Authentic Tastes of Sardinia & Sicily | Rick Stein's Mediterranean Escapes | BBC Documentary

[Music] [Applause] I'm on the west coast of Sardinia it's dawn and the men from the nearby town of K brass are making their way to this Lagoon a place where they catch grey mullet in exactly the same way the Romans did some 2,000 years ago using reed walls to create a series of channels and traps and chambers which when the time is right as it is now ensure an epic catch well I've been out fishing for about 12 years now for all my fish programs I've been out in fishing boats enforced nine gales I've done everything but this is really quite special I've never seen anything like this before and I doubt if very many people watching this have seen it we're actually about to catch a loaded grey mullet in these in these reed cages and they're going to be shipped off to local restaurants and bottarga makers and that's where they salt the rows of the great grey mullet down and dry them I tried bottarga in Corsica for the first time and now I can't get enough of it here it's served on a bed of artichokes and drizzled with olive oil but this is even better a perfect Italian seafood starter grated bottarga on pasta to my mind it's in the same league as sea urchins it has a strong eye adeney taste of the sea bottarga was created initially by the Arabs and is now popular all over the Mediterranean now the business of the morning is under way the men slowly worked themselves away from the reed walls gradually making their way to the center all the time they're reducing the size of the net causing panic now amongst the fish there was a Greek poet called Appian who really liked gray mullet mainly because they're vegetarian he said they harm nothing themselves nor any other creatures never staining their lips with blood but in holy fashion feeding always on the green seaweed or mere mud [Music] the female fish will go to the bottarga curious where their Rose will be salted and dried in the Sun and the males many of which are a good size we'll go to the fishmonger slabs and restaurants all over this part of Sardinia well just I've never seen anything like this would be a complete understatement amor I'm speechless really there's look there's nothing I can add to it is so exciting I asked the boss and when I say boss nobody would make a move without his permission how important it was to the region with olive oil he said it's moto importante because bottarga is a big industry here employing a lot of people when the fishings good everybody's happy other times it's poor and that's a different story but we also have boats to catch the fish it's ear [Music] afterwards he said if you really want to try fresh grave mother cooked really well go to the restaurant ill caminetto and Cabras they know what they're doing there this is what I love best about making this series his cut is finding a totally new dish I've never seen this done before it's called Mecca and what Giuseppe is done is to poach some gray mullet just in salted water and then wrap it in this ester ein weed or Fenn weed and I'm fairly certain the same thing grows in the estuary at Padstow but it's wrapped after it's cooked and it's left to cool down for about 24 hours in this weed and the weed impart sir will a wonderfully estarán flavor to it actually it also makes it makes it taste really creamy you know for years and years myself and many people like me is to think of a gray mother as being a bit of a dear upset fourth division fish you know always it's like worried about where they feed and all that sort of thing this is absolute world class stuff as totally delicious but more important I just love finding dishes for cold fish I mean all we have is salmon and mayonnaise but this gray mullet cooked like this with a little lemon olive oil perfection well I thought I knew practically every recipe going to skate but not this it's poached skate wings in a piquant tomato sauce and it's made as usual with olive oil garlic and onion then Giuseppe the chef here flakes some chili and add some bay leaves it was really good of them to let me into the kitchen to see how they do things here then he adds some parsley they're really open people now a serious helping of plum tomatoes everyone here it seems makes time to bottle their own late summer tomatoes when there's a glut this turned out to be one of the best tomato sources I've ever tasted it must be down to the quality of the tomatoes now he had salt seemingly quite a lot and then raisins a little Arab influence there then when the skates cooled he peels the skin gently from the flesh now he puts in a good ladle full of wine vinegar which gives it an instrument see that skate really needs and then it's done I shall certainly be cooking this when I get home and the thing I really like about it as with the mullet that just went before is that it served cold we just don't have enough cold fish dishes back at home and this is one of the great treats for me of my Mediterranean trip [Music] many travel writers have been here over the years and from what I've gathered they've not always written eulogies about the place the word scruffy pops up as does gloomy it reminded D H Lawrence of Farwest caramel and that's probably why I like it this is one of the oldest settlements here theros which goes back to the Phoenicians who incidentally used to come to Cornwall to buy their tin I scribble this down on a piece of paper this morning it's from dr. Johnson it's it's fantastic I think the grand object of traveling is to see the shores of the Mediterranean on these shores were the four great empires of the world the Assyrian Persian Grecian and Roman all our religion almost all our laws almost all our arts and almost all that sets us apart from the savages comes from here I know Sardinia's got the Emerald Coast