Cooking Fish Sicilian Style
Di la testa feti u pisci. This Sicilian proverb, that translated literally, means “the stink of the fish starts from the head”, is a metaphor to signify that the problems of the people are caused by the ruling class. We can debate the value of this similarity, but when referring to fish, it is the head that reveals the freshness of it.
In fact, a fresh fish has brilliant and clear eyes, the gills the color of the blood, and it should not have a fishy smell.
The flesh should be firm, there should be no missing scales and they should adhere firmly to the body. When buying shellfish (mussels, clams, oysters) select small size for tenderness, smell for freshness, wash and scrub each mollusk, and discard any that have an open or broken shell. Keep the shellfish in cold water for about one hour, than mix and agitate it with salt and rinse with cold water.
Fish can be cooked without adding anything to it, it is easy to spoil the natural taste by adding to many herbs, spices or other ingredients. In Sicily the fish are cooked whole most of the time and simply dressed with salt, olive oil and lemon.
Usually, fish is fried or grilled in heavy iron skillets or in the square heavy metal grill you can find in every household. Obviously fish is also boiled or sautéed, but traditionally it was rarely baked, because the majority of people did not have an oven. In modern times, every household has an oven and baked fish is gaining popularity.
When cooking fish at the Focacceria, we followed the teaching of our father: use fresh and wholesome products and do not spoil it by cooking too long or by adding ingredients that would not enhance the taste or smell of the fish, but on the contrary would detract from it.
But we had to cater to the request of our customers and with time we switched to fish fillets, and very few fried dishes. We baked the cod fish, the baccala’, the grouper, the stripe bass, the mackerel, the red snapper and any other fish that we could fillet. We cooked it in very delicate sauce with herbs and spices that would not overwhelm but enhance the taste and flavor of the fish we were preparing.
