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03/13/2007 Archived Entry: "Report From Catania, Sicily"

Before I begin, I should tell you that this was written several days ago. It was a big problem finding an internet connection in Siracusa. There were three internet points, as they call them in Italy, in our section of town. None of them worked for nearly the week I was there. I returned to Rome about an hour ago and I have to say it like being back in civilization, as chaotic as Rome can be. I love Sicily. I love Sicilians. However, I do get frustrated trying to get things done there. As our driver to the airport said, “Americans have watches. Sicilians have time.”

Iris, Bob and I have been seeing, eating, and learning so much each day we are here in southeast Sicily that I will never be able to keep you fully posted. From moment to moment we don’t know what to do first – walk through the amazing Baroque churches that are in each town we visit – all UNESCO World Heritage Sites -- see the Greek and Roman archeological sites that are all around us, eat the delicacies that are particular to every place, talk to locals about their food, agriculture and … well, we are trying to do it all. So we are exhausted.

Now I am sitting at the kitchen table in our little apartment in Siracusa, on Ortigia, the small island that is the historic center of the city. While I write, Bob and Iris are trying to find a TV program that we can all agree on and understand, meaning something in English. We have satellite TV, but most of the stations, if not in Italian or German or French, are in Arabic, including seven – count ‘em seven -- porn stations in Arabic, one of which is actually called Arab Sex, in English. There’s BBC, but it’s mostly sports and other news too boring or horrific to mention. The Italian stations are either political talk or stupid game shows. Actually, I rather enjoy the stupid game shows. They use very basic vocabulary that I can mostly understand.

Anyway … Let’s back track.

I wasn’t sure what to make of Catania when I first arrived, but it grew on me after three days. We stayed in a very charming bed and breakfast around the corner from the big cathedral – the Duomo – which is dedicated to Sant’ Agata, the city’s patron saint. The address of the B&B is Piazza San Placido, which features yet another impressively over-the-top Baroque church, a famous bakery and sweets shop called Nonna Vincenza, and a bread bakery that sells, besides the local rolls and loaves, a Catania specialty, scaciata, a double-crust pizza. So far, so good. Our room had a small balcony and window doors with a view of the sea and facing the church, which is beautifully lighted at night, showing off all its undulations and elaborate decorations. Nonna Vincenza’s specialties are made of pasta di mandorle, almond paste. There are cookies and sweets in many forms and with various added flavors – orange, lemon, pistachio, to name a few. I bought and tasted practically the whole array. I loved the scaciata, although I tasted only the most typical, the one filled with tuma, a bland, fresh cheese that melts very well, seasoned with a few olives, and a bit of anchovy. There were also scaciate (that’s the plural, in case you thought I made one of my usual typos) filled with ham and cheese, and spinach and cheese, and one with some tomato and cheese. But how much could I eat? Well, quite a lot, as you know, but I can’t possibly consume every temptation. There are too many.

Most of old Catania was built with blocks of dark gray lava, or the buildings are plastered with a mix that includes the gray lava powder, which makes some of the small back streets dreary. On the other hand, the important buildings have rusticated panels, Baroque window frames and pilasters in near white, which elegantly set off the dark stone. The piazza in front of the duomo is particularly beautiful. In the center is the symbol of the city, a statue of an elephant in black lava with a white Egyptian obelisk on his back. To the right of one of the municipal buildings on the piazza is a marvelous white fountain with tritons – let’s call them mermen, attendants of Neptune – who carry seashells that spout water from an underground river that you can see flowing under the fountain. Just behind the fountain is La Pescheria, the theatrical and bountiful outdoor food market I reported on already. Pescheria refers to fish, but besides the freshest possible seafood, it has fruits and vegetables and butcher stalls.

The only thing negative I can say about our stay in Catania is that our bathroom intermittently reeked of sewer odor. We mentioned this to Rita, who was not the owner of the bed and breakfast – she was off skiing in the north with her children and husband -- but our caretaker and the children’s nanny. Rita shrugged off the smell and told us to use the spray deodorant on the bathroom shelf. She then, while we drank our coffee, continued to regale us with stories about celebrities.

“How is that you know everything about the stars?” I asked her. “Because I am a star!” she kidded, tilting her head back, sucking in her chubby cheeks, her hands on her very full hips. Rita was a real card. She’s in love with George Clooney and she keeps up with everyone who visits his villa on Lake Como. Apparently, they report these comings and goings in the Italian magazines. She told us that Versace’s brother owns the villa next door, and that he is very nice. But Donatella … “too much cocaine,” she said sadly, as if Donatella was her close friend.

