It's our first day on the Sicilian Food Tour where we will be travelling around Sicily eating the best of what this gorgeous island has to offer. Come along as we taste the sweetest tomatoes, try Capuliato (made from the tomatoes), trying freshly made Sicilian pastries and have a seafood feast to end them all!
The bus ambles past eucalyptus, prickly pear and oleander trees past ruins of stone buildings. Our group of 10 foodies are on our way to quiet fishing town Scoglitti in the south of Sicily. Scoglitti is the home base for Carm's Sicilian food tour. Carm has been operating the Sicilian food tours for 11 years with a five star rating. Carm's family is from Sicily, although she was born in Australia. Her tours offer a unique and true local experience and one that is a result of her family connections in the town.
She first conceived of the tour in 2011 when she was sick in hospital. She scrawled the outline of the tour on the back of a napkin. She hosted her first tour in 2013 with a group of 22 people that lasted for 10 days. "Everyone was sick of eating. Nobody came in the last 2 days. They had enough. So then I went let’s cut it back and now the tours lasts 5-6 days," explains Carm.
It’s around 1 pm when we reach the hotel Al Gabbiano right along Scoglitti beach. We start with lunch at the hotel prepared by Carm's family Nonna Maria and her daughter Carmelinda. There is an array of Sicilian delicacies prepared by from salty, fat anchovies, thin slices of mortadella, bresaola and prosciutto and twp types of arancini: spinach and ragu.
And the star of the show today: tomatoes. Capuliato is a sun dried tomato paste made with olive oil and salt. They fill bread with this spread (pane cunzato) and slice it up for us. The cherry tomatoes are sweet and plums and paired with tropea onions and olive oil and salt. Nonna Maria shows us how to make Cassateddi, half moon pastries filled with ricotta. Nothing beats sinking your teeth into one of these freshly fried beauties.
After lunch, we take a short walk to a Gelateria Riviera a few minutes walk away. There is a range of classic plus unique flavours. The Etna is a dark chocolate gelato with pistachio and mandarin that resembles a lava spouting mountain. This is intense and rich and tastes just like dark chocolate ganache with a touch of mandarin and pistachio. When people go to pay Carm quips “When you’re with me you don’t pay!”.
We check into our rooms. The hotel Al Gabbiano's location is perfect. Located right on the beach you can literally walk downstairs and have sand between your toes within a minute.
The rooms are simple and clean. They do have basic toiletries and USB charging ports and each room has a safe and a fridge stocked with 2 bottles of sparkling and still water that are replenished daily. The wifi is fast and free for unlimited devices. The hotel does have a quirky old fashioned system where you leave your keys at the front desk when you leave although the keys are just left on the front counter which means almost anyone can pick them up (nothing happens to any of our rooms apart from cleaning).
"I don’t think you’ll ever eat a tomato again when you get home. That’s my biggest problem," says Carm. We climb into the bus and head towards today's first excursion. "We are going to my cousin Joseph’s son's girlfriend's father's farm!" says Carm. Here Giombattiste Ballone and his family grows two types of small tomatoes: ciliegino cherry and datterini tomatoes over 2 hectares and 7 hothouses. He is also one of the only farmers here planting the vines in bricks of coco fibre. To help the tomatoes that he grows from seedling, he also has bomba bees. These bees are large and non aggressive but curious. They use water from a 210 metre/688 foot well in the ground and all of the tomatoes are harvested by hand. The couple have won several sustainability awards.
At the end of the farm tour we try some bruschetta. Although I am still full from lunch I can't help but devour some pieces of this. The tomatoes are sun sweet and juicy and the bread soaks up the juices perfectly while the fresh basil gives it a wonderful aroma.
"Some people go to a psychiatrist we make bread" says Rosina. We are at a local bakery in Scoglitti just off the main road. Rosina is part of a group of women who gather to shape and bake Pane di San Giuseppe bread to honour St Joseph, the patron saint of workers and fathers. Rosina does this at their friend Valentina's bakery "Fichera Panaficio" with Tiziana, Simona and Pietro. The group have been making bread for 30 years in the village. "We do it for faith, says Rosina. The group volunteers for the work that takes 3-4 days starting at 7.45 until they have finished.
We watch them use simple tools like a comb and scissors and their hands to press the dough into incredibly detailed shapes. The dough needs to be a hard or firm dough in order for the designs to remain after baking. She touches it. “Ne” she says after squeezing the dough. The dough is too soft and the intricate designs won’t hold and we watch them increase the dough's elasticity by kneading. They deftly shape a whole range of bread within minutes. St Joseph's face is rendered with incredible detail with dried beans as eyes.
This ritual is often prepared around March 19th, St Joseph's day and is made for a dinner to commemorate the saint. They prepare an altar with the bread with a table. Half of the guests are from the less fortunate and the other half is for the family. They will also take one small roll from the lot and the priest will bless it.
Dinner this evening is a 15 course seafood feast. Because Scoglitti is a fishing village, the whole tour will be rich with seafood. Il Conte Nero is a modern and gorgeous Italian restaurant with a lovely al fresco section in the back and an air conditioned interior at the front.
Our first course is a range of dishes called "Marinati" made of fresh and raw marinated seafood. There's buttery salmon slices, octopus and potato salad, an extraordinary seabass and pomegranate and crostini with swordfish and eggplant puree. There are also sweet raw prawns.
And that's just the first course! The second course is a range of dishes called Cotti or cooked seafood with pasta. This is actually one of my favourite courses of the evening and they come out with a big bowl of pasta that they serve to us. It is made up of hand made fusili pasta with cubes of swordfish in a fresh tomato sauce accented with fresh mint. The mint is a Sicilian touch and really makes this al dente pasta sing.
And to finish? Some pitch perfect, creamy textured lemon sorbet.
After dinner we participate in an Italian tradition. Passeggiata is a cherished Italian tradition particularly in small towns. It’s a time for people to go for a walk and to "see and be seen" with some light exercise and fresh air. It's the perfect way to wind down after a day in Sicily.
So tell me Dear Reader, have you ever been to Sicily? And have you ever been on a food tour overseas?
NQN and Mr NQN travelled to Europe as guests of Vietnam Airlines and NQN was a guest of Sicilian Food Tours but all opinions remain her own.
Sicilian Food Tours
To book the Sicilian Food Tour follow this link. If you use the code "NQN" when booking (please write it in the date field) then you’ll get a complimentary bottle of Cerasuolo Wine from Vittoria, the only DOCG wine of Sicily. This cherry red wine variety is a blend of Sicily’s famous Nero D’Avola & Frappato and is worth $80AUD/$50USD.
Vietnam Airlines
Vietnam Airlines offers 23 flights per week connecting Sydney, Melbourne and Perth to Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. Vietnam Airlines is continuing to add new routes having recently announced new flights to Milan, Munich and Delhi.
https://www.vietnamairlines.com/au/en/home
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