Different types of Sicilian Recipes

If you like good food, Sicilian cuisine is well worth knowing about. Sicily is famed for its seafood. Finnochio con sarde, or fennel with sardines, is popular. Grilled swordfish is typical and small fish like red snappers are often cooked in a sweet vinegar sauce. Cuttlefish is served in its own black sauce, with pasta on the side.

An eggplant, olive, celery and caper salad called caponata is very popular as an appetizer in Sicily and there is also a version of this dish using artichoke instead of eggplant. Panella is a fried paste made from powdered or crushed garbanzo beans. You can also make maccu, a Sicilian soup recipe, with garbanzo beans. Arancine are meat or cheese stuffed rice balls, which are then fried.

Meat is very popular in Sicily, especially goat and lamb. Veal marsala is a famous Sicilian recipe and you can use chicken instead of veal for a similar result. Veal spleen sandwiches are also typically Sicilian, but these do not sound quite so tempting!

Delicious Sicilian Pizza:
Sicilian pizza is a type of pizza from Palermo in Sicily. With Sicilian pizza, or sfinciuni as it is called in the Sicilian language, the cheese goes under the toppings, rather than on top. An authentic Sicilian pizza recipe will feature chopped anchovies and pecorino cheese. Focaccia alla messinese is a variety of pizza from Messina in Sicily and this is topped with anchovies and endive.

A Sicilian pizza in the United States is normally square and has deep dough. This kind of pizza is also known as tomato pie. It is popular in Italian-American parts of New Jersey and New York, especially Utica, New York, where most of the large Italian-American population is Sicilian. Tomato pie is often served in an aluminum baking sheet.

Sicilian Gelato and Other Desserts:
Cassata is a sugary cake with a sweetened ricotta filling. Cannoli is tubular crusts with the same filling. Ricotta in Sicily is made from sheep's milk so it has a different taste from the ricotta available in the United States.
Sicilian style gelato is an intense flavored ice cream recipe which is made simply with milk, sugar, cornstarch and flavoring. The following recipe for Sicilian chocolate gelato serves six people and you will need an ice cream maker to make it.

Chocolate Gelato Sicilian Style:

You will need:
4 oz roughly chopped bittersweet chocolate
2 tablespoons cornstarch, 3/4 cup sugar, 3 cups whole milk

How to make it:

Warm 2 cups of the milk over a medium heat and remove it from the heat when it starts to simmer. Add the chocolate and stir until it melts. Mix together the cornstarch, sugar and the rest of the milk, and then pour this mixture into the hot milk and chocolate mixture.

Bring the pan to a slow simmer and cook, stirring all the time, until the mixture is thick. This will take about 10 minutes. Let the mixture cool to room temperature, then put it into a bowl, cover it and refrigerate it overnight. Process it in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.