Lindsay Marie Morris

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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