We discovered that it wasn’t just Rita that takes the city’s sewer smell in stride. It is simply the price the Catanese pay for living in the old buildings of the historic center. At dinner, we spoke of the problem diplomatically to the friends we were visiting and their other guests, only to learn that they have the same situation in the several bathrooms of their very comfortable and amazingly large apartment in an 18th century building. It’s the ancient plumbing, we were told, and they instructed us to run the water regularly, to keep the pipes filled so the odor could not escape, and to put the stoppers in the drains that had them, and stuff the others with plastic. It worked. More or less.

We ate in two restaurants in Catania, Da Turiddu, and Putia Mazzini, both recommended by our Catanese friends. At Da Turiddu we started with a few items from the vast array of vegetable and seafood dishes on the self-service antipasto buffet. The revelation was broccoli affogati, smothered broccoli. It was actually cauliflower, not broccoli, but around here the word broccoli is used for several members of the family. This version was made with red wine, onions, anchovies, and caciocavallo cheese, which is the most beloved of the many local cheeses. It can be young and soft-ish, or aged and firm enough to grate. Iris reminded me that she used to make this back in New York, and that I loved it then, too. She learned it when she lived in Catania when she was first married to Renato, the mad Sicilian who she divorced 15 years ago.

After the antipasti, we had plates of spaghetti with diced swordfish and tomato – an almost ubiquitous dish in Sicily, and linguine with sepia ink. We always say it is squid ink at home, but it isn’t. The black ink comes from cuttlefish, sepia, not calamari. I kept asking people what is the most typical dish of Catania, and that dish comes up very often. Catania is at the base of Mt. Etna, and someone told me that there is even a conceit to prepare rice with sepia ink and make it look like the volcano. A mound of black rice, actually the dark gray color of lava, is topped with a dollop of fresh ricotta to replicate the mountain’s snowy peak, then tomato sauce drizzled down the from the top to emulate the fiery lava flow.

After our pastas, we ate superb grilled fish – a mixed grill – that I was able to watch being cooked because our table was next to the open kitchen. The grill cook, a woman, doused everything with a blend of lemon juice and oil she kept in a squeegee bottle.

Putia Mazzini is in Piazza Mazzini, which is not a true piazza. It’s an intersection of four corners, each with identical buildings set back from the street, enclosing the intersection with gracefully arched loggias, creating covered space at the base of the buildings. The restaurant (the local dialect word putia, by the way, comes from the Spanish word bodega, and there are many putia in Catania) is on one corner, with tables set on the street under the loggia. It specializes in Catanese dishes, and the food was so good, and eating there was such a good lesson on the local cuisine, that we ended up eating there twice. It was here I tasted pasta con maccu (also spelled macco). Maccu is the local name for a puree of yellow, shelled fava. It’s exactly the same as the puree of fava that is a specialty of Puglia. Here, however, instead of pairing it with boiled chicory, it is seasoned with wild fennel and eaten with pasta. Any macaroni will do, but here it was with broken thick spaghetti. I actually schlepped a couple of pounds of these fava home from Puglia last fall, only to find that they sell them at a better price at Coluccio, my favorite Italian market in Brooklyn (60th St. near 12th Avenue).

I liked my fava puree well enough, but Bob ordered bean soup and it was sensational. It was made with borlotti, what we call cranberry beans, in this case dried ones. I got the recipe, which is sublimely simple, but I’m not sharing it quite yet. I have to save something to write about in the book I am working on, plus I need to try it at home first, and to find a substitute for the wild fennel, one of the few ingredients we can’t get in New York, although I hear it grows in California..

We left Catania for an afternoon to visit the Greco-Roman theater in Taormina, the picturesque but very touristic town just north of the city. You want chotchka shops? Go to Taormina. Instead of the autostrada, we took the coast road so we could drive through the little towns along the way. We ate at Da Giovanni, which faces Isola Bella, an overgrown spit of land just off shore. It used to be a private island. Nowadays it is a public game preserve. The restaurant was good, although nothing to write home about. (Although I guess I just did.)

After three days, we left Catania to come here to Siracusa, but our friends from Catania have a country house outside Modica and they invited us for the weekend. Of course, we couldn’t refuse. Their house is a baronial mansion built some time in the early 1700s, after the earthquake of 1693 that devastated this side of Sicily. I’ll give you the lowdown on Siracusa in a future letter.

Enough writing and reading now. Besides, Bob and Iris just found some British version of the movie Titanic on the TV. Wouldn’t you know, it’s with subtitles in Arabic.