a drifting thought

A non-whimsical and purely practical post coming up… I love to travel and eat, but I am that person who is constantly trying to balance this with a notoriously fickle stomach. Sicily presented a fun challenge to my quest to eat as much as possible, namely in the prevalence of dairy and/ or fried food. Below are my tips from 3 weeks on the island!

Eating on the go

The hardest days I find are the transit days, where you check-out somewhere in the morning or are on a day trip, and jealously watch your companion effortless munch yet another cheesy pizza based sandwich whilst you sadly consider your limited options.

Breakfast

• What the Sicilians eat: Sicilian breakfast is, like in the rest of Italy, sweet, sweet, sweet! Cannolis and stuffed pastries are not an option, and the brioche are typically made with some milk (although it’s not much and you can likely tolerate a couple mouthfuls to see what all the fuss is about the fabled granita and brioche breakfast combo)
• What you can eat: You can buy natural yoghurt in all super markets and mini markets. I reccomend keeping a little pot of honey and nuts with you to add to yoghurt to ensure you have a tummy friendly filling breakfast with you as a backup that you can mix together on the go.
• Top tip: Non-Italians be warned of the Italian breakfast – lactose intolerance aside, a super strong iced coffee coupled with brioche which itself has plenty of sugar… will leave you buzzing for hours.

Lunch

• What the Sicilians eat: This varies all over the island. Many guides wax lyrical about the amazing street food of Palermo, but unfortunately most of it is off bounds to you. Arancini tend to have a little dairy in them, which most lactose intolerant people should be able to handle. However it’s the deep fried nature of these street snacks that floored me. Fried food = big IBS trigger. I thought I was so clever chowing down on multiple panelle, fried chickpea batter fritters which happen to be vegan. I spent my first night in Sicily in the bathroom. Arancini are of course, also deep fried. You have been warned.

• What you can eat: Look for pasticcerias or bars which are a bit bigger, as they often have a salad counter where you can build you own box of freshly cooked veggies and pasta salads or couscous. If you really need a safe meal, compile at least some crisps (salty and carby) and fruit (sweet and refreshing) as an excellent on the go lunch. My personal favourite this trip was ready salted crisps, watermelon, strawberries and a tub of olives.

• Top tip: You don’t have to fully miss out on arancini balls. Moderation is key, and so is making a close acquaintance share with you, where they eat the deep fried outer shell and you scoop out the insides. Messy but worth it.

Dinner

• What the Sicilians eat: Oh wow where to start. Sicilian ‘mains’ that we tried ranged from Arabic inspired fish couscous, spaghetti with raw prawns to rabbit stew with warming cinnamon. Fresh fish is abundant, but being on a budget when we did eat out, we nearly always got pasta. This meal, or any ‘main’ meal you eat at a resturant, is the easiest to find tummy friendly food for for sure.
• What you can eat: Just be sure to ask what dairy has been added to dishes, but generally speaking you are in the clear here. The sausage based pasta sauces are typically the ones where cream has been added in my experience. I also didn’t find anything too garlicky either.
• Top tip: The speciality trapanese pesto is delicious, simple, and not too garlicky. Also eat pasta alla norma whenever you can. Aubergine in tomato sauce, cooked low and slow so any fodmaps have been long cooked down, with a smattering of salted ricotta on top. Only the most extremely sensitive lactose intolerant people won’t be able to tolerate this amount of salted ricotta and it’s so creamy, tangy and indulgent… it’s an absolute winner.

Pudding and sweet treats

• You absolutely will not miss out given the wonderful quality of granitas and sorbets everywhere. Chef’s kiss.

Cooking in Sicily and ingredients availability

Easy to find everywhere

The fresh produce in Sicily is truly delicious, something about all that super fertile volanic soil I assume. Well-stocked grocery stores abound, most of which will also have good quality canned goods alongside fruit and vege.

We travelled in May, which meant a lot of the following:

• Buckets of strawberries, which smelt so strongly they almost don’t smell of strawberries but of some deluxe perfume
• Fancy looking romenesco cauliflowers – so delicious roasted and added to a curry or part of a middle eastern mezze type dinner
• Fennell, another typical Sicilian ingredient we learned to use a lot, adding it to pastas, sandwiches and pilaffes
• Asparagus – fried at breakfast with eggs or added to literally anything we made
• Huge bunches of dark green spinach, so good cooked down into sag aloo or added to dal
• Mellow palest green courgettes which barely needed cooking

Top tip: if you see a pomegranate, buy it! It was not pomegrante season but there did seem to be some around and when we found one, we sure treasured it. They can be hard to spot as they were very small and from a distance blended into the many varieties of apples on display in shops.

Non-sicilian ingredients in Sicily…

For somewhere with such a melting pot of different cultures, it was surprisingly hard, even in Palermo, to find spices and other more varied ingredients. Yes you may say be being determined to find sumac, which I had forgotten to pack in our travel spice kit, is quite niche. But nonetheless I was very dissapointed it was nowhere to be seen.

What you can easily find in supermarkets are tumeric, cumin, ‘curry power’ and fennel seeds, and usually soy sauce and a decent range of rice noodles. Furthermore, we were happy to realise that (like in the UK) many corner shops are run by families of Pakistan or Indian heritage, meaning varied spices from those regions and good quality coconut milk could always be found, once you had located one of these gems! In Trapani, we stumbled across one and left 5 minutes later the proud owner of a giant jar of mango pickle, which we happily lugged around for the following 3 weeks adding it to, of course our curries, but also as tang and spice to roast chicken, sandwiches and even alongside eggs at breakfast. This alleviated the pain of leaving our various sambals and pickles behind in London!

Top tip: The best asian supermarket we found, was in Milaazzo, perfectly placed to stock up prior to heading to the Aeolian Islands. From nori to bamboo slices and Moy Ploy curry pastes, they had an amazing range of asian focussed ingredients -> https://www.facebook.com/asiastoremilazzo/

Cooking ideas with (mostly) Sicilian ingredients

🥬 Griddled courgettes with mint, lemon and honey, alongside roasted cauliflower and yoghurt with pomegranate seeds and more sides.

🍝 Pasta with fennel and lemon, add any crumbled nuts and/or cheese of choice on top. If you slow cook the thinly sliced fennel like you would onions at the start, they go all sweet and caramelised.

🐟 Cerviche! There is a lot of fresh fish and limes around, which is all you need really. Add something sweet (sweet potato or sweetcorn), and maybe some mandolined courgette and/or cucumber and you are basically done. If you have it, add some soy and a splash of coconut milk too.

Good luck and happy eating!