Lindsay Marie Morris

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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My Sicilian grandmother may have been the cook of the household, but it was my grandfather who grew much of the produce she used in her dishes.

 

I can still remember sitting in the kitchen as Luciano Pavarotti's tenor voice filtered through the fragrant air. Nonna was stirring a pot of something wonderful on the stove when Nonno burst through the door with a tray of sun-dried tomatoes. He'd dried them himself by wrapping the tray in plastic and setting it out in the sun to do its magic. Who needed store-bought when doing it yourself was so easy and delicious? 

 

Food blogger Andrea Lagana of Hip Hip Gourmet agrees, but she "sun dries" her tomatoes in the oven before popping them into a dehydrator. 

 

"Doing it outside is nice and all, but there are lots of variables to consider (such as bugs, temperature, rain, etc.), so using a dehydrator is the no-fail preferred method in our family," she says.

 

Andrea took time out to share why she dries her own tomatoes, which tomatoes are best for drying, how to boost dried tomato flavor, and which recipes are best for sun-dried tomatoes. 

 

 

What is your background, and where is your Italian family from?

I'm a proud second-generation Italian. Both of my parents were born in Italy, both in Calabria, but in different towns. My dad is from Scilla, and my mom is from Montalto Uffugo.

Did your family sun-dry tomatoes?

My parents don't actually remember their families sun-drying tomatoes in Italy because they were so small when they left. However, my mom does have a few memories of her aunts and uncles sun-drying figs from their fresh backyard fig trees, so I'm sure it's not far-fetched to say that they did tomatoes, too.

 

When did you start sun-drying tomatoes, and why?

I started sun-drying tomatoes as soon as I started living on my own (about a decade or so ago!). It was always a staple in our house growing up and something I would help my parents make every year. I just knew I had to carry on the tradition not only because we've been making them for so long but also because they're so dang delicious, and I seriously can't live without them! So much so that I've actually vowed to make them every year for the rest of my life.

 

What is your preferred tomato-drying method?

I personally like to start my fresh halved (usually Roma or San Marzano) tomatoes in the oven on the lowest rack for a couple of hours. Then, I transfer them to a dehydrator to finish drying out. This process can be long and requires patience and persistence, as you have to keep going in every so often to check on them and take the ready ones out (they can be ready at different times). I like this method because it's efficient, reliable, and easy.

However, if I lived in Italy under the hot Italian sun, perhaps I would stick to the old-fashioned way of actually using the sun to dry them out completely. My mom used to start them outside in the sun in our backyard (instead of the oven), and then she'd move them to the dehydrator to finish.

How does the process differ from traditional sun-drying?

Traditional sun-drying includes salting the halved tomatoes to draw out excess moisture (which we don't do) and placing them in direct sunlight for several days with a protective covering like a screen or a cheesecloth to keep the insects away. The tomatoes will get rotated or flipped a few times during this process to ensure even drying. The process is generally longer than my family's method of using a dehydrator, as the sun must be shining in order for the tomatoes to dry out completely. 

 

What types of tomatoes are best suited for sun-drying?

We love using fresh and ripe Roma or San Marzano tomatoes for sun-drying. These beauties are the perfect size (go for the smaller ones) and have fewer seeds and more "meat" than other varieties. They also have a firm texture and lower water content, making them ideal for sun-drying. We also make fresh tomato sauce at the same time, and, as any Italian will tell you, Roma and/or San Marzano are basically the only options!

 

Can you list some common mistakes to avoid when making sun-dried tomatoes?

• Not using the right tomatoes: Remember, San Marzano or Roma. My Italian parents wouldn't approve of any other variety! 
• Overcrowding the dehydrator. The air needs room to circulate, and overcrowding the trays or overlapping the tomatoes will result in uneven and improperly dried tomatoes. For best results, place the tomatoes in a single and even layer.
• Taking the sun-dried tomatoes out too soon. You want to make sure they are dry but still bendy when you press them between your fingers. They shouldn't be moist, squishy, or hard at all. 
• Not tossing the ready ones in a splash of oil while waiting for the rest to finish. As I said, this process can take several days (or even weeks, depending on how many tomatoes you're drying). Tossing the ready ones in a bit of oil and keeping them in a container with a tight-fitting lid keeps them fresh and prevents mold before jarring.
• Not ensuring that all of the sun-dried tomatoes are completely submerged in oil at all times (after jarring). Make sure to always press them down beneath the oil with a fork after each use and/or topping up the oil as often as is needed.
• Not having patience. It's a virtue and so required in this process. But trust me, it's totally worth it and will pay off tenfold!
  
  

How can you enhance the flavor of tomatoes during the drying process?

You can definitely add salt to the halved tomatoes before drying. I'm sure you could also add some spices (e.g., garlic powder or Italian seasoning) if you wish. I haven't ever tried doing this before drying, but I'm sure it would be a good experiment.

