Mount Etna’s bounty: caponata, arancini, scamorza and more make Sicily a food heaven you’ll never want to leave
Mind-blowing ingredients grown in the volcanic soils of Mount Etna or fished from the Mediterranean Sea, piquant flavours of a cuisine shaped by waves of invaders, all savoured at an alfresco lunch put on by villagers: Sicily is the promised land
It was the very first bite, from the first plate of the first meal, that confirmed it: Sicily is truly a promised land for food. Dishes are so good at every turn, from elegant waterside restaurant terraces to crowded, cacophonous markets, that after a few days you find yourself looking intently at the listings in the windows of real property agents.
That first bite was of caponata, just one of countless local Sicilian classics. The ostensibly simple vegetarian dish combines aubergine with celery, olives, capers and tomatoes, but the secret, as always, comes in the sauce.
That sauce is both sweet and sour – agrodolce – a flavour profile that frequently appears in dishes across the Mediterranean island and delivers profound depths that turn cheap and humble plates into something far more sophisticated.
The salt in the dish comes from capers and olives, there’s richness from the vegetables sautéed in olive oil, umami in abundance from tomatoes, sweetness from a touch of sugar (or sometimes raisins) and the critical balancing sour notes from red wine vinegar.
At the ultra-elegant Belmond Villa Sant’Andrea in the eastern coastal town of Taormina, the version shared by chef Agostino D’Angelo – both as part of a sensational welcome lunch spread and later in one of his private cooking lessons – is a recipe that comes from his mother. The final dish is dark brown, almost black in parts, with caramelised crusts giving way to decadent, piquant but still creamy interiors.