with its fine hotels celebrities yachts and marinas and all that but this is not a country where every scene is straight out of a brochure I didn't plan to come here it was by chance someone happened to mention the town of bajirao they said it would be good for the soul to visit well this is a ruined mine my son rather drawn to the gloomy looking things like an old ruin like this it looks a bit like parts of run-down korma I was thinking I like a bit of a sort of literary mentor when I was in Corsica it was Edward Lear and here in Sardinia it's D H Lawrence in his book sea in Sardinia and in the book he draws a similarity between Cornwall and Sardinia and I wonder if this is the sort of thing you had in mind fact I have to say this but D H Lawrence was a friend of my grandparents and my grandparents who actually invited him down to call and he had a house in Cimmerian and near where I live so it means a lot to me in fact and actually that the whole here sort of area here looks a bit like some like boss castle you know a very very narrow cliffs down to the sea he found Sardinia quite gloomy I think things have cheered up a bit since then one of the interesting things about making food programs is that you end up in really odd places and sort of mooch around and find information that you'd never find as a tourist I mean take this for example I'm and I was saying earlier about that disused mind I've now discovered that this is a monument to really the first bit of sort of organized labor in the whole of Italy that happened about a hundred years ago when a group of miners were so driven down by poor wages and they worked 18-hour days that they form this little resistance movement and went on strike in fact they went and hid in in one of the mines but it was cold and damp and after a few days they had to come out and it was a bit like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid the three leaders were shot as they came into the light and there's a poem in bribed on the wall here and it says very poignant li Sardinia taciturn sweet mother never before pure blood like this innocent blood has burnt your heart [Music] I found that short visit here quite moving but life goes on and just across this beautiful bay I found at porta shadow a great seafood restaurant LAN Korra the anchor isn't it just the most amazing thing that so often in life your happiest times your most excited time sir and when you least expect them and this is a case in point I mean here is a plate of spaghetti al nero di seppia of pasta with cuttlefish ink and cuttlefish it is so exquisite the pastas cooked to perfection the cuttlefish is really soft and the ink gives it that lovely adeney taste of the sea I am in heaven [Music] my main reason to come to this part of the island was to visit this eel farm eels are becoming an endangered species in Europe largely because they've been overfished so farming is essential when things are diminishing they naturally become more sought-after and more expensive and that's why query Naoko gay a serious money man thinks this is a really good investment what is very simple you know because Sardinia people of Sardinia they like lovely lovely lovely Anguilla is the one of the old dish of people in Sylvania and it was about 3540 years ago I saw that we import a lot of else from the other parts of the world and so I in my mind I said why not to establish a plant obvious so this is the beginning of my you know my job with the years but you used to be a successful banker you must love the coming of farmers oh ah because I like troublesome you know I think that everybody in his life should change job I mean I was in the bank I was a banker not and employing the bed I was a banker it's a quite different and you well know and I said I want to I want to do something else and so I started with ears and is it you believe me you see the Sun in Sardinia the land the green it's wonderful is another life even if I don't refuse the first life to my first job you see it's lovely here they're using bay leaves but they also use poly Myrtle and arbiters which is the strawberry tree to give it a real Mediterranean edge and their hot smoked which means they're cooked in the smoke I'd like to think up a recipe for Phil it's of smoked eel but you know I don't really want to actually maybe the odd new potato in a bitter leaf like a young dandy lon but actually they're never better than just on their own with a bit of horseradish I mean what I really love is a bit of eel straight out of the smoker look at that just just up ciosing with that if you don't like eel fat you don't like food in my view Oh fantastic beautiful perfect deal clean fresh tasting lovely cut off some more [Music] this is the town of Oleanna right in the center of the kidnapping triangle where the local shepherds and bandits did that sort of thing way back in the sixties and seventies it's also where there are more spinsters and widows than anywhere else in Italy I've been told I find these murals pretty somber as if they're a form of atonement for deeds done in the past I think this is a gruesome reference to a time when the bandits sliced off some poor persons ear to show they meant business but overall they're a vibrant form of street art some dark others light they reflect so much that passions of the tongue but it was a really friendly place to be I like all these murals all over oleanna summer political fiercely political some are religious some are advertising indeed this one is hizouse trapping tourists saying where can I get local food and this gentleness Sardinian costume saying CK is a place where you can find what you like one thing i've picked up on on this trip i made a bit of a habit before i sit down in a restaurant to have a quick peek in the kitchen and if i see a bevy of mums and daughter's I'm pretty