[Sca-cooks] Sicilian Pizza

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Dec 12, 2005, at 1:28 PM, Michael Gunter wrote:

>> My local pizzeria makes a Sicilian pie with onions and crumbs  
>> with  olive oil instead of cheese, but unfortunately I don't think  
>> they're  open this early...
>
> It's interesting how I always see things advertised as "Sicilian"  
> that I
> never encountered in my year in Sicily. I guess it's kind of like  
> everything
> is now "Tuscan" whether someone in Tuscany would recognize it or
> not.

I was grousing to my son the other day that advertisers will now  
shamelessly add the letters "XP" to any piece of technology in the  
hopes of making it seem cool (which I find exceptionally amusing  
given my feelings about Windows, but that's for another forum).

Then, of course, comes the plethora of recipes classified as "Asian"  
when in fact they represent combinations of ingredients no single  
culture in Asia would recognize as their own. Stuff like this is very  
common and has been for quite a long time.

I referred to this pizza as Sicilian primarily because it's  
recognizably the same dough and pan they use for what is sold as  
Sicilian pizza around here: thicker, sort of fluffy inside, and with  
an almost fried texture to the crust because of additional olive oil  
either in or spread on the dough before baking. I can't say how close  
to any actual Sicilian pizza this is, but they sell it under the name  
sfingione, and I find recipes webbed for sfincione di Palermo (and  
others) that seem reasonably close.

> This pizza sounds interesting but I never encountered anything like
> it in central/southern Sicily. It might be popular in Palermo or  
> Agrigento
> but I never encountered it in any of the restaurants or bars.
>
> Pizza that I encountered in Sicily was a small round with little  
> dabs of
> melted cheese, whole hotdogs, eggs and pools of olive oil. These were
> oven-baked before oven-baking was trendy. After awhile you got to
> like the kind of salty taste of the ashes. The toppings were sparce  
> and
> basically used to flavor the bread instead of the bread supporting the
> toppings. They did use carmalized onions on some versions or thinly
> sliced ham shavings.

The only part of the above that surprises me at all is the hot dog  
reference.

> Pasta was also a surprise to us Americans. It was a large bowl of  
> noodles
> topped with around a tablespoon of sauce. Again, the pasta is the  
> thing,
> not the sauce.

Yes, well, when the pasta is fresh and hand-made, or even good- 
quality factory-made and not excessively old, it can have plenty of  
flavor. It's not unlike the principle that says you can eat hot fresh  
bread with just salt and olive oil -- still one of my favorite methods.

Adamantius




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04