Personally, my family likes to keep the tomatoes plain Jane during the drying process. We enhance the flavor after the tomatoes are completely dried out by adding loads of fresh chopped garlic, oregano, salt, and oil as we jar them.

 

What are the benefits of drying tomatoes at home versus buying them from a store?

Like anything homemade, they're just way better for so many reasons! First and foremost, they are much cheaper in the long run than store-bought varieties. I find that you can't find a good-tasting jar of sun-dried tomatoes for less than $15 these days (and I'm talkin' the smallest of small jars you could find). I also find that the oil used in most jarred varieties isn't an oil I consume on a regular basis, so I prefer making my own so I can control the exact ingredients and measurements that go into each jar.

And, of course, the real benefit of making sun-dried tomatoes at home is that I seriously cannot find a sun-dried tomato that is as delicious as the ones my family has been making for all of these years. Call me biased, but it's a fact!

What are some creative ways to incorporate sun-dried tomatoes into your cooking?

I love using sun-dried tomatoes in my cooking, so I feel like I can never have enough of them! Eating them straight out of the jar is, of course, also delicious. But here are some ways I like to use them:

• In pasta—why, of course! I wouldn't be Italian if I didn't suggest throwing some into the next pasta dish you make. My mom adds them to her pasta aglio e olio (a traditional simple olive oil and garlic pasta), which takes it to a whole other level.
• If you're feeling fancy (but not really, because all it takes is 10 minutes to make!), try my pesto rosso (aka my sun-dried tomato pesto), where the homemade sun-dried tomatoes are the true star! You can use this pesto on pasta, as a base for a pizza, or as a marinade for things like chicken or pork. It's even great on eggs.
• I love chopping sun-dried tomatoes and adding them to anything, from pizza (they're so good on pizza!) to meatballs (like my homemade sun-dried tomato turkey meatballs with spinach and goat cheese). 

One of my favorite things to do with sun-dried tomatoes is make Mediterranean-inspired dishes. They pair well with olives, capers, artichoke hearts, and spinach.

Here are two of my go-to recipes that use sun-dried tomatoes:

• Mediterranean Baked Halibut (you can use any white fish)
• Lightened Up Tuscan Chicken

 

 

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It was our first night in Palermo. My husband and I were on our honeymoon but chose to visit with relatives, who insisted we stay in their lovely home. My cousin Patrizia sat us down for supper: breaded cauliflower pasta with pine nuts, raisins, and capers. 

 

"This is just like my mother's recipe!" I exclaimed.

 

"It is a family recipe," Patrizia said with a smile. 

 

So, for years, that's what I thought—until I researched Sicilian recipes for my novels. While I have yet to see this particular cauliflower pasta on a restaurant menu, I uncovered a bevy of similar Sicilian cauliflower pasta recipes, such as Pasta chi Vruoccoli Arriminati.

 

But none had the capers, which my mother says add the slightly bitter and salty tanginess that's essential to counter the sweetness of the raisins. Then I stumbled on Michele Di Pietro's MangiaWithMichelle.com recipe for Sicilian pasta with cauliflower, pine nuts, raisins, and—bingo!—capers.

 

Michele, a New Jersey-based cookbook author, food writer, menu and recipe developer, professional chef, culinary consultant, and former certified public accountant, was gracious enough to take time out to chat with me about this recipe. We discussed her twist on a family classic, the essential ingredients, why you should overcook cauliflower, and what she hopes readers will take away.

 

Tell me about your background.

I am. I'm 100% Italian-American. I'm half Sicilian and half Abruzzese. My mom's parents came from Sicily separately at the turn of the century when they were young, and my dad's parents were immigrants as well. 

 

What is the history of Sicilian Pasta with Cauliflower, Pine Nuts, Raisins, and Capers for you and your family?

My mom used to make a dish that was sort of like an overcooked mash, kind of partially mashed cauliflower with lots of onions. She would finish it off with bread crumbs, and it was really, really good. And she would make a pasta with broccoli that is also very similar to that, whereas the broccoli is overcooked and it becomes sort of like the sauce for the dish. It's mixed with Pecorino. And so this is kind of a combination of those two ideas.

For me, it's like the way that she would make pasta with broccoli, and also thinking of the pasta with cauliflower dish that she used to make me.

I am a trained chef. I worked in the food service for many, many years, and most of my job was for many, many years was innovation and trying to come up with different ways and interesting ways of doing food to make things interesting. So it's just ingrained in me to always try and do things a little bit differently. 

Crispy capers, pine nuts, raisins, all three of those are very Sicilian ingredients, but the way that they're put together in this pasta is not really traditional. I think the traditional dish just has pine nuts and raisins and often anchovies, which I left out. So it's basically, it's kind of inspired by a traditional dish with my personal history based on my mom's dishes. And then, me wanting to add my own twist with the pine nuts and the Marcella wine-soaked raisins. 