certain that the food is going to be good the way mama makes it this restaurant in Oleanna is run by Tony nur and I came here last night and tried this really intensely flavored wild boar stew she said the recipe goes back many years and she was even told that soldiers used to cook it on their shields over a fire when they were camping was the cause of young Hamish of the change ollie like it keeps saying cooking shouldn't be difficult there's nothing hard about that olive oil potatoes onions wild boar herbs from the mountains salt in the oven for an hour the thing about Toninho she really really respects her parents and their grandparents cooking her mother and grandmothers indeed today says look after the dishes from the past because those will be the dishes in the future which is a great thing to say so she puts on the other half of the shield I've never seen one of these before and puts it in the oven well that's simple enough that just goes in the in the oven for an hour now I had this dish last night and it is utterly fantastic and I worry sometimes about the cooking back home I was in the pub quite near where I lived the other day and they have a little restaurant and the chef I just asked him what he likes to eat at home and he said I like to a cooker salmon roulade with mascarpone cheese I mean I ask you is this the sort of food we want and it's the food that we remember as children that really come for us so Bravo [Music] this view is what makes us keep coming back here is this color that is the very essence of the Mediterranean dream it's the color of optimism and like the lovely tomatoes should be bottled away in our memory banks to help us through the rain and mist of home I'm going to calorie an ancient town that D H Lawrence described as a place belonging to nowhere I see what he means the Phoenicians the Arabs the Spanish the Greeks they've all been here but somebody told me about this restaurant here it's called a Lilly ku and they said it's just for the locals and to tell you the truth I haven't got a lot of time for tourists restaurants always feel a bit let down but I just want you to see this because it's right up my street first of all of course a lovely display of fresh fish look at those lovely red Mediterranean prawns got some sea bass got some rascally I don't know what the Italian word is it's a little durog there and some little souls as well but this is the bit that really caught my eye these are the seafood antipasti which are superb we've got some gray mullet there with a tomato sauce and some roasted sardines with a piquant tomato sauce suddenly it's got lots and lots of them chili in it this is a speciality that local speciality is actually little shark dogfish in their calorie in the calorie style and an escabeche sardines are like the look of those too here is the kitchen this is where all alive stuff's done just dishing up some salsa but this is the bit I really like this is some I mean this is the sort of restaurant that entirely excites me just very utilitarian there's some guys over there in their overalls this is not a tourist place by any stretch of the imagination I'm going to sit down over here if anyone was seriously thinking about becoming a chef and it wouldn't do you much harm to come to a place like this to watch these guys for a week or so you'd probably learn more in a fortnight than six months at a catering college I think these are good restaurant dishes because each one takes five to seven minutes or so and arrives on the table as it should sparkling fresh someone said that the mere smell of cooking evokes a civilization well I'm getting olive oil I'm getting garlic and serious seafood the warm buttery smells of freshly cooked pasta do you know what I'm not getting I'm not getting orders being barked oh there's not frantic screaming no histrionics just chefs without egos just really good simple Italian food the sort of food that would make me return time and time again [Music] but now it's time to move on to the biggest island in the Mediterranean Sicily and it's a perfect time to leave a good lunch a glass of wine a lovely afternoon and a ferry journey ahead [Music] well I'm just leaving Callie re and I'm thinking what a fantastic time I've had in Sardinia I had no idea really what Sardinia and cooking was gonna be like I just found it totally to my liking simple dishes done with real understanding but you know what much as I like Sardinia and the much as I know I'll be coming back here it's a bit like going to a really important party what I like to do before I go to the party is go to the pub with my friends because in the pub we're having a few drinks and we're really letting our hair down but all the time I'm thinking well this is great but what comes next is going to be greater and that's the way I feel about going to Sicily the so many classic Italian dishes there I'm so looking forward to it for thousands of years the sailors and the people who lived along the shores of this sea thought that this was the extent of their universe this wasn't just a sea this was a world and I think when Homer described the Mediterranean as the wine-dark sea he wasn't just commenting on the colour of the water [Music] well we're just coming into Chopin II in Sicily and I've just turned on my mobile phone and picked up an a Tunisian Network and I saw that was quite sort of significant rarely because one of the things that I'm gonna be really looking forward to in Sicilian cooking is that influence of North African cuisine I'm trying to record my thoughts as honestly as I can as I continue on this journey not being a travel writer I was hoping to spot something anything to say I was indeed in Sicily apart from the fact they weren't all that keen on a Landrover edging out into the traffic trapa me reminds me of calorie which looks