CUCINA SICILIANA (CONRANOCTOPUS/INTERLINK)
MEATBALLS WITH WHITE WINE, LEMON AND BAY LEAVES (for 2)
There are hundreds of variations for polpette or meatballs in Sicily, as they are one of the best ways of making a little piece of tough meat both palatable and go a long way. One particularly refined and elaborate recipe with almonds, pistachios, pinenuts and cinnamon comes from Mazzarino, a medieval hamlet founded by the princes of Butera in the centre of the island, noted for beautiful churches, a ruined castle and friars accused of Mafia involvement. Under cross-examination they admitted to writing blackmail and extortion notes 'but only because the mafiosi were illiterate and did not own a typewriter.' Which has nothing to do with this recipe, but is a fascinating example of Sicilian logic.
250g/9oz minced beef, veal or pork or a mix of one part pork to two parts veal
50g/2oz grated pecorino
50g/2oz dried breadcrumbs
4 tbs fresh parsley, chopped
Zest of 1/2 lemon
Salt
1 medium egg
25g/1oz plain flour
4 bay leaves, torn
Olive oil
1 glass of white wine
Hot water
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Lemon slices and bay leaves, to decorate
1. Place the minced meat, grated cheese, breadcrumbs, parsley, lemon zest and salt in a bowl. Mix together with the egg. You can use a wooden spoon, but it's best to do it by hand, and much more satisfying to feel the mixture squelching and squeezing through your fingers.
2. Form the mixture into small, slightly squashed balls each about the size of a plum (some Sicilian cooks dip their hands in white wine before they roll out the polpette). Gently roll in the flour until lightly coated all over.
3. Heat a thin layer of oil in a pan large enough to take all the meatballs without over-crowding. Fry the meatballs over a medium heat for about 10 minutes until nicely browned on both sides. Give them a gentle shake and prod now and then to make sure they're not sticking either to the pan or each other.
4. Add the wine, turn the heat up a bit, shake the pan so the wine distributes itself fairly evenly and let the alcohol burn off for a few minutes. Then pour in enough hot water to just cover the meatballs. Add the bay leaves. Leave to bubble away over a gentle to medium heat until the sauce is well reduced and starting to become syrupy.
5. Add the lemon juice and cook a few minutes more.
6. Remove the meatballs with a slotted spoon. Place in a serving dish - spoon over some of the sticky pan juices if wished - and decorate with whole bay leaves and wafer-thin slices of lemon.
VARIATION: Simply grill the meatballs and squeeze lemon juice over them when cooked.
recipe copyright 2002 Clarissa Hyman
COFFEE IN PALERMO
Mid-summer morning, and the blinding heat of the day already dances around the edge of your senses. The sounds of daily life jangle through the blistered streets, palm-filled piazzas and labyrinthine markets. You need a coffee. The short, sharp shock that jolts the nerve endings into a state of red alert from the mainline combo of rich Arabica cut with astringent Robusta beans preferred by all Southern Italians. The cafés, already hazy with slate blue smoke, are filled with men, brooding, heavy-lidded and distantly flirtatious; they come for ristretto, a cornetto or brioscia, perhaps filled with ice-cream, topped with a snowdrift of whipped cream or dipped into a lemon granita.
Sicilian coffee is high-octane, dark as midnight and syrupy-sweet, topped with the essential swirl of crema and usually served in a miniscule cup. You could tell fortunes from the grounds. Coffee consumption and attendant rituals are etched deep into the Latin soul. It is an essential punctuation to the daily routine, and the Sicilians understand the complex interaction of bean, blend, roast, grind and brew essential for the perfect mouthful. They appreciate coffee making is a precise technique, its drinking an art, and that roasting is the science that underpins the whole rite.
The Torrefazione Termini in Palermo has been roasting coffee for over 70 years, supplying the Bar Alba, acclaimed by Gambero Rosso magazine as serving the best coffee in Italy.
The premises are unassuming: one one side, a marble service desk with grinding machine, hemmed in by bags of roasted, blended beans; on the other, for no apparent reason, a discount china counter.
The beans arrive raw, from all over the world, to be toasted in a drum roaster nearly as old as the shop, encrusted with pulleys and wheels and levers like the engine of a steam locomotive. As coffee roaster Giovanni Lo Verso explained, 'New roasters are shiny and impressive, but they don't give the same flavour. We roast the coffee the old way and it's still the best!'
All the time he talked, he was hovering around the roaster, adjusting the temperature, checking the colour of the beans and amount of oil on the surface. 'Each bean has its own roasting time. It looks simple', he said, 'but if you misjudge the length of roasting, even by seconds, then the coffee will taste like poison!'A convoluted Sicilian wave of the hand, then he continued, ' We can roast up to 250 kilos at a time, but we just make what we need in order to sell it as fresh as possible. We start at 7am and continue roasting till about 3pm.'
A cascade of steaming mahogany-going-on-ebony beans erupts onto a cooling table, like a coffee windmill. Giovanni pointed out that all the beans were highly roasted, 'Any lighter and they simply don't taste good. I know you English, you drink coffee from beans that might as well be raw!'
We started talking about brewing coffee. My friend Rosy said you have to pack the coffee tightly in with a spoon, dampen it down really well, then take a toothpick and make several holes. Why? 'I don't know, that's the way we always make it. The important thing is it always works. And you need an old coffee pot, it makes coffee better than a new one. You never feel like throwing your old pot away.'All this talk of espresso was giving everyone withdrawal symptoms. Giovanni organised thimbles of the black stuff an inch deep, promising strength without bitterness. 'Drink it, drink it'he urged. 'See - it explodes in your head like a bomb!'
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