Organ adventures

This post is not about offal, nor anything salacious. (Apologies to those who are disapponted on either count,) Rather it concerns the musical powerhouse sometimes hailed as the king of instruments: the pipe organ.

Our friends Kate and Randy, whose visit I described in the preceding post, had come here from Paris, where they've been staying for a few months. During their time in the City of Light Kate made a startling discovery about her partner: he has a thing for organs. "I feel this should have been disclosed a lot earlier in the relationship," she told me. In Paris he made a point of visiting several famous church organs, including those that had been played by Saint-Saens and Franck, and talked about how wonderful they were, how beautiful the sound, and about his own family's long history with the instrument.

Kate has no objection to Randy's interest, but she has a hard time overlooking the double-entendres that inevitably arise whenever he gets on the topic. Being with me didn't help, since every time Randy said something organ-related Kate and I would snort and snicker like Beavis and Butthead. Admit it: when someone talks about his grandmother's "big organ" and how she "needed two men to help her," could you keep a straight face?

As a good hostess, I hoped to provide Randy with a few organ adventures here in Fidenza. And as luck would have it, the Church of San Michele, down the street from us, was celebrating its 300th birthday with an organ concert during Kate and Randy's visit.

The concert included a small group of instrumentalists, a choir of 12, and several soloists. in a program that included Mozart's Ave Verum and Coronation Mass but centered on a pipe organ that was built in 1764, 42 years after the church was consecrated. You can see it peeking over the heads of the choristers on the left side of the photo.

Fidenza's bishop was in attendance (the gray-haired man in the front row), as well as San Michele's priest (who's at the other end of the same pew). We think the fellow in the middle is Don Benjamin, a priest from Togo who serves one of the country parishes outside of town and was just given Italian citizenship a couple of weeks ago. And that's Saint Michael off to the right, the one with the golden sword.

I was disappointed when I saw the little pipe organ sitting on the stage. I'd assumed we'd be hearing the big sound of a church organ, and in truth when the organist, Matteo Francesco Golizio, launched into the solo program that made up the middle section of the concert his antique instrument sounded quite a lot like a merry-go-round calliope. 

Two men playing with a little organ.

While he played the church's own organist, Luigi Fontana, seemed to be hovering behind him like an anxious stage mother. But then Fontana lunged forward and I realized what was going on: Fontana was pulling out or pushing in the stops on the organ that changed its timbre and tone. This is presumably what the two men helping Randy's grandmother had also been up to. 

Sometimes it took quite a vigorous tug.

All in all it was a lovely concert that we thoroughly enjoyed (except for the not very comfortable wooden pews). More exciting was the up-close-and-personal organ experience we had a few days earlier in Fidenza's venerable Duomo.

Not long before our guests showed up I was telling my friend Pam about Randy's organ obsession and she offered to introduce us to the organist at the Duomo, Giovanni Chiapponi. Moments later Giovanni himself rolled by on his bicycle. Pam flagged him down and in a few minutes we had an appointment for the day after our friends arrived to meet him at the church and get a tour. 

Il Duomo.

The cathedral was mostly deserted on a Thursday afternoon, and because we were with Giovanni we were able to go up behind the altar to the choir loft, where the organ console is nestled. It's a handsome piece of furniture with lots of pedals for both feet and hands, including several new buttons that had been recently added above the keyboard for new kinds of sounds.

While we were there, Pam took advantage of our access to the choir loft to show us a fresco hidden inside one of the wall panels. 

Most of the imagery that once covered the inside of the Duomo was whitewashed over centuries ago during an outbreak of the Black Death, but for some reason this one image was spared. It's sad to think of how magnificent the church must have been before its frescos were obliterated.

Then Giovanni sat down, flipped some switches, and began to play. He showed us the amazing range of musical sounds and nuances the organ can deliver, by pressing foot pedals or turning stops on and off. Because this organ is fully electric, he doesn't need any help with the stops and can do it all himself. The dexterity and coordination of his feet and hands were amazing. 

He improvised a stream of beautiful, churchy-sounding music, with some Bach dropped in here and there. It was most impressive. Randy was entranced.

So was I. I was embarrassed when tears began stinging my eyes. Something primal about that sound in that space momentarily overwhelmed me.   

If religion wetr as simple and as powerful as that feeling, as moving as that soul-stirring sound, I would be a convert. It's unfortunate the words so often get in the way. 

Of course that moment of transcendence didn't last very long. Soon I was once again egging Kate on and annoying our menfolk with a stream of organ-related witticisms. After all, we'd just met the fellow with the biggest organ in town. 

