Made in Sicily. Giorgio Locatelli
if I had landed from another planet:
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m drying them, so the people don’t eat so much oil.’
‘This is not a Michelin-starred restaurant,’ he said. ‘People like oil. That’s why they eat fried fish.’
And then he throws Trapani sea salt, which is a little moist and a bit grey, over the top, literally throws it – fingers into the pot and bang – so you can see the grains. But his food never tastes over-salted, because the quality of the salt is so high; it really makes all the difference to a calamari fritti.
Serves 4
about 400g plain flour
500g calamari, cleaned and cut into rings or strips
vegetable oil for deep-frying
sea salt
finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
Have the flour ready in a shallow plate. Dip the calamari rings into the flour and shake off the excess. Heat the oil in a deep pan, making sure it comes no higher than a third of the way up the pan. It should be 180°C. If you don’t have a thermometer, put in a few breadcrumbs, and if they sizzle straight away the oil is ready. Fry the calamari until golden, and drain, season with salt and scatter with chopped parsley.
Mixed fried vegetables, with anchovies or sardines
Sicilians love fritto misto, so much so that in the summer people set up stalls or park vans or three-wheelers with gas burners and big pots on the back, and deep-fry vegetables or fish for you there and then.
Serves 4
4 baby artichokes
juice of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon salt
1 small cauliflower, cut into florets
500g cardoons, tender heart only
1 apple, peeled and cored
vegetable oil for deep-frying
500g fresh anchovies or small sardines, cleaned
For the pastella:
250g plain flour
150ml water
1 large egg, beaten
10g fresh yeast
Peel the tough outer leaves from the artichokes, stopping when you reach the tender leaves, then cut in quarters vertically. With large artichokes, you need to cut out the hairy choke, but with baby ones, the choke will not have developed properly, so there is not much to remove. Put them into a bowl of water with a little lemon juice squeezed into it, to keep them from discolouring, until you are ready to use them. Drain, and dry.
Bring a pan of water to the boil and add the salt. Put in the cauliflower and cook for a couple of minutes, until just tender, then lift out and drain. Put the cardoons into the same water and cook for about 7–8 minutes, until they too are just tender, but still retain some bite. Drain and keep to one side.
Combine the flour, water, egg and yeast to make a pastella (batter) with a fluid consistency. Slice the apple, and cut the cardoons into strips. Heat several inches of oil in a high-sided pan (make sure it comes no higher than a third of the way up the pan) to 180°C. If you don’t have a thermometer, put in a few breadcrumbs, and if they sizzle the oil is ready.
Immerse the artichokes in the pastella and deep-fry until golden. Lift out and drain on kitchen paper. Repeat with the cardoons, cauliflower and apple, then the anchovies or sardine fillets, and arrange everything together on a warm serving plate.
Polpettine di tonno o pesce spada
Tuna or swordfish balls
As well as putting these out as part of an antipasti, you can also add the tomato sauce (Salsa di pomodoro) and serve them with pasta.
Serves 4
olive oil
400g yellow fin tuna, bonito or swordfish, cut into cubes
50g pine nuts
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon dried oregano
a handful of flat-leaf parsley, chopped
200g breadcrumbs from stale bread
50g pecorino cheese, grated
2 eggs
zest and juice of 1 lemon
a little vegetable oil, to oil the tray
Heat a good couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a large frying pan and add the fish and pine nuts. Season lightly and sauté for a minute or so, until the fish is coloured on all sides and the pine nuts are golden.
Remove from the heat and transfer to a bowl. Leave to cool for 5 minutes, then add the oregano, parsley, breadcrumbs, pecorino, eggs, and the lemon zest and juice. Mix everything together well, then moisten your hands with water and form the mixture into smooth balls, slightly bigger than a golf ball. If the mixture is very sticky, add a few more breadcrumbs.
Lightly oil a baking tray with vegetable oil, lay the fish balls on top, then put into the fridge for an hour to rest and firm up.
Heat a little more olive oil in a clean frying pan. Add the fish balls and fry in batches, shaking the pan to move them around, until they are golden brown all over.
Snails in tomato and chilli sauce
When we go to Castelvetrano in the spring and early summer, we usually see the old guys who sell land snails in the square outside the walls of the old city. The snails come out after the rain, and are best around May, when there is a chance of eating green grass that hasn’t yet been burnt in the heat. Because of the association with rain, there is a belief that if there is an abundance of snails in the spring it will be a good year for crops.
If it has been very wet, the old people will go out and if they are lucky they might collect up to ten kilos of snails, some to cook themselves, and the rest to put into boxes and sell to anyone who wants to buy them. Even if families no longer need to gather and eat snails to survive, they are still a big thing in Sicily, and sometimes you can choose between snails that have just been gathered, and those that have been collected a couple of days earlier and have already been purged for you. Snails always have to be purged, or purified, before cooking, in order to remove any dirt, grit or chemicals that get into their system from the leaves they eat.
In Italian we call snails chioccole or lumache, but in Sicily they are sometimes known as munachedde (after the sisters in a closed convent, who never come out!). The Sicilians also distinguish four different types of snail, and each of them has a string of different names in dialect. Ciocco or vaddareddi are the small, light brown ones. The white ones that have a brown line running around the shells are babbaluci, and these are the ones that are used in this recipe – the smaller ones are often known as picchi pacchi, which is a kind of sweet, kind of rude kids’ expression for ‘little bottoms’. The third type are dark brown, found on the branches of trees, and because the snails always seem to be closed inside the shell they are mainly called ntuppateddi, which means ‘corked’. The fourth category are the wine snails.