 

Why are the pine nuts, raisins, and capers important in this recipe, and how do they contribute to the overall flavor?

Well, they contribute both in flavor and texture. Texture is a really important part of flavor. And so, for me, the capers are important because they add brininess and saltiness and, therefore, also umami, but they add texture because they're crispy. So that makes it interesting. The raisins add a pop of sweetness in a place where you wouldn't expect sweetness. And eating the savory pasta dish and the Marcella wine, like I said, that's just sort of like a fun, interesting twist on it, which just adds a little bit of extra flavor. They're important because they're all rooted in traditional Sicilian ingredients. 

 

You intentionally overcook your cauliflower. Why?

A lot of Italian Americans and Italians tend to overcook their vegetables, which is the exact opposite of what I learned in cooking school. I often think about, oh my god, Chef So-and-So from cooking school would fall over if they saw me cooking my vegetables like this. Why do Italian Americans and Italians tend to overcook their vegetables? I'm not really sure, but they do. And what happens to it in a dish like this is if it becomes part of the sauce. It's really a vegetable-based sauce. And it'll become more of a sauce the more you overcook the cauliflower because it allows you to mash it or smash it with a fork. And when we combine it [with the other ingredients], that will emulsify it, thicken it, and kind of coat the pasta, which is why it's really nice with the hearty pasta; it holds onto this heavier-in-the-texture sauce.

 

My mother uses breadcrumbs when she makes this dish. Can you speak to why Sicilians use breadcrumbs?

Well, it goes back to cucina povera, the combination of using what you have and not having a lot. So, back in the day, they didn't always have Pecorino Romano. I'm sure they didn't have any cheese at all, but they had leftovers from bread. So breadcrumbs were a way to add a little something to different dishes, a lot of times in pasta.

There are two iconic pasta dishes for [St. Joseph's Day]. One of them, which I also have a recipe for on my website, has breadcrumbs and anchovies. It's very, very simple. It's spaghetti with breadcrumbs and anchovies, and it doesn't have cheese. It's just toasted breadcrumbs, and it gives you all that texture. With that dish, specifically, the breadcrumbs represent the sawdust of St. Joseph, who's the patron saint of Sicily.

 

What do you hope readers will take away from your recipe?

I hope that all my recipes bring people together around the table. And I guess the last thing is I always just want people to make the recipe their own. I like all my recipes to be an inspiration. And just like I was inspired by the recipes and I made recipes my own, I would like them to do the same thing. So if they don't want to have crispy capers or they don't like capers, leave the capers out. Or if they want to make this recipe with broccoli instead of cauliflower, then do it.

 

>>Get Michele's Sicilian Pasta with Cauliflower, Pine Nuts, Raisins, and Capers recipe here!<<

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It's prickly pear season with so-called fichi d'India showing up in markets across Sicily. With a sweet taste reminiscent of watermelon, these spiky fruits can be found in the wild and on farms in the Mount Etna foothills. But what exactly is a prickly pear, and how do you eat them? Read on for a primer on this dangerously delicious fruit.

 

What Are Prickly Pears?

Native to Central Mexico, where it is called nopales, the prickly pear plant (Opuntia ficus-India) was first brought to Europe in the 16th century by Spanish explorers. Today, prickly pears grow on every continent except for Antarctica. In the United States, you can find Optunia cacti growing in the West and Southwest. You'll recognize them for their slender, beavertail-shaped pads, known as shovels, and their brilliant green, yellow, orange, red, and purple fruits (also called tuna). Both are edible.

 

In Sicily's markets, the preferred prickly pears are labeled as bastardoni. These fruits result from the plant's second flowering and are bigger and sweeter following an initial pruning in the spring. 

 

Sicilian Prickly Pear Recipes

Whether you're a fan of sweet or savory, you'll find a broad spectrum of prickly pear recipes bursting with Sicilian flavor. Try your hand at a traditional mostarda fichi d'India or gourmet Sicilian Etna prickly pear risotto (pictured below). Thirsty? Sip a glass of prickly pear juice. In the mood for a light, refreshing dessert? Prepare a palate-cleansing prickly pear granita. Sicily is also known for its prickly pear liqueur, which you can purchase at specialty stores or make your own.

 

Credit: Terra Orti - I Love Fruit & Veg from Europe

How to Pick Your Own Prickly Pears

If you're lucky enough to have access to prickly pear cacti, you may be wondering how to harvest them. Whatever you do, don't use your bare hands! Prickly pear fruit is covered in tiny spines called glochids, which can get in your skin. Ouch! 

 

Experts recommend wearing a long-sleeved shirt, long pants, and thick gloves. There are a variety of innovative methods, which I showcase below. Tools of the trade include small blow torches, tongs, and the traditional coppo, which you can purchase online or make yourself by cutting in half a 500-milliliter bottle and affixing it to a stick. 

 

 

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