PASTICCIO DI MOHAMMED IBN ITMNAH (THUMMAH), EMIR OF CATANIA

Serves 8 to 10

One 1.75 kg/4 lb chicken in parts

4 tablespoons olive oil

450 ml/16 fl oz (approximately) light chicken stock

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 large round loaf of crusty Italian bread

15 g/⅛ oz toasted almonds

15 g/⅛ oz pistachios

1 tablespoon capers

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

2 eggs, lightly beaten

Juice of 1 lemon

Brown the chicken in the oil, add 225 ml/8 fl oz stock, salt, and pepper, and simmer until tender, adding more stock if needed. Cool the chicken, remove the skin and bones, and cut the meat into small pieces. Reserve both the meat and the stock.

Cut the bread horizontally, a little less than halfway down, so as to make a dish and lid. Hollow out the bread, combine the crumbs with the reserved stock, and press through a sieve.

Grind the almonds and pistachios, together with the capers and parsley. Add to the bread purée together with the eggs and lemon juice. The mixture should be quite moist, so you may need to add an extra tablespoon or two of stock. Combine with the chicken meat, spoon into the empty bread crust, and replace the upper crust.

Bake 20 minutes in a 180C/350F/gas mark 4 oven. Serve cold.

Note: My only reservation about this recipe has to do with the age of the bread. If you use a stale loaf, the crust is unpleasantly hard; if you use a fresh one, the dampened crumbs turn to glue. This impasse could be avoided either by drying out the fresh crumbs in a very low oven before adding the broth, or by substituting older crumbs for the fresh ones. Being a hedonist, I also prefer to use a greater quantity of almonds and pistachios (50 g/2 oz each).

Irrigated fields also permitted the introduction of new vegetables such as spinach and aubergine. Spinach appears to have taken one look at the island and headed north, since it is absent from traditional Sicilian cooking except around Syracuse and is still not always available in the markets, even in Palermo. Aubergine, on the other hand, found its fortune here, and has become as much a part of the Sicilian summer as the sun itself.

Speaking in broad terms, there are two varieties of aubergines marketed in Sicily: the so-called Tunisian aubergine, which is round rather than oval and fades from a true deep purple to lavender and then white around its stem; and the Turkish, or what the Sicilians call the nostrano, variety. (Nostrano, which is best translated as “our kind of,” is an adjective used with all sorts of foods to denote a local variety.) The nostrano aubergine is an elongated oval of a dark brownish-purple colour with a green tinge around the stem and just under the skin. Although Turkish aubergines may be specified in a few recipes, particularly those calling for small aubergines to be used as individual servings, on the whole Sicilians much prefer the Tunisian variety, which are noticeably sweeter and fresher in flavour but have a shorter season.

Any discussion of aubergines in Sicily should begin with caponata, whose fame has justly spread well beyond the island. Caponata is thought to have originated as seagoing fare, since it keeps well because of the vinegar. Virtuous Sicilian housewives put up caponata for use in winter, but what seems like an enormous quantity while I am making it, disappears in a matter of days in my household, without ever having a chance to show its mettle.