Inflight Magazine of Brussels Airlines

Street life

Images photolibrary.com, James Grady

Forget greasy fast food from a mobile van – in Sicily, you can feast like a king come market day. Ellen Grady takes a foodie stroll among the winding streets and covered stalls of Palermo and Catania

The Sicilian art of eating in the street begins at breakfast time, with roadside conversation over plastic cups of exquisite, fluffy granita; a sorbet-like concoction flavoured with crushed fruit, almonds or coffee and often topped with whipped cream, eaten with a soft brioche roll. From March to November this is a Sicilian’s favourite morning pick-me-up, before heading for the nearest market to buy the day’s food and catch up on the gossip.

Make like a local and get stuck in…

Palermo provisions

The capital boasts photogenic food markets at La Vucciria (just off the main street, Corso Vittorio Emanuele), Capo (near the church of Sant’Agostino) and Ballarò (by the splendid Baroque church of Casa Professa). All are renowned for incredible displays of green and black olives, prepared plain or mixed with celery, parsley, garlic or chilli pepper. Don’t hesitate – buy a paper cone of them and start munching! While you enjoy your appetiser, take your pick from the ham, mortadella, salami and vast array of cheeses that are just begging to be made into sandwiches with rolls taken straight from the oven. Ask the vendor to add some sun-dried tomatoes, pickled mushrooms, or a few capers from the island of Pantelleria – the world’s best.

The markets’ tempting displays of fruit, meanwhile, vary with the seasons. You’ll see citrons and persimmons in winter, alongside abundant oranges and lemons; cherries and apricots in spring; avocados, peaches, star-fruit and kiwis in summer; and huge bunches of freshly picked grapes in autumn. And then there are the vegetables, seductively arranged with an artist’s eye for colour and shape. Trays of whole-roasted aubergines, potatoes, onions and peppers are cooked in the nearby bakeries; when the loaves come out, veggies go in to make the most of the residual heat. After discarding the charred outer skin, they are superb as they are. Cardi is another popular Sicilian snack: a wild artichoke that’s steamed and sold in paper cones to be eaten on the spot. Tasty and good for you!

If you’re after meatier morsels, you’ll find sides of beef and pork, sausages, lamb and kid in season, along with whole chickens – ready-roasted if you like. Cascades of glittering fish are sure to catch your eye (and nose!), too. Biggies, such as tuna or swordfish, are found at the back, shrimps and shellfish are out the front, and octopus, squid and deep-red tattlers sit in the middle, near the anchovies, sardines and red mullet. Abundant as it is, by midday everything will be sold, so buy a lemon from a nearby stall and enjoy some raw shrimp or shellfish, like everyone else!

For more food on the hoof, market-goers are partial to purpu vugghiutu (boiled octopus); stigghiole (intestines of lamb or kid, wound around a bamboo cane and grilled); pane con panelle (crisp bread rolls sprinkled with sesame seeds before baking, then sandwiched with chickpea fritters) and pani ca’ meusa (the same kind of bread with a filling of grilled veal spleen, sometimes enriched with a dollop of ricotta). Where you see crowds of people hovering round a stall like bees to a honey pot, you can be sure they’re buying one of these traditional foods, as popular today as they were in the days of Arab rule over a thousand years ago.

Culinary Catania

A mid-morning stroll through Catania’s Pescheria, the noisy food market near the cathedral, will awaken your appetite before your morning caffeine has had time to kick in. So buy a crunchy roll from a bakery and use it to scoop out the delicate orange flesh of some sea urchins from their prickly shells, or to accompany a handful of olives and a few raw anchovies that were caught only an hour or so earlier. Once your taste buds have been kick-started, a cinnamon-laden fragrance may lead you to a stall offering boiled sangele; pigs’ blood seasoned and cooked in a stretch of veal intestine. Surprisingly tasty, this dish reveals the Norman ancestry of the people of Catania. But if you can’t face that, pop into a bar for a dish of crespelle delle Benedettine – dainty fingers of fried rice doused in orange-blossom honey – to share with friends as you wander.

Later in the day, ‘mpanate or scacce are must-trys – irresistible suppertime pasties found in bakeries all over Sicily. Favourite fillings include potato and onion, black olives and salted anchovies, broccoli and sausage, spinach, or tomato and mozzarella. And as night falls, you’ll be attracted by the aroma of improvised roadside barbeques with a party feel. Here horsemeat steaks, sausages or roasted artichokes stuffed with garlic and parsley reign supreme, all washed down with strong red wine.

Finally, wherever you go on the island, the king of street food is surely the famous cannoli di ricotta; a crunchy pastry tube filled with sweet ricotta cheese and various additions such as candied peel and chocolate, cherries or chopped pistachios. But arancini, breadcrumb-coated rice balls with many different fillings, come a close second. Their oval, round or cone shapes denote what you will find inside – meat, tomato, peas and hard-boiled egg, or perhaps ham and mozzarella and aubergine, or pistachios. Fried until golden, they’re just right for munching as you take in the sights of these fantastic cities.

