Sicilian Food Pilgrimage – Christmas Edition
Christmas. Who doesn’t like Christmas? Winter time, snow (well, not in Sicily..), presents, streets full of lights, Michael Bublé singing Christmas songs, crazy shopping, little Christmas markets, celebrations, and food, load and load of food, especially if you are Sicilian, you face literally a Sicilian Food Pilgrimage!
Let’s make it clear, Christmas is all the above more or less everywhere in the world, but if you are Sicilian you take the food and celebration part to the next level, and start practicing months before: it’s like a competition, you need to prepare your body to the top, or you’ll fail.
And you can’t fail, or your Nana will complain and you don’t want to disappoint her – you’re obliged to eat everything.
This is basically the story of my life since I moved out from Palermo to live in the UK – I always take my holidays during Christmas time so that I can spend time with my family, but being abroad, and not taking part in those huge family reunions every Sunday (have a look at my previous blog post about Sunday’s lunch here..) makes you a bit soft. You start having trouble after the antipasti already, and you feel ashamed.
Normal people would’ve started dieting around September so that they could eat during the holidays without thinking about gaining few extra kilos. But this is not what happened in my case. You want to be ready, you want to perform great in front of your Nana, so you do whatever it takes. In this case, it was pretty easy, you quit the diet, and you increase the amount of food you usually eat and guess what, I discovered that I was super good at this!
I “trained” very hard for one month and a half with Pasta al Forno, Arancine, Pizza, Sfincione, Lasagne, Pasta with Seafood, and more, everything always homemade: I was ready to rock.
My 2017 winter holidays started on the 19th of December and it lasted until the 29th: 10 days of pure food craziness where to the usual Sicilian Food Pilgrimage, you need to add all the festive celebrations. And I have to admit that it wasn’t easy at all this time.
It’s true, I’m running a Sicilian Food Blog, and I do make a lot of Sicilian specialities at home, but having them in Sicily is something entirely different, the taste is not the same and is always better (even if you’re a good chef!).
I will not go too deep into what I had during those days, but this list may give you an idea:
–Pizza (at least 4 pizzas)
-Pane con Milza (Spleen and lung sandwich)
-Lasagne
-Setteveli Cake
-Cannoli
-Musso e Carcagnolo(Meat and Cartilages)
-Pane con melanzane fritte (Sandwich with Fried eggplant)
-Pollo allo spiedo (Chicken Rotisserie)
–Involtini Siciliani (Sicilian rolls) with roasted potatoes
-Pasta with fresh tomato salsa and fried Melanzane
If I need to use a single word to describe this experience I would say “intense”. I had all of that, and then my performance during the official Christmas family lunch was good, making my Nana very proud. Her menu for the lunch was:
Starters:
-Salumi (Prosciutto, Mortadella, Parma ham)
-Cheese (Pecorino, Parmesan and more)
-Sicilian Bread
Primo:
–Pasta al forno with boiled eggs, fried eggplants, ham, salami and mortadella.
Secondo:
-Chicken roll with roasted potatoes
Various sides:
-Roasted vegetables (Eggplants and Peppers with vinegar and garlic)
-Fried Cardoon
Dessert:
-Cassata
-Panettone
-Pandoro
I took the flight back to London on the 29th of December, and I was worried that I would’ve needed to buy an additional seat on the flight because I was now looking like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters. Full, with few extra kilos but happy. Because remember, nothing makes you happier than your home’s food.
