy, you've got the territories north; they were all separate countries, little city-state countries in and of themselves. There were wars historically up there, so they had to protect their northern border. When the French Revolution began, you truly saw a bit of a change in the historical record when it came to her. She went from being an enlightened monarch to being very bitter and upset about the murder of her sister [Marie Antoinette]. 

 

So, she built up the military and focused on building up that strong military force because she knew it was only a matter of time before France invaded. She just knew, especially when Napoleon came in, that it would happen. She did a lot to try to protect herself and the kingdom from what Napoleon was doing.

 

I'd read that Maria Carolina had French chefs who introduced potatoes to Italy. Didn't she also introduce coffee?

That was one of the things that surprised me the most when I was writing the book because when we think of Italy, we think there's always coffee. There was always coffee, but it was considered bad luck to drink coffee before she came along. So I put in the book that every time she would turn over her coffee cup, there would be a pepper in her cup because they considered it bad luck to drink coffee. But she brought it with her from Austria because she was like, "I'm not living without my coffee," which I can really, really relate to. So she had it with her. She had it every morning, and then it just became trendy to be able to drink coffee. And it has become such a huge part of Italian culture.

 

They put a pepper in her cup?

Yeah, they would leave a pepper by her cup; she'd turn over a coffee cup, and there would be a pepper to ward off the bad luck, the evil eye. And then you have this queen who's willingly tempting Mal'occhio. They connected the two because coffee was so bitter.

 

She was a patron of artist Angelica Kauffman. Can you speak to her support for female artists?

Yes. I find this really fascinating. This was something that I really, really loved because it had a tie to Bridgerton because the queens of that period—you have Charlotte in England, you have Antoinette in France, and then you have Maria Carolina in Naples—had this system where they would take female artists, not just Angelica Kauffman, but other female artists, and they would exchange them between each other. They would make references. And these female artists could go from one kingdom to another, and they were patrons of these women.

It's truly a beautiful thing that they never get credit for. I think this type of feminism, the idea that women's rights aren't just women's rights; they're universal rights, they're human rights. She lends a lot of that to what you see regarding rights in Italy today. I know there's a lot of feminism talk, and that's something that comes up a lot, but when it comes to Italy, it's very much a human rights issue. And I think she pushed for that because she did a lot of that. She had a female personal librarian. As much as she could, she would utilize female artists.  

 

What is Maria Carolina's legacy?

I think truly caring about the country, truly caring about trying to make the country a priority—and not in a nationalistic way—in a way that allows people to take care of each other.

 

>>You can read more about Maria Carolina in Diana's book, Antoinette's Sister.<< 

 

 

 

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