Napping between meals

Our friends Kate and Randy were here over the weekend to check out our Fidenza lifestyle. What they experienced was a lot of gabbing, a daily nap habit, and plenty of eating and drinking. They seemed to enjoy it, and we certainly did.

On their first night here we took them to one of our favorite local restaurants, whose exact name is a bit unclear. It's the Antica Trattoria al Duomo on the restaurant's own Facebook page, but it's the Antica Trattoria il Duomo according to the sign over their door, and I've been saying "Antica Trattoria del Duomo" because I kept seeing it that way online, including on the Fidenza town website and an all-Italy site listing the country's best trattorias. 

"Antica Trattoria" can be variously translated as the old tavern or the old diner, and the Duomo in the name refers to the Cathedral of San Donnino, which the restaurant used to be right next door to, before it moved a block or so up the street.

The back of the Duomo, as seen from the little piazza in front of the restaurant.

I suppose it hardly matters whether it's the old diner at the Duomo, the old Duomo diner, or the old diner of the Duomo. Whatever it's called, the food is great.

In particular, the Antica Trattoria is famous for its antipasto of salami, prosciutto crudo, and other salumi accompanied by torta fritta, little rectangles of bread dough that are turned into tender pillows via a quick sojourn through very hot lard. Many other places in the area make torta fritta, but Antica Trattoria's version is amazingly light and the meats are top quality.

Danny wondered if this local specialty might be a bit too carniverous for Randy, who was a devoted vegetarian until recently. But he need not have worried: Randy enjoyed the antipasto as much as the rest of us did, and we finished every bite. 

In the days that followed we had plenty of pizza, pasta, cappuccini, panini, pastries, wine, beer, meatball soup, gelato, and Bar Teatro's best-ever tiramisu. When it came to the latter, our instinct for self-presevation kicked in and we got just one and shared it.

I love how Italian desserts are served with little shovels.

Their last day here was Randy's birthday, and he proposed we celebrate by going back to the Antica Trattoria for another round of antipasto. We were happy to oblige. We once again ordered the restaurant's very generous antipasto for two.

What better way to say "...and many more" than a plateful of torta fritta?

The preceding days of eating and napping had taken their toll, though. We just couldn't finish it all the second time around. We did, however, manage to eat most of the pasta or meat courses that we ordered as follow-ups, before we staggered back to our place, moaning about how full we were, and hobbled off to bed.

Danny and I were so exhausted by all this high living, and by the interrupted sleep brought on that night by a very rich meal, that we didn't get up till eleven the next morning. By then our guests were long gone. How they managed to get up, pack, and leave in time to catch a 6:30am train to the airport I can't imagine. When at last we got a message saying they'd arrived safely at their destination, I wasn't surprised that Randy added, "We're ready for our naps!" 

Home (away from home) again

We got back to Fidenza on Thursday afternoon, greeted by warm sunshine and shiny-clean streets. The annual San Donnino festival had finished the weekend before, and by the time we got here all evidence of the crowds, the food stalls, and the late-night carousing had been scrubbed away. 

As ever, I arrived with a mental roster of things I wanted to be sure to do while I'm here. At the top of our list was eating at Bar Teatro, so we hurried over at lunchtime on Friday. The place was fully booked--I guess everyone else has figured out how great Angelo's cooking is--but luckily for us one customer was a fast eater and left a table empty that we were happy to grab. Danny had a veal chop with carrots and green beans and a salad of red cabbage and mache, while I, fighting to stay awake, opted for my favorite comfort food, pasta with a meaty tomato sauce. And a glass of fizzy red wine to help me get to sleep, because the next thing on my agenda was a nap. The pasta, the wine, and the nap were all delicious.

Another thing on my list was clearing out our pantry shelves. Last July I'd noticed that we'd been invaded by cupboard moths, and now when I looked over our food supplies I could see they'd been busy eating and breeding the whole time we were gone. Some open bags of flour, nuts, and other comestibles we'd neglected to put in the refrigerator before we left now were the cupboard-moth equivalent of Bar Teatro--a great place to get a good meal. So this afternoon I took everything off the shelves, washed off the legions of dead moths (and hopefully a lot of moth eggs), threw away everything that looked to be infested, and put the rest back in sealed containers and in good order. If the moths turn up again I'll know I missed something.

