ASPARAGUS OMELETTE

(Frittata de Asparagi)

Serves 4 to 6

450 g/1 lb tender wild asparagus shoots or cultivated asparagus

4 tablespoons olive oil

Freshly ground black pepper

8 eggs

4 tablespoons grated parmesan or caciocavallo cheese

Salt

Remove any tough parts of the asparagus, then wash and cook them in abundant salted boiling water for 5 to 10 minutes or until tender.

Drain thoroughly and put in a heavy frying or omelette pan with the oil and a sprinkling of pepper. Cook over a low flame until the asparagus has absorbed most of the oil.

Break the eggs into a small bowl. Add the cheese and some salt, beat lightly with a fork, and pour over the asparagus. Cook slowly, lifting the edge of the frittata with a fork and tilting the pan so that the liquid part of the eggs runs down under the solidified part, until almost completely set.

Cover the pan with a lid or an upside-down platter, and holding this firmly in place with one hand, turn the pan over so that the frittata is resting upside-down on the platter. Slide it back into the pan and cook for a minute or two until the underside is browned. Slide the frittata onto the platter once more, cut into wedges, and serve either hot or at room temperature.

Note: Sautéed courgette, string beans, peas, onions, slices of boiled potato or of fried aubergine—almost any vegetable in Sicily can find its way into a frittata. The technique is always the same, and is most accommodating to small quantities of leftovers. This resourceful dish also travels well, large and pie-shaped in a well-equipped picnic basket, or as a small, one-egg frittata tucked inside a sandwich in a box lunch.

The Spanish domination of Sicily came to an abrupt end in 1713, at the close of the War of the Spanish Succession, when the Treaty of Utrecht assigned Sicily to the rule of Vittorio Amedeo, Duke of Savoy. Seven years and another war later, the Sicilian crown passed once again to a Hapsburg emperor, Charles Vl of Austria, until the Spanish re-conquered the island in 1734 and joined it to the Kingdom of Naples under the rule of Charles III. The reign of the Bourbons had begun, and although the Sicilian nobility offered equal resistance to all attempts at reform, whether they came from Savoy officials or Austrian viceroys, this last change in crown heralded the beginning of much more far-reaching changes. The connection with Naples opened Sicily to stronger currents of Italian influence; the presence of Lord Nelson and the British fleet during the Napoleonic Wars created a fashion for things English; and especially after the Treaty of Vienna Sicilian aristocrats discovered the pleasures of Paris.

In Sicily, despite ferment and contrast, the ancien régime was slow to fade:

A few moments before a great lady of Noto passed us, who seemed very truly an admirer of ancient etiquette and the pomp of feudal times. For three ages ago, a rich and grave baron could not have visited his vassals with more lacqueys and servants, more trappings bedizened with silver and gold, more liveries embroidered, more housings displayed, more mules, and more trunks with covers, surmounted with shields and escutcheons of the family with all their quarterings, than did this good lady delight in exhibiting. And … reflecting upon this motley masquerade, we agreed, that as every season has its fruit, and every age its “form and pressure,” the times and the taste of the nineteenth century require another sort of régime than that of pride and parade.

Thomas Wright Vaughan, A View to the Present State of Sicily, 1811

Entertainments, although they gradually became less stylised and more intimate in character, remained lavish: a case in point is the ball given by the Prince della Cattolica.

Immense salons, their walls covered from top to bottom with mirrors, were masked by trees that had been uprooted whole from the earth and were festooned with fruit. The spaces between the foliage and the mirrors gave the idea of another world existing on the other side of the passage: the illusion was complete. We danced English quadrilles along trellised aisles from which ripe bunches of exquisite grapes dangled, and French country dances in tree-ringed squares disposed about a pool in which a graceful jet of water gushed and played. At the very back, in the last salon, a delightful little hill rose up, this too covered with trees, and in the middle a path leading to its summit, bordered on each side by a great abundance of sweets and cakes of every variety. The guests could see no servants, but at the foot of the hill there was a row of thirty or forty little taps and signs indicating different drinks and every conceivable refreshment, such as hot punch, cold punch, cream, tea, coffee, Bordeaux wines: and underneath were the glasses, which, once lifted, caused the flow to cease. The sound of music was very clear, but just as there was no sign of servants so also were the musicians hidden, concealed in grottoes covered with foliage. Only at suppertime could we see that there were servants present.

