mazara, selununite, trapani

After sadly saying our tot ziens to Bon we journeyed to the south west coast of Sicily, unchartered territory for us, to meet Jono and Ewa. We started off in Mazara dalla Vallo a fishing town which also makes tasty cous cous. The town’s population is predominately made up of fisherman hence the local traffic custom to handle your car as if it were a boat and drive slowly down the middle of the road waving at everyone.

One afternoon we found ourselves at a weird fish auction, which we were led to believe was going to be a beautiful parade of fishing boats coming into port. Aside from there being no parade and no boats, it was weird mainly because there was no audible bidding and the auctioneer, before selling off a crate, carefully chose and put aside the best fish for himself. Thankfully there was a lovely/patient lady standing next to us who answered our questions.

The west coast is also well known for it’s salt production on massive coastal salt plains. It was impressive to see them in action.

cipollina

This is a small takeaway snack found all over Sicily in different forms. Santo, our first farm host had undertaken a personal quest to try all the Cipollina’s in his area and rate them, this made us proud to know him. It’s made up of cheese, proscuitto, tomato and onion wrapped in a puff pastry. Jeremy is carrying the cipollina flame and trying as many cipollina’s as possible across Sicily.

Bon-anagram, Ragusa, Catania

Bon dropped by to visit us in Noto. We collected cherry tomatoes, perfected our rock dives at cava grande, were taught a lesson in banagrams, appalled a gelati shop owner in Ragusa for not being able to finish his not so nice wine flavoured gelati and throwing it out accidently in front of him, and were whooped in handstand competitions in which she was awarded a solid 3/3 for grace, endurance and entry-exit.

sciaccia

Alongside arancini or canoli, sciaccia is a Sicilian staple. Basically it’s crispy pizza dough stuffed, calzone style, or folded and layered like a lasagne with cheese, tomato, potato or whatever you fancy really. Vittoria, Sicilian casalinga cook extraordinaire, showed us the basics.

pasticceria kennedy

We were pretty amused to learn that the family who named their cake shop after the Kennedy’s, who they were obsessed with, are now also referred to as the Kennedy Family. A Noto cake instituion.

Cava Grande

Another amazing spot. Cava Grande is a huge canyon with fresh water lakes to swim in. It’s in South East Sicily in-between the towns of Avola and Noto. The climb out in the heat is nasty but it’s worth it to go lake hopping and have diving competitions amongst the rocks. Our photo’s don’t really do it justice.

carob, bagged and tomatoes, boxed

We returned to Noto in August for the carob harvest. Carob, we learned, is used for things other than a tasteless chocolate substitute. The farm sells the carob, by weight, to a local processing plant where the carob seeds are extracted and ground to make a flour, or a kind of gelatine or in pet food.
We broke the collection world record on this particular farm with two of us collecting 1.5 tonne of carob. The task involved Jeremy shaking the pods from branches using nothing but brute force and if this didn’t work beating a massive bamboo pole against the tree and carob pods until they fell to the ground... The work was pretty easy but we’ve probably seen enough carob for a while.

Can’t seem to find any pictures of carob pods. Visualize a pod similar in shape and size to broad beans but dark brown and solid. The seeds inside are like watermelon seeds.

We planted these guys in April so were pretty pleased in August when we returned to find a veggie patch full of juicy tomatoes. We ate a lot of spaghetti that month.