A third thing I've wanted to do is make a bollito misto. I've written before (here, for example) about restaurants in the area that specialize in this classic meal of boiled beef, tongue, chicken, sausage, and other meats. It's a feast-day dinner; recipes often start by saying "Serves 10" and calling for a whole tongue, a six-pound cut of beef, a calf's head, and so on. It's not something you'd think of making for yourself and your husband, no matter how much of a meat enthusiast he might be.

But ever since we started coming here I've been intrigued by the little DIY bollito misto kits at our local supermarket. The package includes a thick slice of raw tongue, a bony piece of beef, and a quarter of a capon, plus half an onion, a carrot, and a stalk of celery. (In Italian they call a celery stalk a gamba, a leg. Isn't that cute?) The label says "for broth" but I can't imagine that a thrify Italian housewife would toss away the meats after they'd been cooked.

Yesterday when we went to the market Danny got a turkey thigh--that was on his wish list--and I grabbed one of these bollito packages. This morning we followed up with a visit to the big Saturday street market, where we loaded ourselves down with parsley, cabbage, onions, carrots, and various other necessities, four bagsful altogether.

Danny took this photo. Thank you, dear!

Inspired, this afternoon I started a minestrone in the InstaPot, looked through the bollito misto recipes in our various cookbooks, and then put the bollito meats on the stove to simmer with the recommended rosemary and parsley while I did battle with the cupboard moths.

Once the pantry cupboards were cleaned up I followed another recipe for a classic bollito accompaniment, a sauce of parsley, garlic, anchovies, breadcrumbs, and olive oil. 

At last the meats were done (or as done as they were ever going to get--the capon was still weirdly rubbery after more than two hours of simmering). I extracted them and added some vegetables and pasta to the broth. Traditionally the brodo is clarified and served with anolini or other filled pasta, as a very refined first course. But we had a lot of veg filling up our fridge and I'd been made aware of just how much dry pasta we've got stockpiled, so I opted for a vegetable soup with whole-wheat farfalle instead.

Then came the main course. We'd bought some mostarda di frutta (very sweet candied fruit spiked with hot mustard oil) and a pepper relish to go with the bollito, along with the green sauce I'd made. 

Here's our dinner. From the top, there's a mostarda peach and cherry, the green sauce, a slice of tongue, several pieces of boiled beef with some of the capon in the middle, and the pickle relish. It was a wonderful meal; even my critical husband said so. The meats on their own are pretty bland, but when they're eaten with the various relishes the plate really sings. I'm exhausted but very pleased with myself. 

What's next on my list? A visit to an art show at the town's exhibition space (formerly a high school and, before that, Fidenza's fascist headquarters), some blog posts about vending machines, fascists, and greeting cards, and an investigation into making this blog's subscription doohicky finally work. There's a Roman-cuisine restaurant I'd like to try, in addition to going back to our old favorites. I want to see my Fidenza friends and get my Italian up to speed. Most of all, I hope to spend some time just enjoying being here. I'd be crazy not to.

Sicily, part 4: The rest

 We are about to climb aboard a plane and returning to Italy, and so I am racing to finish the story of last May's Sicily trip before I return to Fidenza and resume my regular blogging duties.

Danny is a fan of hot springs and when he read that Sicily is full of volcanic geyers and mineral springs he proposed that we include a visit to one in our itinerary. Francesca obliged by taking us to the thermal baths in Segesta, in the countryside about an hour's drive east of Palermo. 

"Terme" means thermal baths

The hot springs we've visited in California are either unsupervised naturally occurring pools in the middle of nowhere or part of more or less elaborate spas. Usually the latter include not only hot pools but also cold plunges or cold showers to help you recover from cooking in the thermal springs.

The place in Segesta was very nice, very clean, and quite underppulated on a weekday morning, but all the water apparently came from the same hot spring. The large indoor jacuzzi-like hot tub, the outdoor lap pool, and the showers all were hot and sulfurous. The only way to cool off was to stand on the deck and wait for a breeze. After we'd showered and dressed Francesca spread towels all over the seats of her car, lest we imbue them with the stink of sulfur that clung to us for the rest of the day.

The other big attraction in Segesta is its Greek temple, which dates from about 420 BC and is the best preserved Doric temple in Europe. Sitting all by itself on a hill, it's very photogenic.

Francesca told us that although it is a classic Greek temple, it was built by the non-Greek locals to try to convince Greek colonies elsewhere in the area to side with them in one of the small local wars that were always going on. The alliance fell apart, the war continued, and the temple remained roofless and uncompleted. 

One way to look relatively young is to stand in front of a ruin.

