I’m dreaming of Sicily: the land, the sea, the food, the history. The olive trees, the grapevines, the wheat fields.
The wild fennel and artichokes. The market stalls piled high with just-picked cauliflower, shiny fat eggplant and cucuzzi, the yard-long summer squash that’s grown on trellises. The fish on view at the lively pescheria: swordfish, tuna and branzino, sardines, cuttlefish and urchins. This dream is making me hungry.
On a recent visit to Sicily, friends from Catania took us to a small seaside restaurant with an all-fish menu. At the entrance was a small display of the day’s offerings on ice. You choose your fish before heading outside, where well-weathered, sun-bleached tables and chairs sit right on the docks.
For the main course, your chosen fish is roasted whole in a wood-burning oven and then deboned. It can be served plain, with olive oil and lemon. Or it can be tossed with pasta and a quickly made sauce — that was my favorite.
Credit…Bryan Gardner for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Brett Regot.
The pasta was paccheri, the sturdy, pleasantly chewy shape known for its sauce-clinging nature. (You could substitute similarly hearty rigatoni, calamarata or pappardelle, if preferred.)
The sauce was revelatory. It was essentially a deft ragù di pesce, a rapid sauté of onions and red peppers in olive oil, with chopped tomato and a splash of white wine. The boneless roasted fish pieces were then added. The simple combination was perfectly delicious, just saucy enough to dress the pasta. I fantasized about making it in my own kitchen.
In Sicily, it was made with orata, sea bream. Back home in the States, we tried it with cod and with halibut and were more than happy with both. But nearly any firm-fleshed fish could stand in — rockfish, sea bass, corvina — whatever is spanking fresh.
Instead of sitting down for the first course, we stood, nibbling on crostini topped with savory caponata, enjoyed with a bottle of crisp white Grillo.
Credit…Bryan Gardner for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Brett Regot.
Traditional caponata is made with eggplant fried in olive oil and then simmered in a sweet-sour sauce that includes tomatoes, vinegar and sugar, along with capers, green olives, celery and sometimes raisins. There are other versions of caponata, too, made with artichokes or other seasonal vegetables, the agrodolce sauce being the through line.
I made mine with zucchini and eggplant; both looked good at the market. My version is light on tomato, possibly because that’s the way I first knew it, when we used to buy it in those flat glass jars at the Italian deli.
Though you can eat it right away, of course, caponata is best when it’s allowed to meld its flavors for a day or two. And since it keeps well, it’s nice to have a batch on hand in the fridge, ready at any moment to serve with drinks or as a midnight snack.
Credit…Bryan Gardner for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Brett Regot.
Lately, for dessert, I have been enamored with roasted fruit, so I continued the theme for this meal, this time with pears, flavored with a little powdered fennel seed. They were anointed with a creamy zabaglione, kissed with Marsala, the fortified sweet wine.
Sicilian zabaglione is nothing more than Marsala, egg yolks and sugar, heated and whipped into a frothy custard. In restaurants, they make a show of it, the chef in plain sight, beating the mixture vigorously by hand in a copper pan.
Be warned: When making it at home, you’ll need a strong arm (or a volunteer) for all that whisking, but, for a sauce this good, it’s worth the workout.
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