a bit like parma which reminds me a great deal of Corfu I suppose the influence of the various empires like the age rings on a tree trunk left their mark over the centuries particularly in all these narrow tiny Sicilian streets that was a bit disconcerting I just stopped for the lights and past this side road and this car battered car drew up and four unshaven young men got out and started yelling at me saying come here come here I just found the window down I figured they'd seen the number plate and thought a foreigner easy pickings with the luggages on the roof and so to Palermo and yes it too was colonized by the Phoenicians and the Byzantines and the Romans in fact it seems anyone who had an arm in a navy made an appointment with history here and this gate celebrates Charles the fifth of Spain's victory over the Turks in the 15th century it was Charles who said to God I speak Spanish to women Italian to men French and to my horse German the city center has all the atmosphere of a Verdi opera balustraded buildings narrow streets a faded elegance of interspersed with the cause of Street traders selling tomatoes garlic and lemons will always come to the market in any city first of all and Thomas's are really good what I love all the sort of voices couldn't be anywhere else with it [Music] she burned the mateship Ornish Atlanta [Music] just picked up this bit of information that the Sicilian word for the Mafia is actually a Costco and that's the name of an artichoke and the reason is that you've got all these tightly knit leaves gathered round the center I love these they've been gathered from the hillsides around the city I think eating and really enjoying snails sorts out those who think they're a bit of a gourmet and those who really are I call it the snail test this is a bit of a fine these are tiny little snails from around Palermo and they're feed on wild fennel you can almost taste it that's all they they gather them off the fennel fronds fact I've seen them in court maybe I've got an idea going here but they're delicious they're just done with olive oil garlic and parsley and I think I think anybody that was unsure about snails would like about these is they're very small they're a bit like winkles and they don't have that long Brown bit at the bottom which people don't really like so I think these are an absolute must for the first time snail eater which I suspect he isn't I think when you cease to be excited about the colour of fresh vegetables or the sheen of freshly caught fish and it's really time to pack in cooking for a living places like this give me inspiration for recipes in fact it's the essential first step of cookery lovely food first using a knife second look at those peppers just reading a bit in this book by Norman Lewis about that the market here on Norman Lewis wrote the very famous book about the Mafia called the honored society and it had a lifelong love of Sicily he's just saying about the market there can be no more splendid market for the vendors of foodstuffs and every kind are infatuated with extremes of size and artistic presentation zucchini are a yard long but 50 snails can be held in a cup to hand the tastefully arranged collapse of meat are brilliantly and continuously smeared with fresh vermilion blood and the chickens feet neatly trimmed of their claws I just think markets are just such a good indicator of stuff and I'm afraid I've said this before but you know just go to a British supermarket and see what cultural inferences you can get from that not a lot I fear but here it's everywhere I've arranged to meet someone who really knows her stuff about Sicilian food she's an olive oil producer natalia rabida it's really fascinated me when i came back from london it was a strong contrast this feeling of of the Middle East of the Arabic influences of the French influences because you have to know that in Sicilian lots of food names are a distortion of French words amazing so it's amazing and it's all there it's mixed and in fact it has a strange combination which makes us again food very complex but also very interesting because with all the invasions that Sicily has had throughout the centuries it has taken in a bit of everything and mixed it into their into their traditions and especially food Okemah Goomba well bit like summer squash so it's not like a zucchini as we know it's very clear inside it's a white a transparent it's delicious we're going to bit in the summer what we do it simply boil it with our white onions which are very mild summer onions and then with very little water and then season them Rigali boil a bit of oregano a bit of mint and a sprinkling of Patrick of Allah which is a Sicilian cheese that we use instead of parmesan it's like a like a salad then all the old cellar becomes like this is very tasty you'd be surprised sounds good and what about these that these are the leaves from this flower and this also make one of the most popular summer pastas it's a cold pasta made with chopped spaghetti probably to use up all the older reserves of spaghetti and again we take the milder leaves the smaller one there royal and then chopped and mixed with some chopped tomatoes sautéed with a bit of garlic and then mixed with the past time we cook the pasta in the vegetable water because that adds flavor to the pasta I really like Palermo I know it has its dark side but it's glorious it reminds me of Paris or Madrid and there's nothing provincial about it [Music] when I told some Italian friends of mine that I was coming here they said there's one place I have to visit even if it's just for a coffee well this restaurant is called spin art oh and it's the most famous restaurant in Palermo and it's where all the great and the good and the powerful come to eat and talk and see and be seen and there's lots of people here with very