After our week together in Palermo ,Valerie went off with Francesca to see more temples in Agrigento while Danny and I took a bus to Piazza Armerina, a small town in the center of the island. The scenery along the way was mostly unpopulated and very beautiful.

 Piazza Armerina is a little hill town with a surprisingly large cathedral at the top, its dome like the cherry on a Sicilian titty pastry.

The view from our bed-and-breakfast.

We got plenty of exercise walking around the town. Here's the street leading up to the cathedral.

The Duomo itself is surprisingly restrained, decorated in Wedgwood blue and white.

It seemed almost un-Sicilian, although one of the balconies is decorated with the island's emblematic three-legged woman, the trinacria, the symbol that's now emblazoned on the Sicilian flag.

The reason most people, including us, visit Piazza Armerina is the astonishing Roman palace a few kilometers outside of town. This huge villa, with its thermal baths, dining rooms, exercise rooms, public halls, enclosed gardens, and quarters for guests, children, and servants, was built in the fourth century AD, then laid waste by capital-V Vandals and others in later centuries. Then a vast landslide in the 12th century covered it over.

When archaeologists began excavating the site in the early 20th century they discovered that the villa's acres of mosaic floors had been almost perfectly preserved. It's one of the world's most extensive set of Roman mosaics.

Birds, animals, and marine life dominate the mosacis, with scenes of hunting, fishing, and chariot races. 

These competitors were on the floor of the children's playroom.

Fishermen-putti decorated the part of the palace that housed the hot, cold, and tepid baths.

And this sexy medallion was in the master's bedchamber.

My photos don't come anywhere near doing justice to these mosaics and the villa's story. Of all the "sights" in Sicily, this was the most exciting.

Our third and final stop was Catania, on the western side of the island. We had booked a room at the XX Miglia bed and breakfast, conveniently near the bus station. We arrived at the address, a big, rather battered apartment block, and were buzzed in and told the code for the elevator that would take us to the top floor. The interior courtyard looked more than a little alarming. "We should have spent more money," Danny said nervously. 

Once we arrived at the top, however, we discovered a lovely little hotel with pretty rooms, welcoming hosts, and, the next day, an excellent breakfast. We later learned that the keypad on the elevator, which the B&B owners had installed at their own expense, was to keep the building's other tenants from using it.

We had a day in Catania before flying back to Fidenza. The old central city is a baroque banquet. 

The famous elephant obelisque in the main square was charming even while undergoing some hydraulic repairs.

The cathedral, just across from the elephant, is suitably grandiose.

Inside are the remains of a cardinal, sheathed in silk and silver, who is remembered for--what else?--his commitment to charity.

We also made a quick visit to San Nicolo, a Benedictine monastery that's another of Catania's must-sees. This vast pile in the center of the city provided a very sweet life to the monks who lived there.

One of the monastery's two cloisters.

The grand entrance.

The decor features poor Sant'Agata's mastectomy.

An informational sign notes that the monastery was a favorite stopping place for well-born 18th-century travelers because of the high quality of the accommodations, food, and wine it offered. One visitor, amazed by the luxuriousness of this "palace," was assured that it "was nothing else than a convent of fat Benedictine monks, who wanted to assure themselves a paradise in this world, if not in the next." 

After visiting the monastery I was grateful to be able to toast our own version of the good life with a Campari spritz, followed by an "aperi-fish" platter of fried baccala, mussels, swordfish involtini, and other seafood and a tasty salad--probably a rather ascetic meal compared to what those long-ago fat monks enjoyed. Still, for me Sicily was more paradaisical than not, and the interplay of the bright and dark sides of its history are a big part of its appeal.  

Sicily. part 3: The food

When we arrived in Palermo last May, one of the first things we did was go out for cannoli. Notwithstanding the hype about these delicacies in The Godfather and The Sopranos, I wasn't a cannoli enthusiast, since the versions I'd had in the Little Italies of New York and San Francisco were usually soggy, stale-tasting fried shells filled with gummy icing whose painful sweetness wasn't alleviated by the occasional nugget of candied citrus peel. But our friend Dana, who'd been in Palermo a few months earlier and always knows what she's talking about, told us we couldn't miss the cannoli at the church of Santa Caterina, which happened to be only a few blocks from our Airbnb apartment. So thither we hied. 

In The Leopard, Lampedusa describes Palermo as "weighed down by the huge edifices of convents and monasteries. There were dozens of these, all vast, often grouped in twos or threes, for women and for men, for rich and poor, nobles and plebeians, for Jesuits, Benedictines, Franciscans, Capuchins, Carmelites, Liguorians, Augustinians..." Santa Caterina was one such. A Dominican convent for high-born ladies, its church is suitably grand, in the baroque-and-beyond Sicilian style.

