PESTO TRAPANESE

Serves 6

6 garlic cloves

1 teaspoon salt

Small bunch fresh basil leaves

150 g/5 oz blanched almonds, roughly chopped

4 ripe tomatoes, skinned and chopped

125 ml/4 fl oz olive oil

Black pepper

675 g/1½ lb bavette or spaghetti

In a mortar pound the garlic, salt, and basil into a paste; add the almonds little by little and then the tomatoes. When all the ingredients are reduced to a pulp, add the oil and the pepper. (This can be done in an electric blender, in which case the oil should be added at the beginning.)

Cook the pasta in boiling salted water, drain, and toss in a serving bowl together with the pesto until the latter is evenly distributed. Serve at once.

The Arabs did not by any means confine themselves to a mere tampering with taste, a subtle touch of lemony tartness or the textural novelty of rice. Indeed, they revolutionised the whole of European confectionery by introducing into Sicily the cultivation of sugarcane. Cane sugar differs from the sweeteners available to the classical world in that its taste is neutral, with no special character of its own, whereas both honey and vino cotto have distinct and at times strong flavours that leave a trace and a certain sameness in any dish of which they are an ingredient.

However lavish their embellishment of spices and pistachios and dates, the cakes and desserts described by the classical authors all sound like something one might find at the pastry counter of an organic-foods shop—full of the wholesome and virtuous goodness of the granola bar or the Fig Newton. By introducing cane sugar to Sicily, the Arabs opened the door to all the possibilities and peccadilloes of European patisserie and introduced Sicily to the Oriental taste for the overpoweringly sweet, a characteristic that has survived until today.

There are a great number of Sicilian desserts that bear the Arab imprint, and several that even bear Arab names, of which the most famous is the cassata siciliana. Cassata comes from the Arabic qas’ah, a large, steep-sided terracotta bowl used to mould this amazing cake, made of marzipan, sponge cake, and sweetened ricotta. A proper cassata is spectacularly decorative: the cake, striped with marzipan coloured pale green in memory of the days when one could afford to use pistachio purée, is glazed with white icing, and then crystallised wedges of oranges and pears are placed on top, spread out like the petals of a flower within curving ribbons of translucent candied squash.