Michele Palmieri de Miccichè, Pensées et Souvenirs, 1830

The author of this description was the younger son of a noble Palermo family who took part in the separatist revolt of 1820 and was exiled to Paris for many years, where he became well versed both in the economic and political ideas of the time and in its sophisticated social mores. The memoirs that he published in Paris poke gentle fun at the world of his youth. We shall have occasion to consult them again.

The high point in Palermo social life came in 1798, when Napoleon’s army invaded Naples, forcing King Ferdinand and his court to take refuge in Sicily. The presence of royalty inebriated the aristocratic families, who redecorated their palaces, refurbished their wardrobes, and squandered large fortunes in a race to offer the most lavish hospitality possible.

It was only natural that the new fashions in thought, in dress, and in furnishings—Queen Maria Carolina was particularly fond of chinoiserie, and the charming Chinese Pavilion on the outskirts of Palermo was built for her pleasure—that all these foreigners brought with them should reach to the dining room as well as to the drawing room. Austrian by birth and sophisticated in taste, the queen did not share Ferdinand’s rustic passions for hunting and for agricultural pursuits, but she no doubt approved of his scheme for the construction of a Crown dairy in Partinico, thanks to which Palermo, according to English travellers, was the only city on the island where butter was available. Exile no doubt seemed slightly less bitter when there was “a little bit of butter for the royal slice of bread.”

Royal breakfast requirements aside, the establishment of a Crown dairy marked the introduction of new gastronomic tastes that had matured in northern Europe during the eighteenth century, where the vinegar-rich sweet and sour condiments so dear to medieval and Renaissance cooks had been abandoned in favour of the butter- and cream-based sauces of the French haute cuisine.

Butter came upon a scene in which other animal fats vied with olive oil for pre-eminence. The island’s oil production had suffered a severe setback during the Saracen era, for the Sicilian Arabs preferred to import oil from the vast olive plantations of the Maghreb, and many of the Sicilian groves that in classical times had produced oil for export were uprooted to make way for citrus trees and other irrigated cultures. Lard had thus become the principal fat for cooking purposes, and it was not until the eighteenth century that there was a significant increase in the cultivation and production of olives, and oil gained an important place on the table of all classes, as Patrick Brydone noted:

The Sicilian cookery is a mixture of the French and Spanish, and the oil still preserves its rank and dignity in the centre of the table, surrounded by a numerous train of fricassees, fricandeaus, ragouts, and pot de loups, like a grave Spanish don amidst a number of little smart marquisses.

Patrick Brydone, A Tour Through Sicily and Malta, 1773

Brydone’s words show that French cooking had already begun to infiltrate the Sicilian kitchen in the eighteenth century. But Henry Swinburne, travelling in 1790, testifies that progress was slow: “A most splendid entertainment was served up. I found the Sicilian cookery entirely different from that of France or England; sugar and spices were predominant in almost every dish.”

Eight years later the court arrived from Naples, and the tastes of the aristocracy began to change rapidly. Turning their backs on the traditional cucina baronale, the Sicilian aristocrats sent to Paris for their chefs. Originally Frenchmen and later Sicilians or Neapolitans who had served an apprenticeship in the culinary capital of the world, these chefs merited the title of monzù, a corruption of monsieur. This most coveted appellation was reserved for the cuochi di casata, the chefs who served in the baronial households, while the cooks who worked for the middle class, no matter how rich or distinguished their employers might be, were known as cuochi di paglietta—“the cooks of the shysters”—and were not permitted to mingle socially with their superiors.

If the title of monzù conferred prestige—the chef of the Paterno family in Catania went to the market accompanied by two lesser mortals who carried home in ample baskets the wares that he dubbed worthy, indicating this head of lettuce, that cut of swordfish with a flourish of his silver-pommelled walking stick—so did the employment of a monzù. The best chefs were much sought after, and Denti di Pirajno actually received one as a wedding present (and sent him back as soon as the first month’s grocery bills arrived!).

