Tags
cannoli, carciofata, citron, Edoné, Francesca Marchese, Geoff Andrews, granita, Graniti, pesto, Piccadilly, Salvatore Romano, Sicilian medlar, Slow food, Tasting Sicily
Sicily 6: Foodissimo. Salvatore Romano, and his wife Karin, opened their first restaurant – in London, just off Piccadilly – last year I believe. It is called Tasting Sicily Enzo’s Kitchen. But they live in Graniti, in the centre of the small town in which Edoné is also technically located. They have a smallholding there, receive holiday visitors on their house, sell foodstuffs made from their own produce, and have a thousand further projects in mind. Salvatore was mainly in charge of us today.
We arrived at their house shortly after 10.00 am.
As we did so he collected the best granita (no etymological link with the town) in Sicily – from the local garage! Granita was a Sicilian, and now Italian, sweet.
Chocolate, pistacchio, almond and raspberry, and some cream
Salvatore serves Emma
We could not hang around – it was going to melt quickly. Here is my portion, and the brioche which went with it. I tried all the flavours, but not being a great fan of cream, omitted that. 
Ever a journalist, Francesca finishes a video interview with Salvatore
Then we were shown round the house.
Our ‘lesson’ that morning was to be from Geoff, who has written a book on the Slow Food movement, which started in Italy, and the slogan for which is ‘good, clean and fair’. We were to be the first to use an artistic workshop that Salvatore and Karin had just created from an old house, a short way from their own residence. We passed the town hall to get there.
Salvatore opens up the workshop for us
Geoff, Emma, Alec
Early lunchtime, and Salvatore had prepared us a lovely meal from his own products, accompanied by the sparkling wine we had first tasted two days previously.
Some of us bought from him – though we had to ask to be able to do so. Here is what is left of what I bought.
I am discovering that, while they are good on bread, they are also wonderful on thin toast. And I’m looking forward to using the voucher Salvatore gave us for his Piccadilly restaurant – where also his products may be bought.
At 4 pm, back at Edoné, we gathered for our cooking lesson in the kitchen with Salvatore and Enzo. (Not the same Enzo of course who runs the restaurant in Piccadilly!)
I confess to having been a little half-hearted about this. I am no cook at the best of times – though adore good food – and the threatening cold, no doubt picked up during travel, was beginning to become evident. So I kept my distance and limited my direct involvement to halving some delicious small tomatoes.
We starting eating quite early for Sicily. Here are the antipasti.
The empty chair is mine – see below
A full meal for me already!
Enzo then came from the kitchen to the patio with the pasta. The tomato sauce had been simmering for hours.
I didn’t get a picture of the lamb once cooked, but I was given an enormous portion of it! This was the entire menu.
We assembled our cannoli ourselves, at table.
and then were offered citrons. Francesca had already brought us one of these from her parents’ on Easter Day. While it is a lemon-coloured citrus fruit, it was amazingly sweet, and adding honey takes away any remaining sharpness.
Finally – and it is my recollection that Francesca brought this – there was an extra sweet. But in my haste to take a photo, which required my getting up to move around the table, and anxious to protect my ankle, I leant on the back of my chair – which tumbled off the low patio, followed by me, into flower pots and seedlings! I am not usually accident prone! Fortunately, other than some bruises – which are now pale yellow, two weeks on – I was not at all hurt, (though I am not too sure about the seedlings) and once helped up I completed what I had set out to do.
The Paschal lamb was made of a soft icing sugar and marzipan. (That is a marzipan (Sicilian) medlar at the front. We ate several of these fruits during the week.)
I went to bed very, very full indeed, even though I had not partaken of the liqueurs on offer.
My father’s favourite bus route when my parents lived in London was the number 14, because it passed so many places of interest. Over all the years since, it has remained the same, as far as I know. Certainly the small part we did, on the way to the Victoria and Albert Museum, gave me plenty of photo opps from the upstairs front seat, through the tinted window.
We considered this building virtually opposite the V and A, not particularly beautiful in the context of South Kensington, though when I went over later to see what it was – the Ismaili Centre – I could see that close up it had merit in many smaller architectural details.
The desire for coffee obliged us to walk across the central square of the museum.
and over lunch decided to visit another special exhibition in the Museum, (not in our original plan), that of work by, or inspired by, John Lockwood Kipling, father of Rudyard (whom his parents named after the village in Staffordshire where they had met.) Lockwood was a designer, illustrator (including of his son’s books) teacher, journalist and curator. Among other things he was an architectural sculptor to the South Kensington Museum, (now the V and A). He moved with his wife to become Director of the Mayo School of Art in Lahore. ‘His contribution to the impact of the British Empire on India’s artistic heritage is still recognised and debated today’.
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