A Sicilian Renaissance?

posted by Geoff Andrews at Saturday, January 14, 2012

14 January

The Sicily Unpacked series on BBC2 has already quite an impact judging by the reviews and comments on twitter. It has been important in opening up new generations to the wonders of the island’s unique art and architecture food, history and culture and Andrew Graham-Dixon and Giorgio Locatelli are a good combination. As we found when we made the BBC Radio 4 series last spring, the story of Sicily also offers another way of looking at the history of Italy and will hopefully change some existing perceptions of the island, as well as the need to recognise that Italy doesn’t start and end with Tuscany and Umbria.

We know of course that Britain has long had a fascination with Italy. This reached its peak in the expeditions of the Victorian and Edwardian travellers, writers and artists, among them John Ruskin, George Gissing, the Brownings, Norman Douglas and Edward Lear, as they set sail in pursuit of culture and civilisation. As John Pemble’s book The Mediterranean Passion - a remarkable and scholarly tour de force which beautifully captures this moment – makes clear, this fascination extended well beyond the now familiar terrain of Chiantishire, whose beautiful landscapes have seen such rises in holiday homes and tourism that it has become synonymous with the British-Italian experience. The current desire to reproduce this ‘Italian lifestyle’ at home, (even without the weather and under the misguided view that Italians habitually dip their bread into bowls of balsamic vinegar and olive oil), has survived even the vulgarity of Silvio Berlusconi. Believing, rightly, that ‘Italy is not Berlusconi’, Brits have continued to travel to Italy to be civilised and enlightened by its sheer capacity for the good life.

Sicily Unpacked will revive interest in the Mediterranean. A destination for many of the earlier travellers, Sicily has been overlooked for too long and when it does get mentioned, is often reduced to romanticised accounts of its Mafia – the Cosa Nostra. Yet this island of five million inhabitants is the most varied of all the Italian ‘regions’. The birthplace of some Italy’s greatest literary figures, it derives its rich cultural traditions from the legacies of the many different conquests and occupying powers over centuries.

And it is food, and not the Mafia, which best captures the essence of Sicilian identity. The conquests of Sicily by Greek, Romans, Normans, Arabic, French and Spanish invaders among them, have left behind an extraordinary variety of influences and ingredients, made richer by the warmer climate. The daily reality of extreme poverty has also left its mark in the range of ancient, cheap and delicious street food, such as Panelle – chick pea fritters - which still thrives in the centre of Palermo. An island disposed to insularity, fatalism and prejudice from the north – represented today by the Northern League – has shown a remarkable resilience in preserving its identity.

This was apparent to us when making the BBC radio series last spring. Arriving at the port of Trapani, on the west coast, we found ourselves walking through back streets more reminiscent of North Africa than Western Europe. At the Cantina Siciliana, owned by a long-standing communist, Pino Maggioni, couscous was on the menu, indicative of the Arabic influence. Yet we were told that this couscous, served with fish or pork, differed from the couscous in Marsala, only a few kilometres away, where the tradition was to serve a larger grain couscous, and served with snails. ‘Local food’ takes on a whole new dimension in Sicily.

More Arabic influences were to be found in the Vucciria market in Palermo; wild fennel, crucial to the delicious but complex dish pasta con le sarde; aubergines, crucial for caponata, one of Sicily’s best known dishes, and one of the examples of the sweet and sour combination in Sicilian cuisine. Sicily is rightly renowned for the richness of its pastries and desserts like Cannoli and Cassata, and these also owe much to the Arabic influence which brought sugar cane in the ninth century.

The Spanish influence was featured strongly in Sicily Unpacked and notably in the chocolate shops of Modica, a baroque town in the south of the island, synonymous in recent years for the quality and quantity of its chocolate producers, which have expanded dramatically in recent years. Like Sicily Unpacked we also visited the Antica Dolceria Bonajuto, the town’s oldest chocolate producer, and wondered if the revival and recognition of traditional methods of making chocolate, based on the Aztec tradition, offered another version of globalisation.

One of the virtues of Sicily Unpacked has been to challenge the view that Sicily can be reduced to the mafia. It is also true that you cannot explain Sicily – and above all its food – without understanding the way the mafia has controlled food production and distribution for so many years, with significant effect on exports and the making unnecessary detours for food distributors. The Vucciria, for example, has been controlled for many years by mafia extortion rackets.

Yet, here too, there are signs of a renaissance. One of the most optimistic developments in Sicily in recent years has been the passion and commitment of anti-mafia activists. Foremost has been the association Addio Pizzo which plastered the centre of Palermo with stickers calling on people of Palermo to preserve their dignity and refuse the pizzo (protection money) and Libera Terra, an association which promotes the use of land confiscated by the mafia for the production of wine and olive oil.

The key to understanding the Sicilian Mafia is the mentality which has roots in Sicilian culture. The importance of belonging, of the first loyalty to family, of honour and are deeply rooted Sicilian values, reflected in the absence of a strong sense of state and civic traditions which are the result of centuries of conquest and domination. The mafia has cultivated its own negative interpretation of this; presenting itself as the only option for security and career hope for young people, in a land often perceived as fatalistic.

Yet, as we know there is a more positive, genuine interpretation of Sicilian hospitality and friendship which Sicily Unpacked captures well. It has also has made a very interesting connection between art and food. A similar connection could be made between literature and food. The complex nature of Sicilian identity is central in the work of some of its greatest writers, notably Leonardo Sciascia, Luigi Pirandello and often food seems to reflect wider cultural and political questions. There is a famous scene in Lampedusa’s The Leopard, where the pleasure of eating Sicilian food survived the attempted imposition of a ‘national’ diet in the moment of unification.

For Andrea Camilleri’s Sicilian detective, Inspector Montalbano – recently introduced to the BBC – food is also crucial. His loyalty to the Trattoria Calogero, his uncompromising lunch rituals and knowledge of the tastes and flavours of his island, notably in the province of Agrigento and the shadow of the Valley of the Temples, is crucial to the way he lives and works.
Sicilian food has not only survived but is now beginning to prosper in the era of globalisation, which is normally characterised by the imposition of drab standardised fare. Instead its extraordinarily rich history, encompassing such a variety of wonderful flavours, has finally found its moment.