very sharp expensive suits honestly to catch my drift [Music] this I love Genoa I think sisters Sicily is a vegetarians paradise this is spaghetti with little tiny capers from the island of Pantelleria right down on the southern side of Sicily just with some mint and tomato and a bit of parmigiano it is super miss just the sort of thing I love to cook and I'm going to cook it I couldn't wait to try this when I got home I'm using vine tomatoes from a supermarket and they're good I'm getting rid of the pips and the excess liquid because you don't want them in the finished dish then I chopped them up pretty roughly for the sauce I love I often feel when you tell people about Palermo they if they haven't been there they think that's going to be mafia on every street corner and it's dangerous so it makes you show off a little bit in a slightly subtle sort of way and spurn our toes well there are all those people kissing really suited and you know embracing kissing on other cheek and of course you think they're that they're mafia that they're probably just you know Clark's to the council or estate agents but I suppose the thing about Paloma is everybody lives up to that everybody has a sort of sense of style I [Music] love doing that attractive to the Mediterranean is just change my life on goes the spaghetti and then chop up them in a smell of freshly pikmin is smelling English summer which is odd because it's an Italian dish - three cloves of garlic and put them in the oil you don't want to fry them too hard you really just want to flavor the oil and then take them out poor in the tomatoes and add a few chili flakes you don't need to cook the tomatoes right down and you can't use tinned tomatoes here because you want a really dry sauce I'm gonna dry seems a bit silly but you know what I mean then some capers and finally some roughly chopped parsley some black pepper and seasoned moderately well with salt and stir [Music] they'll see what I mean here by a dry source is not much liquid there is there but it clings to the pasta very nicely that's just about it well when I saw this dish I just thought that's for me that's for our cafe it's a perfect vegetarian dish the chef's can knock it up from scratch in about five minutes flat and it's just sort of thing that vegetarians are me loved completely this is a perfect summer lunch when the mints at its best in June topped with grated Parmesan and as they say in Sicily HECO Bronto when I think of capers my next thought is anchovies and the port of shocker on Sicily southern coast it's famous for processing these silver beauties from the days when the harbor was full of Roman galleys well I suppose you could say this is dreams come true I mean when I'm thinking about Elizabeth David and Mediterranean recipes and times in the Sun by the Mediterranean I'm thinking about anchovy boats bringing in the catch as fresh as that they're absolutely stiff fresh this is one of the canneries here and everything's done by hand really quickly mainly by women working like metronomes to their own rhythm as they take off the heads and remove the guts with a flick of a finger and sprinkle on sea salt the oldest way of preserving fish I asked why there wasn't a machine to do this but the boss here Agostino Rekha said in a resigned New York Sicilian way there's no machine because the Machine can't tell a good and should be from a bad one these women can so what makes this town shaka synonymous with anchovies the climate is the best air shaka because as a human and sometimes suck that's what it needs for the insurance and the fact that they're caught and preserved the only thing will pour on it's a little soft and that's it the rest is all natural they only put a little salt and that's it and we'll get the best brother well you spent a lot of time in the States in in New York yes 15 years how does it compare with life here differently all together this tell you that so I like very much they're really wise they're forming me they teach me the importance of the work work so they measure the main thing when they see you they don't ask you how are you they'll tell you are you working if that means if you're working the middle you stay well and then to say how why you know yes then that's a whole American ethos yes one of the great things about going on a tour like this is your taste in the real food they're just given us a load of anchovies to taste and some bread to go with it but also some caponata now I always thought a caponata was bit like ratatouille too much vinegar in it but now I've tasted the real thing and that's what's so good about coming on this tour is that you could not write a correct recipe unless you tasted something I have to say that this is lovely and sweet and aromatic basically it's just over gene onion tomato caper a very important celery a little vinegar sugar and salt cook very very slowly till it's almost like well almost like a chutney delish the soil around Etna is extremely rich and the lemons grown round here a world famous and so is the granita a real Sicilian delicacy made by Aurelio Licata in the town of shaaka play about a loved one are gonna need that pretty mother actually wasted warning says the secret of a good granita is to have lemon fficer a little green because the young just ripe lemons have that fresh taste from the acidity in them and also the young lemons give off a perfume he says his machines may look a bit old but they treat the lemons very gently and don't break the skins he only wants the juice and not the mash Nabi wasted only one help you then the lemon juice is mixed with sugar and a little water and poured into this wonderful machine I think the creation of machinery like this is a real testimony to man's ingenuity to create something really refreshing Sicily is home of Isis in the Western world but