Holiday flavours

Cipolline (makes 8-10 pies)

On returning home, you can recapture the atmosphere of the Sicilian street markets and offer your friends a treat if you invite them to brunch and prepare cipolline (little onion) tarts, a speciality of Catania:

Ingredients

2 packs puff pastry
2 ripe tomatoes (or some home-made tomato sauce)
A few slices of cooked ham
Mozzarella
2 large onions, finely sliced and cooked until transparent and tender
1 egg, beaten
Salt, freshly ground black pepper and oregano for seasoning

Method

Heat the oven to 190ºC, then roll out the pastry (not too thinly) and cut it into 20cm squares. Place a piece of ham, a slice of tomato (or a spoonful of sauce), a dollop of mozzarella and a layer of cooked onion in the middle of each piece of pastry. Season with salt, pepper and a pinch of oregano. Fold the corners of the pastry in towards the middle to form ‘envelopes’, and seal the edges carefully using a drop of cold water. Brush the pastry parcels with the beaten egg and bake in a medium-hot oven until golden brown. The oregano gives a slightly bitter flavour, which perfectly offsets the sweetness of the onion.

FR Cuisine de la rue

Oubliez le fast food gras des camionnettes ambulantes – en Sicile vous pouvez faire un festin de roi les jours de marché. Ellen Grady suit un parcours culinaire parmi les petites rues sinueuses de Palerme et de Catane

Provisions à Palerme

La Vucciria, Capo et Ballarò, les marchés de la capitale sont réellement photogéniques. Tous sont réputés pour leurs fantastiques étals d’olives, mais on y trouve aussi une vaste gamme de viandes fumées et de fromages, sans oublier les échoppes tentantes de fruits qui varient au gré des saisons. Les légumes, quant à eux, sont grillés dans les boulangeries – lorsque les pains sortent du four, c’est au tour des légumes d’y entrer. Aux environs de midi, tout sera vendu, soyez donc rapide!

Les marchés réservent aussi une large part aux délices à savourer sur le pouce comme le purpu vugghiutu (pieuvre bouillie) et le stigghiole (intestins d’agneau ou de chevreau, grillés), qui sont toujours aussi populaires aujourd’hui qu’au temps de la domination arabe, il y a mille ans d’ici.

Catane gastronomique

Le marché bruyant et coloré de Pescheria éveillera instantanément votre appétit. Un parfum de cannelle pourrait vous conduire vers du sangele – du sang de porc cuit dans un boyau d’intestin de veau – mais si vous ne pouvez pas vous résoudre à goûter cette préparation, optez plutôt pour les crespelle delle Benedettine : des bâtonnets de riz frits dans un mélange de miel à la fleur d’oranger.

Plus tard dans la journée, les mpanate ou les scacce sont d’irrésistibles petits pâtés pour le dîner, avec des garnitures comme des pommes de terre et des oignons ou des tomates et de la mozzarella. Et à la tombée du soir, vous serez attirés par les arômes des barbecues improvisés le long du chemin. Finalement, la première place au rayon de l’art culinaire de la rue revient certainement au cannoli di ricotta, un rouleau de pâte croustillante fourré de ricotta sucrée. Mais les Arancini – les boulettes de riz frites fourrées de préparations diverses – arrivent directement en seconde place. Elles sont parfaites pour grignoter tout en vous baladant à la découverte des environs.

Informations utiles

En général, les marchés en Sicile sont ouverts du lun-sam de 7 à 14 h.

NL Straatleven

Vergeet vettige fastfood van rondrijdende bestelwagentjes – in Sicilië kun je de komende marktdag smullen als een koning. Ellen Grady maakt een culinaire wandeling langs de kronkelige straten van Palermo en Catania

Proviand uit Palermo

De hoofdstad is in het trotse bezit van fotogenieke voedselmarkten bij La Vucciria, Capo en Ballarò. Ze zijn allemaal gekend voor de fantastische uitstallingen met olijven, maar er is ook een enorm aanbod aan gerookt vlees en kazen en uitstallingen met fruit dat varieert naargelang de seizoenen, waarvan je gaat watertanden. Ondertussen worden groenten geroosterd in de nabijgelegen bakkerijen – wanneer het brood uit de oven komt, gaan de groenten erin. Rond de middag is alles verkocht, dus je moet wel snel zijn!

De marktgangers zijn ook verzot op snelle hapjes zoals purpu vugghiutu (gekookte octopus) en stigghiole (gegrilde ingewanden van lam of geitenlam) – vandaag net zo populair als tijdens de Arabische heerschappij zo’n duizend jaar geleden.

Culinair Catania

De lawaaierige, kleurrijke Pescheria-markt zal je eetlust terstond opwekken. De geur van kaneel zal je naar gekookte sangele – varkensbloed gekookt in een stuk kalfsdarm – lokken, maar, wanneer je dat niet aankunt, graai dan een bord crespelle delle Benedettine mee; gefrituurde rijstvingers in oranjebloesemhoning.

Later op de dag zijn mpanate of scacce onweerstaanbare pasteitjes voor bij het avondeten, die gevuld zijn met aardappel en ajuin of tomaat en mozzarella. En wanneer de avond valt, zul je aangetrokken worden tot de geur van geïmproviseerde barbecues langs de kant van de weg.

Tenslotte wordt de belangrijkste plaats in de galerij der straatlekkernijen zeker ingenomen door cannoli di ricotta; een knapperig pasteitje gevuld met zoete ricottakaas. Maar Arancini – gefrituurde rijstballetjes met gevarieerde vulling – komen op een eervolle tweede plaats. Ze zijn gewoon ideaal om op te knabbelen terwijl u verder op ontdekkingstocht gaat.

Goed om weten

De Sicilaanse markten zijn meestal open van maandag tot zaterdag tussen 07u00 en 14u00.

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