At any time of the year you arrive in Sicily, the aromas and perfumes that welcome you are exquisitely "Sicilian", unique.
Scent of lemons, oranges, almonds and basil, flavour of the sea and, if you arrive in the morning, in every corner you sometimes sense a characteristic smell of hot bread which in this land, for those who are not local, can be assimilated almost to a sweet or dessert.
Scents, fragrances, perfumes, flavours, smells irrationally catch your mind and follow you and pursue you even after leaving this piece of paradise.
There are corners whose aromas, mixed in the environment that welcomes them, remain indelibly in you.
This is the case of the Pescheria di Catania, a unique place where it is not only the smell of fish that catches you but an interminable and variable confused sequence of even unpleasant smells.
Smells of a different nature that make everything unmatchable also for the incidence of the bizarre element, because the "Piscaria" sells everything from meat to fruit, sausages, fresh cheeses, food of various types.
In short, everything that can be edible is sold, but in the space of a few thousand square meters!
Sicily is also (I write at random for instinctive memories): pasta with the flavour of unimaginable sauces ... Olive oil, golden green, the divine pistachio in a sweet and salty guise and then the aubergines with that dream of caponata and parmigiana. ..
But what about rice with seafood, food of the Gods, or arancine, a small piece of heaven on earth.
The tomatoes, to be tasted with the eyes, to be photographed, the sweet wild strawberries, Segantini painting.
One cannot forget the great quantity of cheese from the Royal table.
Sicilian sweets cannot be described, they must be tasted and in three years I am still only at the beginning ... ricotta cannoli, almond paste, cassata, and among the latest arrivals the "setteveli" (delicious sweet based chocolate, my favourite).
I forgot, the ice cream shop. I have seen counters with over 60 different flavours!
In this sector, granita deserves a separate discussion. A typical Sicilian cold dessert eaten with a spoon with countless flavours that include a queen of the sector: the "almond granita" (which Sicilians call "minnulata").
I do not speak as a "gourmet", I put in writing instinctive feelings of a foreigner who visiting loves and loving visits this land of the sun of fire and contrasts.
I speak as a tourist who, having been there three times in three years, perhaps out of an ancestral instinct, would never tire of returning to the same places.
Discover how beautiful, how old, how attractive, how modern (but also how contrasting and mysterious) is this still hidden millenary land, home of culture but also of dissonant foreign influences.
See you soon, Sicily ...
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