they say it was the Arabs who gave them the inspiration with their ice-cold Shabbats or sherbet granita is much grayer which is what granita means than a sorbet I just love watching this as the icy shavings turned to slurry which gets thicker and creamier until it's time to serve [Music] I think a lemon granita is an Italian icon up there with Mario Lanza caponata and the motor scooter now do you remember this Richard did Bobby's little film took the country by surprise on April the first fifty years ago this was a time when we knew so little about food the last two weeks of March are an anxious time for the spaghetti farmer there's always the chance of a late frost which while not entirely ruining the crop generally impairs the flavor and makes it difficult for him to obtain top prices in world markets many people are often puzzled by the fact that spaghetti is produced at such uniform length but this is the result of many years of patient endeavor by plant breeders who've succeeded in producing the perfect spaghetti well it was April Fool's Day but so many people believed it it was from the days when Italian restaurants in London had signs outside saying we serve spaghetti but not on toast [Music] I'm going towards the center of Sicily to see how spaghetti is made heading towards the town of collie only famous for being the home of the Mafia Don played by Marlon Brando in The Godfather I would have come here anyway spaghetti factory or not because of this landscape people could hide and never be found for years before I came here I imagined it to be barren rocky scrubland and yet it's very fertile and green [Music] it's funny walking about you can't help but think that every old man you see on the street corner is a mafia Dom living in a Palazzo in luxurious retirement I suppose this could only happened to me but we're hearing Colleoni and people be coming up to me and saying are you here because of the the mafia boss well it was this this chap called Bernardo Provenzano that was captured about three weeks ago I've been seriously on the run for forty years well we know F of because of the mafia we're here because of that pasta but our sort of thinking was funny really because actually if you think about the Mafia do you think about those films like The Godfather and Goodfellas and The Sopranos there's always food in it they're always eating and generally if it's an America it sort of you know mamma's spaghetti and meatballs or here it's pasta alla Norma but somewhere there's a mum and I suppose that's why we have a sort of sneaking regard for the Mafia that's if we don't get too close because they love their mums [Music] in Kelowna everythingís mafia and the everybody's comes Igor Luana becomes mafia sir fine then everybody talks like Matthew people yes of course because when you come here you become in my fusilar castle sir well that was very illuminating I just popped in for a beer and got a dissertation but this is what I came to see this Old Spaghetti Factory has been churning out pasta for over a hundred years [Music] well I've always wanted to see how proper casters made them it just looked wonderful just cascading down like that and their smell all I'm thinking because it's just before lunch this is pomodoro sauce is tomato sauce that's all I want nothing more the smell of that fresh wheat is absolutely wonderful I'm just thinking many many years in the kitchens of my restaurant I used one of those little tiny pasta machines and we used to dry the pastor on broom handles all over the kitchen that's the sort of thing I needed it's just made with durum wheat in water nothing more [Music] so that's how it all becomes the same length Mussolini the fascist dictator tried to change the Italian diet and wanted to stop the population eating so much pasta because he thought it made them sluggish and lazy needless to say he didn't achieve his goals earlier I mentioned pasta alla Norma it's a classic Sicilian pasta named after Bellinis opera Norma Bellini was Sicilian as you probably gather anyway first slice over jeans and cover in salt to take out the moisture dry in a tea cloth ideally want to do this half an hour before you fry them the opera Norma was apparently a huge hit and the word Norma became synonymous with something that was really good toss them in a pan of hot olive oil give them a good searing and then set them aside chop and crush some garlic and some salt and fry that off in the same oil add some chilli flakes and chopped tomatoes and then put in the ever-so-slightly fried aubergine I know it's another vegetarian pasta dish but sisal is famous for them they've got such great Sun ripened vegetables crumbling sand cheese I'm using feta in Sicily the chef's seem to prefer cachi a caballo those yellow pear light cheese's that hang from the rafters tear up some basil and put in the spaghetti and toss it around and serve dishes like this hark back to a time when Sicily was a poor country and everyone had to use what was in season now you might take the view that this is poor people's food or you could say it's a splendid celebration of the aubergine the tomato cheese and olive oil in the hotel last night there were some Americans who said they'd met up with a strange Englishman who is writing a book about Sicilian food while exploring the island on a scooter well we all knew who they were talking about Matthew fought the Guardians food writer and a friend of mine so thanks the invention of the mobile phone we arranged to meet up and swap notes about scooter is the Vespa is them in contact with what's going around you I kept eliminating smells I was going along sometimes they have all sort of hund'd wool honey creamy smell of broom and then it was a went through this area where there were wild sweet peas and this extraordinary beautiful exotic perfume you know