The Sicilian Legacy

 

 

Whether you are visiting us to pick up a recipe for tonight’s meal or pass time immersing yourself in the old-world stories of life in Sicily, we hope that you will find what you are looking for and discover from this site new information about the island, some of the history of their inhabitants and aspects of their way of living and life-style to better understand and assess the Sicilians.

 

The Island of the Sicani and Siculi

This small island, a few square miles bigger than the state of Vermont, originally was populated by the Sicani and the Siculi. In the Bronze Age, the Elymians invaded the west of the island and since than, it has been a continuous dominance of one ruler after another.
Sicily was occupied for the beauty of the landscape, the richness of the soil, the beautiful climate and for the strategic position in the center of the Mediterranean Sea.

 

The Bridge to the World

All the antique civilizations became great when their expansion included Sicily!  This is true for the Carthaginians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines and the Saracens.
The Greeks, who introduced new and modern agricultural techniques, colonized Sicily, made it their second country and changed the name of Sicily to Megale’ Hellas, meaning Great Greece. The Romans translated it into Latin and the Island was called “Magna Grecia”.
All of the conquerors abused the abundant resources of the island and it was inevitable that they exhausted the soil from overuse to supply their need for food to feed their army and wood to build their ships.
The Normans, the Svevi from Schwabenland, the French, the Germans, the Spaniards, the Savoia, the Austrians and the Spanish again conquered and dominated Sicily from time to time. Some of the occupiers gave a positive contribution to the Sicilian society and some created resentments for the way they tried to rule and govern the lives of the people.
But those events and realities produced what Sicily is today: a paradise for art lovers and a desirable destination for the discriminating tourist.

 

Sicilian Cooking

The other very important aspect of this versatile island is in the field of cooking. On this subject Archestratus, originally from Gela, wrote a cookbook in the forth century B.C.
The reputation of the Sicilians in the art of preparing and cooking food is unquestionable and goes back in time. The Greeks engaged Sicilians for their cooking and the Roman proverb saying “siculus coquus et sicula mensa”, meaning Sicilian cook and Sicilian provisions, illustrate well the consideration they had for the island’s cookery.   
The best cooking was consumed “per il pranzo”, when everyday, as a ritual the family joins together.

 

 

The Family

The family was and is the most important nucleus in the Sicilian society.
The family was the foundation where their members could find real protection from the outside world, at times bellicose and antagonistic. The father was in charge to provide for the family’s needs, but it was the mother who, as in the Judaic tradition, among her many duties, had to keep the family united, to care for the children’s education, take charge of the kitchen for the preparation of the food and stocking up the provisions. The mother had learned from her mother the recipes that after thousands of years are passed on and used in today’s Sicilian cooking.

 

 

The Recipes and the Sources

Relatives, friends and people we have met in our visits to Sicily, have given old recipes that were very successfully tested in the family business, the Focacceria on Avenue “U” in Brooklyn, NY.
We will propose to you those and other recipes reflecting the local traditional way of cooking; simple ways to cook fish and vegetable in order to enhance their taste, recipes of pasta, meat and specialties, some reminding you of your mother’s or grandmother’s cooking. 
Finally we will show you how to make easy Sicilian desserts, some very old-fashioned, some with a pagan or Saracen legacy and others more contemporary.
We hope you will enjoy this collection of recipes with their brief accounts, and we trust that their execution will be a source of enjoyment for your family and satisfaction for you.