Santa Caterina from the ground.

Santa Caterina: A nun's-eye view.

Although the sisters were the daughters of aristocrats, their lives were circumscribed by schedules of devotions and strict rules against contact with the outside world. They watched the church services hidden behind metal grates surrounding their enclosures far above the congregation. (You can also see their hideaways in the first photo, above the tall arches.) 

Another way they spent their time was to help support the convent by producing expensive pastries for wealthy Palermans. Although there are no longer any nuns at Santa Caterina, it now has a pastry shop that offers sweets based on historic recipes from Santa Caterina and other local convents. 

Sicily's famous marzipan fruits and vegetables are on offer, along with cakes as over-decorated as the churches.

There are also lots of simpler sweets, little pastries filled with candied fruit, jam, nuts, cheese, and liqueurs. 

But that day we were there for the cannoli, which are made to order.

The young lady above, looking rather nun-like all in black, filled the freshly fried cannoli shells with sweetened ricotta, then added whatever each customer wanted--candied cherries, chocolate chips, chopped pistachios, candied orange peel.

Next to the pastry shop is the convent's beautiful garden. Reportedly rose petals grown there are used to make the rose water that flavors some of the pastries. There we sat down under a lemon tree with our cannolo (Danny and I shared one, in hopes of saving some room for dinner) and a couple of other things (because how could we not?).

The cannolo was indeed wonderful, in my opinion, and the star of the show that day. The tangy, fresh-tasting ricotta was nothing like the icing-from-a-can filling you too often encounter, and the shell had great flavor and crunch. (Danny, true to form, says he thinks cannoli are "disgusting." He really didn't have such a good time on this trip.) 

The other pastries were tasty, but a little heavier and more sedate. Being an American, I couldn't help thinking they would have benefited from being eaten alongside a glass of cold milk. (But being an American, I also can't help thinking that no dessert, anywhere, is quite as delicious as a homemade layer cake with buttercream frosting. I recognize that this is perhaps a character flaw.)

Another very popular Sicilian pastry is known as "virgin's breasts," for obvious reasons.

Now Sant'Agata is extremely popular on the island, as well as elsewhere in Italy. (She is the patron saint of my Italian family's home province of Molise, for instance.) Agata was born in Catania, Sicily's second biggest city, during the early Christian era, and was imprisoned and tortured for preferring a life devoted to Jesus rather than marriage to the local Roman governor. Her torments included, most famously, having her breasts torn off with pincers. 

Sant'Agata honored in a church in Catania.

The saint and her martyrdom are symbolized by two breasts on a platter, raising the question: which came first, the iconography or the dessert? 

Minni di vergine dissection.

We had to try one, of course. Inside was a rich cookie base, jam made with zucchini (the green layer), and pastry cream, surrounded by a sugar shell. It's delicious, if you like things that are creamy, crunchy, and very sweet, but it's also a bit overwhelming.

The same shape is used for a variety of other pastries. These two, which we had for breakfast one morning (something I don't recommend if you're planning to do anything but collapse into an insulin coma for the rest of the day), were flavored with pistachios and raspberries, respectively.  

Francesca, our guide, is a Palermo native who loves the dolce of her homeland, the sweeter and richer the better. She'd traveled to the Emilia, the part of Italy where our place is, and was unpleasantly surprised by how austere the desserts there are. To her the Emilians' simple jam crostatas and nut cookies barely qualified as desserts. "I'd lose 10 kilos if I lived there," she said dismissively. 

While Sicilian pastries are a big tourist draw, another is the island's street food, or as they say in Italian, "street food." (Apparently this culinary concept didn't exist in Italy until very recently, although food eaten elsewhere than at the table presumably has always been as common in Sicily as everywhere else.) 

A fabled, even perhaps iconic Sicilian street food is a spleen sandwich. So when we came across a vendor in Palermo's Ballaro street market selling spleen sandwiches alongside another well-known specialty, rolls stuffed with panelle (chickpea fritters) and fried balls of mashed potato, we were eager to try them both, not least because the bill for two big sandwiches totaled about three dollars.