into pine trees and you get another sort of herb smell food have you had any decent meals yet I've had countless of savings but I've had some absolutely absolutely storming any good meals made from very very sort of simple straightforward but it's strong the good ingredients for a a high-quality what do you think is so special about Sicilian food so different well it has a very very different food culture I think from Italy and I think anybody expecting the sort of farm harmonious Precision's of Italian cooking rare that's of just those things is in for a bit of a shock nothing that's partly because it's heavily influenced by the the cooking of North Africa when you see that particularly the pastries and the ice creams but also I think in that taste for sweet and sour but also that of those other sort of preserved America sort of preserved Mediterranean flavors you know very very strong salted anchovies for example capers preserved in salt dried sun-dried tomatoes other things which are some with a bang when you open everything when you're eating them it is the cooking of poverty if it meets how do you make a little something go a long way and but pasta has an absolutely essential part to play it seems to be the process because this sort of almost sort of mellow blandness at the background you could pump in these very very strong flavors and then the pasta sort of riff keeps the mouth fresh keeps a balance this is the season where you get a swordfish and if again from markets you can see these wonderful Phillips of swordfish and those rather than but there's some great Bills sticking up and there and it's rather sad looking I hear he gets through reproachfully but I hadn't I just had a slice of big slice of of swordfish just grills a little bit of oregano lemon lemon which lemon seasons it and then one becomes all this salty when it's used in that way just a perfect I mean God knows he couldn't be simpler but what can we do that what can I do that obviously are humbling to be perfect this Hotei agree and I think that's what makes this place so tough it very nice to see you Matthew if you find anything like you know wine or lives capers be really interested sun-dried tomatoes pasta give us a ring what a great way to taste the food of Sicily Matthew mentioned such a good dish simply grilled swordfish don't wave Matthew with a Sicilian classic sauce Sal Marilia a lot of doing these sort of simple dishes with chargrilled food with barbecued food outdoors it's the sort of thing where you can have a couple of friends sitting by and have a bit of a chat glass of wine I always think it's quite nice when you're cooking to have fur have people around but you don't really want them to close when you're in a busy kitchen doing something rather overcomplicated for this summer illios just very straightforward this is olive oil water and lemon juice and I'm adding Oregon au flat leaf parsley and celery tops then I put in garlic freshly ground black pepper and salt this summer Elio is probably the most popular sauce in the whole of Sicily and its really good we roasted meat so now to grill those lovely swordfish steaks all they need is a few flakes of dried chili and a bit of seasoning sort fish at best in late spring to early summer I was told that the sicilian fishermen say something in greek before they start fishing now this is to trick the fish into thinking it's Greek fisherman who not very good at fishing rather than Italian who are well that's what the Sicilians say well they would wouldn't they I've cooked the swordfish for four minutes on each side now that's really important so it's nice and moist in the middle I'm basically this is a classic isn't it I mean if you think of the perfect fish for a barbecue its swordfish and the salmieri leo goes so well with it and just a green salad and some chips nothing fancy that's perfect for me I suppose Matthew is still on his scooter buzzing around Sicily it would be so good I've had lunch with him and yeah I got fish cheese's tomatoes great sauces breads well until a wine ran out [Music] these salt pans at San Leonardo have been providing salt which is after all evaporated briny sea water for a mighty long time everything has been here for a long time and Sicily the most modern addition to the landscape where the windmills created in medieval times to help with the drainage they look to me like the mechanical drawings from the great Leonardo I think this view here sums up the incredible richness of history here in Sicily and also of culinary influence - we've got Arab and Norman ruins of castles up there I wouldn't mind getting that before that that would have been Carthaginian before that there would have been Greek and after it probably French and Spanish I mean it's just an a melting pot and that I think is why it's so interesting why in the food you can find all these little nuances right from the simplest food right to the most complex I couldn't help but notice that all along this rocky outcrop caper plants are bound a thorny creeping bush where the little buds are taken and salted and often pickled in vinegar the origins of food never cease to amaze me who'd have thought these little buds are so important like the olive in Mediterranean cuisine well I'm in Porton Paulo which is just outside Memphis and with Vittorio I'm really looking forward to eating this though which is some which is Puccini the SEPs and wild mushrooms with tomato olive or bit of white wine looking and then he's going to do that with some vongole to be perfected he puts in some chopped tomatoes foil olive oil of course garlic the vongole basil that silico of course chili flakes and then he chops up a fresh green chili Giorgio Locatelli told me about Vittorio in London and that's why I'm here he rapes him is probably the best seafood chef in Sicily he puts in