October 18, 2010
I once saw my friend Giò drop a heel of bread on the floor. She scooped it up like it was a newborn chick and tenderly kissed it.
“That’s what we do here in Sicily,” she laughed. “Bread is everything for us. Jesus is in the bread. It must always sit on its bottom, for example. And we never toss it away. That’s a sin.”
“Well, what if it gets old?”
“We make breadcrumbs from it. If it’s turning green with mold, we kiss it and apologize to Jesus.”
I once made Easter breads with an 86-year-old woman who’s never been off the island. She said a prayer as she popped the bread into the oven.
To Saint Anthony, handsome and good.
The angel passes and leaves his blessing, the angel passed and left his blessing.
May the Ragusan bread rise as big as a field, may the country bread rise as big as a mountain.
Saint Anthony is not the only person Sicilian women turn to for help with baking. Some pray to Saint Clement (“Let the bread not have a bubble!”) or directly to Mary and Jesus themselves.
I didn’t dare tell my friend Giò that as kids we made spitballs with bread, or that as an adult I’ve carelessly trashed scores of half-eaten loaves. That would be the ultimate blasphemy here.
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What food do you revere?
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October 24, 2015
There’s a new treasure in the ‘hood: I Banchi.
Its magnetic force pulls me in every single day, either for a frothy cappuccino, pasta lunch, hunk of parmigiana or half loaf of bread, take-out dinner pizza or scaccia (available by the slice), or for an evening glass of the local peppery black Nero d’Avola at a table outside. The genius behind this casual-affordable-lovable place is none other than 2-star Michelin chef Ciccio Sultano.
 Ciccio Sultano, the beating heart behind I Banchi It’s open all day long–8:30 am-11:30 pm–shockingly long hours for Sicily! (closed Tuesday). Mornings are my favorite time to sally forth, when the duomo is the color of fresh brioche, doves flutter about, and the only thing shattering the silence are my boots on cobbles. Although I Banchi’s official opening hour is 8:30 am, their door is ajar by about 7:30 or so for coffee. Monica’s smile will brighten your day.
 Where else can you go in the village on an October morning with rain bursting overhead? And linger for an hour over a warm whole-wheat croissant (un cornetto integrale, per favore) while scanning the news on a no-hassle wifi connection? You’ll stumble in half asleep and wake up to the smells of baking breads, chocolate, cream, and espresso. You’ll marvel at the stone walls honeyed with age and at the fact that these rooms were the once-upon-a-time stables of the adjacent baronial palazzo. Such a high life the cows must have lived here! Feeding from troughs hand-carved from the local black pece stone under spacious vaulted ceilings.
 Ancient horse ring still on a wall  A destination for regular folk and gastronomes with shallow pockets, I Banchi (the name refers to the old wooden school benches still found in some Sicilian schools) is many things at once: a cafe/wine bar/bistro/trattoria/pizzeria/bakery/salumeria/bookstore/wifi zone/hang-out place par excellence. Down to earth, welcoming, and warm.
 Londoners in Sicily In nice weather sitting on the cobbled sidewalk under oleander trees is pleasant.
In charge of day-to-day operations is Chef Peppe Cannistrà, a local Ragusan. Yay, Chef! Keep up the good work.
 Chef Peppe Cannistrà Alfio Magnano, restaurant director, is a font of wine wisdom. And, as you know, Sicilian wines are spectacular.
 Alfio Magnano knows Sicily’s wines.  Breakfast at I Banchi  Breakfast at I Banchi When you step inside, you’re in the bakery, face-to face with mini cassata cakes, chocolate truffles, fruit-topped puff pastries, and other gems. But with my doctor’s voice in my ears, I often go for the stone-ground brown breads–breads almost impossible to find in Sicily because locals, after millenia of poverty, seem to be under the impression that soft white refined foods represent the apex of well-being. But I Banchi is nudging Sicilians back to their their healthier past, to fiber-rich ancient grains.
The breads are made from Castelvetrano flour, a stone-ground flour from Western Sicily that uses an ancient grain called tumminìa (supported by the Slow Food Presidium as it was becoming extinct).
 This ancient Sicilian flour, once in danger of extinction, is stone-ground and protected by the Slow Food Foundation.  Giovanni, bread baker at I Banchi  A selection of foods are available for purchase at I Banchi, including busiate produced from antique organic stone-ground grain in western Sicily by Filippo Drago. I love that Ciccio is supporting ancient grains and other old-time Sicilian products. For more information on Filippo Drago’s work, see Elizabeth Minchelli’s blog.
For lunch I can recommend the unusual fish lasagna with broccoli puree.  And for dessert nothing could top the cannolo, served here with a dollop of almond granita.
 The approach at I Banchi is in keeping with the spirit of this ancient little village founded by the Greeks and rebuilt by exuberant Sicilians in the 1700s. No flashy Milan-style decor, no garish signage (instead it uses small stencils on its traditional shutters), unlike some other establishments that have popped up here recently. Sometimes I moan that World Heritage designation leads to ruination and nothing but magnet shops, but having I Banchi in the neighborhood gives me hope.
Buon appetito!
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PS: When you go, have a peek into the adjacent courtyard where a scene from Divorce Italian Style was filmed. The wine cellar’s amazing too.
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ibanchiragusa.it
VIA ORFANOTROFIO 39
+39 0932 655000
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October 2, 2011
Yes, Sicily’s folk culture is endangered, her old way of life fading away. I lose sleep over this.
