The tastes of Sicily, we decided to dedicate an entire section of this guide to taste experiences. Sicily is in fact one of the regions where you can delight your palate – from appetizers to desserts. The particularity of the flavors is given by favorable climatic conditions that favor, especially in vegetables and fruit, a unique taste in their kind.
Starting from this assumption it goes without saying that every small Sicilian enclave has its particular dishes. Starting from Palermo to Agrigento, from Catania to Trapani, the variety of tastes changes, making the choice of the adventurer varies.
An example in particular is that of “arancine”. I still remember my train conversation with a lady from Palermo in her sixties who was telling me, gracefully but at the same time firmly, that the word is used for women – that is, with “a” at the end. This is because the shape resembles that typical of an orange (Arancia in Italian).
If instead we are in Catania here is that the word changes and turns for some mysterious reason in “Arancino” with the “o” at the end. Personally I do not have a great interest in the etymology of the word, but taste remains a cornerstone of Sicilian cuisine.
And how not to mention the desserts? An assortment of sugars, candied fruit and the inevitable ricotta. La Cassata, Cannoli, Martorana Fruit and Almond Paste are an inevitable pastime of my days in Sicily. Of course, suffering from time to time with the blood sugar …. But it’s worth it! The tastes of Sicily are all to discover…
“Food is more essential than clothes”
Sicilian Proverb
“It was a very rich place…It drew luminaries from the mainland who did some of their best work there on the island, and it was a place where both native-born geniuses … moved the needle in terms of Greek culture and made contributions to the larger Greek world. Sicily was Greece, only with richer soil and more sources of seafood and wild game.”
Michael Bennett, Curator of Greek and Roman Art, The Cleveland Museum of Art