some parsley and a good dollar for white wine and then he gets the pasta going [Music] I've only just met Victoria but I mean there's things about a thing about cooks there are now I like him the reason I like him is he wants to please me and that's what good cooks are all about is thinking about who they're cooking for and pleasing them and wouldn't he's just give me that clown because he knows I'll like it I've tried the sauce already and it's absolutely delicious I mean it is a start and then he puts in the porcini which literally means little pigs in Italian and he gets on to make the pasta [Music] the thing that keeps cropping up with me with Italian cooking is generosity it's all about families it's all about big portions it's all about steaming bowls of lovely food who could fail to have their appetite exciting about something like this [Music] well this is the best bit of the whole job for me I've always managed to splatter my shirt at moments like this but I don't care I love being in Sicily mmm delicious lovely al dente knows about the pasta excuse me I'm going to burn archaea what's a famous place for catching tuna in the Mediterranean tuna have been hunted to near-extinction and now I hear there are unlicensed fishing boats and criminal gangs using spotter planes of Sicily the poor things don't have a chance I find those old tuna boats over there quite melancholic really they're rotting and not used now but they were used for Matanzas and matanza was when they would row those boats right out into the Mediterranean and wait sometimes for days and days in the open boats for the tuna to arrive during that time they'd create these vast cages of net using these anchors here to bed the net down to the seabed and the tuna would be corralled into these nets from first from one large cage to smaller to smaller till finally they got in this end chamber which was called the chamber of death they then winch that cage up to the surface and they'd all bludgeon and cut the tuna to death and I've seen film of it and there's blood everywhere it's frightful and I thought well if they were still doing it we'd probably have to film it which was not a pleasant thought and I suppose perversely but because of the decline of tuna generally they hardly ever do it anymore which in a ways a blessing but it was here in this now-defunct tuner port that I found a restaurant quite by chance that made a dish that really reflects Sicilies long-standing relationship with North Africa it's a seafood couscous and they start off with a little bit of water and use their hands to ensure that all the grains are separated then it's chunks of onion dried bay leaves ground spices mostly nutmeg black pepper and sea salt and then olive oil that all gets hand mixed so that each individual grain takes on the flavor it's really funny because I tasted the couscous the previous evening and I said we'd love to come and see you make it and she said da Verdi is a leap as edgy that means he must be crazy that's a thing you see Italians just look upon cooking as a completely normal thing requiring no explanation she uses about ten whole bulbs of garlic and pounds it into a paste the adds passata to start off the store a fistful of salt two spoons of black pepper and still more of the Nutmeg and in with the mashed garlic I'm trying to keep up with her and then parsley they do this each and every morning before the restaurant opens and now the catch of the day not the really expensive fish it's really just like making a suit to pass on as this fish is cooked till it falls off the bones because it's only about flavor and while this has been going on the couscous has had its two hours and it's done I've heard about seafood couscous so many times are foreign in fact I think that Sicily is the only place they do it I don't think the girl in Morocco what's really impressed me if the the nuances of detail in making this couscous from the sort of behind loving it at the beginning to the gentle steaming for two hours and I had it yesterday and I was so impressed just the way the grain standout when you eat it and the lovely flavor it's as good as risotto [Music] I suppose you might think this looked a bit mundane it's just couscous and fish broth but to me is perfection they'd be making it like this for 47 years the people behind me have all come from all over Sicily to try it is that famous I don't know whether I'm getting better at it but traveling around the Mediterranean relatively slowly I'm sort of getting a bit of a a nose for a good dish and I just had a feeling about this fish couscous it's just turned out to be everything I dreamed of [Music] although the Mediterranean is a very small see it's sort of it's actually a very large area in the way we think about it but funnily enough I don't tend to think of it as a sea it's almost like every part of the Mediterraneans part of it a sort of shared culture and nowhere is that more the case than with the food I don't think about Italy Greece Spain I think about olives capers tomatoes and everything's drawn together even if you go to places like like the Lebanon or turkey and you have the met thirties I'm thinking at an antipasto in Italy that there's a shared culture in cooking here next program I'm sorry Dean fishing off mondello in Sicily and then to Puglia the black and white gold truffles [Music]

Channel: BBC Documentary

Views: 774,467

Rating: 4.8643622 out of 5

Keywords: bbc documentary, documentary bbc, bbc, rick stein, rick stein full episodes, rick steins mediterranean escapes, mediterranean food, rick stein chef, cooking documentary, food documentary, sardinia documentary, sicily documentary, bbc full documentary, bbc full episodes, fish, pasta, Palermo

Id: pGWIzxSIlP0

Length: 58min 48sec (3528 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 17 2019