But Franco and Salvo are trying to stop the march of time. The men have a vision and a passion: to save an old flour mill, to grow ancient varieties of wheat for grinding, and to produce Sicily’s old-time bread. The mill in question, Mulino Soprano, had been in Franco’s family since it was built in 1822, but it had–like all the other flour mills in Sicily–gone to seed, closing in the early 1980s.
 Salvo Arena and Franco DiStefano Thanks to “progress,” flour is industrial in Sicily today, pretty much devoid of nutrients and high in hard-to-digest gluten. The ancient varieties of wheat that grew on the island in Roman times have given way to a few globalized varieties.
But Franco, 50-something, can still remember a childhood when the mill was a hub of rural life Sicily and a center of gossip, when he ran in fields of wheat and fell asleep to the sound of swooshing water.
So Franco and Salvo spend all their spare time on weekends, while scraping together their own money, to bring back a slice of Sicily’s past.
 The old water wheel  It's amazing how long it takes to grind a bag of flour!  Franco is proud of his antique varieties of wheat.  Salvo with his experimental breads There’s still work to be done. The men are experimenting with ways of baking bread; they plan to open a bakery, too. Already they’ve got a deliciously chewy brown bread–something that you can’t find in any bakeries here.
 Bread made from ancient grain Way to go, guys! You’re local heroes to me!
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The mill in Contrada Cifali on the road between Chiaramonte and Ragusa, but is impossible to find unless you go with someone in the know. And that person would be Consuelo Petrolo, an adorable tour guide with excellent English. You can reach her at consuelo.petrolo@tiscali.it or visit her website. Consuelo can also find holiday housing for you in Southeast Sicily.
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April 9, 2013
My Roman friend Roberta–who has moved to Sicily–proposed that I host an afternoon tea.
Great idea, you say?
Ha. Consider this: Roberta works for Gambero Rosso, Italy’s gastronomic bible, which pitilessly rates and ranks food. She’s reviewed fancy Michelin-starred restaurants all over Italy … and Paris … and London … and New York. She’s penned cookbooks and other food books and now runs a restaurant near the shore with her new Sicilian marito.
So the thought of feeding my food-goddess amica filled me with a kind of horror.
But I’d been fed at her table plenty of times, so it was time to step up and act like a Big Girl.
Whaddya serve at a tea party, anyway? Was Roberta expecting high tea or low tea? I was sure mine would be low–very, very low.
You eat breads and cakes, don’t you? I can do that. I like to bake. I ran my usual repertoire through my head.
- Cranberry-nut loaf. (But there are no cranberries here!)
- Pumpkin tea loaf. (No canned pumpkin here!)
- Chocolate chip cookies. (No chocolate chips!)
- Blueberry-oatmeal muffins. (No blueberries or oatmeal!)
- Buttermilk biscuits. (No buttermilk here!)
- Etc, etc, etc Ach!
Every single thing I’d ever baked in my entire life contained a key ingredient that this isle lacks.
So to the Wide Web I went, trolling for lemony-orangey things. Because mountains of lemons and oranges we have.
Then I got to work squeezing lemons, chopping nuts, whipping eggs. It was warm enough to toss the doors wide open. Big furry bees circled the honey.
I made Tuscan lemon muffins using whole ricotta instead of skim (no such thing here), and more lemon zest than the recipe calls for.
And an orange-nut loaf.
And lemon meringue pots de creme, a NY Times recipe.
And raisin scones, totally unworthy of a photo.
You can just get a glimpse of them below–those things in the back that are flat and hard as hockey pucks. What self-defeating instinct made me put pucks on the table????? The fact that I had good mandarin marmalade and zagara honey to scoop on them was no excuse.
I had a Plan called Prosecco. When my guests arrived, I would get them tipsy so they wouldn’t care what they were eating. I let the Moroccan mint tea steep and steep while we tossed back the sauce. We toasted the slaves of Milan and New York who do not know the perks of the free-lance life, and we toasted Sicily.
The orange-nut bread was unremarkable, but Roberta rushed to the rescue: She pulled a pastry bag of ricotta cream from her purse, like a rabbit from a hat. Abracadabra! The perfect spread!
The Tuscan lemon muffins were good and moist, but Roberta reserved her praise for the lemon meringue pots de creme.
 Roberta Corradin Hooray! I got the Gambero Rosso thumb-up!
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Oct 27, 2010
Here’s a good chilly-weather recipe. It takes only minutes to prepare (plus an hour in the oven). Light a crackling fire, pour a tumbler of wine, and cozy up.
The recipe comes from Giovanna Bellia La Marca’s Sicilian Feasts, chock-full of simple home-style recipes. This one may remind you of something from Northern Italy or Bavaria, but I can vouch that baked sausage and potatoes is a very typical dish in southeast Sicily.
Ingredients (for 6-8)
2 pounds Italian hot or sweet sausage, or a combination
6 baking potatoes cut in wedges (I used fingerlings instead)
2 bell peppers (red or yellow) cut in wedges
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
sprinkle of dried oregano
salt and pepper to taste
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Directions
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Separate the sausage links. Place the sausages, potatoes, and peppers in a large baking pan. Add the olive oil, oregano, salt, and pepper, and mix well. Bake for an hour, stirring the contents of the pan twice during baking to be sure nothing sticks to the pan. Serve with a good crusty bread.
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