COVER TO COVER
THE SICILY COOKBOOK
By Cettina Vicenzino, Penguin Random House, $34.99
Sicily is a part of Italy but apart from it. The island’s unique cuisine owes much to its strategic position in the Mediterranean and the waves of invaders and immigrants — Greeks and Romans, Arabs and Normans, Austrians and Africans — who left their marks over the centuries. Unlike mainland cooking with its fine cuts of meat, (peasant food), a rich array of simple flavours: fruit, spices, cheeses, olives, eggplant, wild fennel and seafood, especially sardines and anchovies. Sicilian-born cook, writer and photographer Cettina Vicenzino offers meditations on history and culture, profiles of local chefs and more than 70 authentic recipes, from starters to , that make the case that if the three-cornered island isn’t the best part of Italy, it might well be the most interesting.
