On this page you'll find recipes of and interesting information about typical Sicilian food.

At the moment you can enjoy reading about the Sicilian caponata and the frutta martorana.

Warm greetings from Sicily,

Laura e Martijn
on-Sicily

One of the most famous Sicilian dishes is probably the caponata. This dish ("capunata" in Sicilian) is based on the Catalan caponada. The Catalans probably based their recipe on the French ratatouille, the Maltese kapunata or the moussaka found in the eastern Mediterranean.

In the 1700's the caponata was a side dish to be eaten with the "capone", a Mediterranean fish. Because a lot of poor people had no money to buy the fish, the caponata became a dish on its own and the fish was replaced by chopped fried eggplant. That's how the caponata antica was born, the first recipe for the caponata. There are about 36 local variations on the recipe, with some versions adding olives, carrots and green bell peppers, and others adding potatoes, or pine nuts and raisins.

In the 1950's the caponata became an appetizer and this tradition remains the same.

Wash the eggplant (do not peel it). Cut it into 1" cubes and leave them for 30 minutes in salty water. Place the eggplant cubes in a colander. Set the colander in the sink and put a plate inside the colander so it is in direct contact with the eggplant. Place a weight, such as some heavy canned goods, for about half an hour on the plate so the plate will press down on the eggplant (the purpose is to squeeze some of the sometimes bitter juices out of the eggplant).

In the mean time chop the celery stalks and blanch them quickly. Bake them in a little bit of oil and then dry them. Wipe off the eggplant to remove as much of the salt and clinging juices as you can. Bake the eggplant cubes in oil until they become nice and brown. Leave them to dry and cool off on some kitchen paper.

Dissolve the sugar in the balsamic vinegar.

Chop the onions into small pieces and bake them gold in some oil. Add the celery, the green olives, the capers, the pine nuts, the raisins, the tomato sauce, some fresh basilicum, salt and pepper. Let it simmer for 10-15 minutes. Add the balsamic vinegar and sugar mix to the eggplant mixture and reduce the liquid by half. The mixture should be thickened to "dip" consistency. Take away from the fire and let the "caponata" cool in a bowl. The caponata should be refrigerated overnight and brought back to room temperature before serving.

(*) If you don't like to bake in olive oil you can use peanut oil instead.

The first to make marzipan sweets were the Etruscans. Today the recipe is the same as in the 13th century. "Marzapane", the Italian word for marzipan comes from the Arabic marzaban. That was a wooden box used as a container for sweets. In the end the sweets took the name from the wooden box. In Sicily marzipan is also called "pasta reale", because one of the kings, Ruggero II, loved it and used to order it very often.

In 1193 Eloisa Martorana built a Church and abbey in Palermo, called Chiesa di Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio. After a while it was renamed the Chiesa della Martorana after the lady who had it built.

One day the nuns of the abbey were waiting for the Bishop to come and visit them. Because it was autumn the trees around the church and the convent were without fruit and they all had yellow, red and brown leafs. The nuns wanted to render the trees more beautiful for the Bishop and decided to hang some 'fake' fruits in the branches. They made lots of lovely marzipan fruits and colored them vividly before hanging them in the trees.

The nuns kept on making these sweets for celebrations and after a while the marzipan treats took the name of Martorana and were called frutta (di) martorana.

Put all the ingredients into a bowl and mix them together until it becomes a uniform mixture. When the mixture has the consistency of play dough it can be used to make the marzipan treats. To make the several fruit and vegetable shapes, you can use special moulds or you make the shapes by hand.

Color the fruits with vegetable colors. Mix a couple of grams of the colors you want to use with some amaretto or a mixture of water and amaretto (the more alcohol the stronger the color). Use a different paint brush for every single color.

For some fruits like strawberries, oranges, and mandarins you can buy fake leafs for an even more realistic look.