Panelle are fritters made with chickpea flour, a popular street food in Sicily.  The fritters are usually served in a bread roll.  The more traditional method of making panelle requires the chickpea flour to be cooked with water into a thick porridge like mixture, which is then is then cooled, cut, and fried in oil.  […]

Swiss chard is one of my favorite greens.  It can be used most of the time interchangeably in many recipes calling for spinach.  Chard has a sweeter taste than spinach.  My preference is going with the chard or sometimes combining the two.  You can use spinach in place of swiss chard in this dish, but […]

Puff pastry is great to have on hand as a quick time-saver.  It works in a pinch when I don’t have time to make the dough for those stuffed bread recipes Italians are so fond of.  You can use just about any filling you would use for a calzone, pizza, or rotolo.  This recipe uses […]

The rosticerria (rotisserie) is a popular snack-food eatery throughout Italy.  In Sicily, the word “rosticceria” refers to a place but also a type of cuisine.  Restaurants or bars offer a large array of finger foods such as pizzas, calzones, and other stuffed delicacies.  It’s the Italian version of fast food.  The Sicilian rosticceria (rosticceria Siciliana) […]

The word schiaccate (scacciati in the Sicilian dialect) means crushed or smashed.  These flavorful green olives are cracked open before being marinated in a garlicky mixture with parsley, olive oil, and vinegar.  If you like garlic – you’ll love these olives.  You need to use green olives that are not pitted.  I like to throw […]

Our family celebrates Christmas with a traditional seafood dinner on Christmas Eve, as most Italians do.  This year I decided to make baked scallops instead of the usual stuffed clams my kids love.  Here’s the reason why.  As I was cleaning out my kitchen drawers the other day, I found some natural baking scallop shells […]

These roasted peppers rolls make a stunning presentation for a holiday appetizer or as a side dish.  You can use roasted peppers in a jar that come from the supermarket to make these pepper rolls.  However, jarred roasted peppers have a slightly bitter aftertaste which comes from the citric acid that’s used as a preservative.  […]

Whenever my mother had leftover pizza dough she would make pasta fritta (fried dough).  The thinly rolled out pieces of the dough would puff up as they fried in olive oil.  The fried breads where fragrantly yeasty, soft on the inside, and lightly crisp on the outside.  She would sprinkle them with powdered sugar.  But […]

Arancini are stuffed rice balls.  They are a popular street food in Sicily.  The most traditional fillings are tomato ragù and cheese with ham.  I heard about how popular Arancini Bros. have become in my home town of New York.  They have a huge array of fillings and flavors.  They have taken the art of arancini […]

Although we are more familiar with the French croquette, potato crocchè (crocchè di patate) – small parcels of mashed potato with egg and cheese, coated with breadcrumbs and fried – are of Sicilian origin.  The Monzu (a corruption of the French word monsieur) were the renown French chefs employed by the Sicilian aristocracy.  Many dishes […]