Perhaps we should have shopped around a bit more. The potato-and-garbanzo sandwich was merely stodgy, the taste of poverty, but the spleen one was kind of icky. I later read that the classic preparation involves not just boiling the spleen into edibility but then frying it till crispy. This version either skipped that second step or the spleen had been sitting around long enough to lose any vestige of crunch. The flavor was vaguely organ-ish and the texture not so great, either. After a few bites we were happy to slide all of it into a waiting garbage can. Months later Danny is still complaining about that spleen sandwich. It was a culinary low point for all of us.

 

Valerie, who accompanied us on our Palermo adventure, and I were far happier with the fare at a busy little place in Piazza Marina. The street-food delicacies they offered included a "Sicilian salad" of tomatoes, olives, and mackerel, another of sliced oranges and onions, eggplant caponata, and an array of arrancini--fried rice balls stuffed with meat sauce (round) and cheese (tubular). 

Unfortunately, I didn't think about taking a photo until long after I'd started eating.

Emboldened by that experience, we decided to do a street-food lunch at the Capo street market a few days later. 

After admiring the beautiful arrays of fruits and vegetables, we zeroed in on a busy stall selling all kinds of good-looking snacks.

There's eggplant parm and arancini or are they meatballs?) stuffed with red onions and peppers baked with cheese, and I'm pretty sure those are panelle and arancini with cheese in the back.

There were also eggplant rollatini, tomato bruschetta, meatballs on skewers, and herb pies. We tried about a half-dozen things, squeezed around a little table amid the market hustle-bustle, but we had to admit that none of it was very exciting. Maybe we hadn't chosen well, or perhaps this place was better at attracting tourists and their cameras than making really great food. We probably should have enlisted Francesca's guidance, but this was one adventure we'd decided to have on our own. Ah well, part of the adventure of travel is being reminded that only in travel writing is every meal a life-changing experience and every snack a revelation.    

As those street food photos indicate, Sicilian cuisine uses a lot of vegetables. Indeed, it hews much closer to the American fantasy of Italian cooking as an amazingly delicious form of health food than does the food of northern Italy. Because of the island's history its classic dishes combine good things from many cultures, and because its residents were mostly poor its cuisine uses a lot of seafood and a wealth of vegetables and fruits. 

This list of the day's specials at the little Bissot Bistro gives you the flavor. The dishes include rabbit with fava beans, sweet-and-sour pumpkin, pasta with tuna, green beans, tomatoes, and basil, and plenty of other seafood dishes. We had the pumpkin, some eggplant polpette (meatballs, but made with eggplant, if you can imagine that), fish cousous, and a salad. It was a delightful dinner. 

As I've noted elsewhere, in our part of northern Italy vegetables, like desserts, aren't the focus. The pastas are terrific, and so are the various cured meats, but to my palate at least the disinterest in vegetables can make many dishes seem a little bland. Meat courses in most restaurants are often (too often) plainly grilled or roasted.The vegetable contorni offered are usually either grilled or boiled, and salad means lettuce with some tomato slices and slivered carrots (and canned corn, if you're unlucky). 

Compare the usual northern antipasto--a big plate of ham, sausage, and other salumi, with perhaps a little giardiniera for color--with the antipasto platter we were served in Piazza Armerina, the town in central Sicily we visited after Palermo.

At the aplty named Trattoria del Goloso (Glutton's Restaurant).

There's eggplant parmigiana and caponata, tomato bruschetta, fresh mozzarella, grilled zucchini, dried tomatoes, and lots more besides. The main course that followed was rabbit stewed with carrots, celery, and olives. It's not spa cuisine, but it was wonderfully tasty and the vegetable ingredients get much of the credit.

Here's another antipasto, this one from Buatta Cucina in Palermo. Not as vegetable-intense, but still a lot more varied than the antipasti I'm used to in Fidenza. Apologies for the photo; it was so enticing I once again inhaled a lot of it before I remembered to take a picture.

Clockwise from the lower left, there's the remains of sardines in mint and tomato sauce, marinated tuna, two pieces of sfincione (a Sicilian pizza variant), a panella (chickpea fritter), and caponata in the center. I followed up with a Sicilian pasta classic, annelli in ragu. 

Like Spaghetti-Os, only delicious.

Other dishes I enjoyed during our time in Sicily (but neglected to photograph) included spaghetti alla Norma (with eggplant), linguine with sardines and fennel, spaghetti with clams and bottarga (fish roe), spicy green beans, a salad of tomatoes, sweet onions, and ricotta, baked stuffed clams, and a sensational sfincione-inspired pizza with lots of onions and black olives. 

Some of these dishes were pretty average, some outstanding, but overall the food on our Sicilian trip was as exciting as their crazy churches. And that's saying something.