In the beginning the French chefs appear to have imported the haute cuisine of the nineteenth century pot and potage, with very few concessions to local tradition, as a description of princely hospitality in 1841 demonstrates:

The Prince Partanna retires to a shady arbour, where he has a private consultation with his French cook: and the result of their combined taste and skill, about four o’clock, is truly astonishing. We form a rather numerous party at dinner, and sit down more than twenty in number. I am the only plebeian guest among them. The Sicilian nobility is one of the oldest in Europe, and six princes, with a proportionate number of dukes and marquises, are present at the table. It is useless to give you a bill of fare, as it would be nearly the same as any other well dressed French dinner; the only custom which seems to me to present any national peculiarity is that of invariably eating iced melon immediately after the soup. After dinner we repair to the saloon, where coffee is served, and soon after iced lemonade and iced water; tea and cakes follow, and a slight supper of rusks, butter, sandwiches, and liqueurs terminates our eating cares.

Arthur John Strutt, A Pedestrian Tour in Calabria and Sicily, 1841

Nor is there anything particularly Sicilian in the buffet described in the ball scene of The Leopard, unless it is the way in which intimations of mortality have penetrated even to the dinner table.

Beneath the candelabra, beneath the five tiers bearing toward the distant ceiling pyramids of home-made cakes that were never touched, spread the monotonous opulence of buffets at big balls: coralline lobsters boiled alive, waxy chaud-froids of veal, steely-tinted fish immersed in sauce, turkeys gilded by the oven’s heat, rosy foie gras under gelatine armour, boned woodcock reclining on amber toast decorated with their own chopped insides, and a dozen other cruel coloured delights. At the end of the table two monumental silver tureens held clear soup the colour of burnt amber. To prepare this supper the cooks must have sweated away in the vast kitchens from the night before.

Giuseppe di Lampedusa, The Leopard, 1960

But by the end of the nineteenth century orthodox French dishes seemed to be slipping from favour as the monzù turned their attention to re-elaborating traditional Sicilian dishes. One might argue that this was a reaction to the rule of the Savoy monarchs to which Sicily passed once again with the expedition of Garibaldi and the unification of Italy. This Piedmontese dynasty was as foreign in temperament and outlook to the islanders as the Bourbons of Naples had been familiar, and the changes in menu may have reflected a return to Sicilian tradition in the face of the “enemy.”

In any case, the acme of this period in Sicilian cooking corresponds to the last great flowering of Sicily—the Belle époque in which the immense mercantile fortunes of the Florio family and of the Anglo-Sicilian Whitakers mingled with those of the aristocracy, and transformed the outskirts of Palermo with theatres, opera houses, Art Nouveau villas and hotels. Franca Florio, whom Gabriele D’Annunzio called the beltà divina, was reputed to be one of the most beautiful women in Europe (and to own one of the longest and most beautiful pearl necklaces). Palermo social life was judged to be the gayest and the most opulent, Sicily’s climate the most delightful. It was a last enchanted moment in Sicilian history, and it is lovingly and delightfully described by Fulco di Verdura in his memoirs, originally published in England under the title A Sicilian Childhood: The Happy Summer Days.

Kings and kaisers visited, and the hospitality offered them was no less lavish than that which had been offered Ferdinand and Maria Carolina a century earlier—a rare occasion for the monzù to show their skills. Many of the masterpieces, however, survived in the memory of the people who ate them rather than in the notes of their creators, in descriptions well flavoured with a yearning for long-lost delights, but vague about the actual ingredients.

One dish often cited in this manner is pasta alla cardinale, which blends elements of French cuisine—sauce velouté and mousse de jambon—with prawns from Sicilian waters and ’u strattu from Sicilian villages. It was all bound together with cream and with what was considered by many to be the hallmark of the monzù’s art, essenza di cipolla: minced onion cooked so slowly and for so long that it was reduced to a quintessence.

Pasta alla cardinale strikes me as expensive rather than interesting. I am much more attracted by what the monzù accomplished when they worked more strictly within the limits of local traditions. One of the areas in which they made their greatest contribution was in the pasticcio, the filled pie or pastry beloved by Sicilians throughout the millennia.

The “Leopardesque” timbale of macaroni (gattopardesco has entered the Italian language, serving to describe anything that reflects the opulent tastes of the Sicilian aristocracy) has already introduced us to this theme. Another example is a recipe from Messina in which the humble bread dough that envelopes the traditional impanata becomes a delicate crust of pasta frolla fragrant with grated orange peel and filled with swordfish. Of the various baronial dishes that I have tried, this one is perhaps the most restrained and at the same time the most enjoyable.