Sicily's Food & Wine, Healthy Mediterranean Diet

Traditional Cuisine on Italian Island, Savoury, Dessert & Cheese

Jun 30, 2009

Reputed for its gorgeous produce, culinary skills and rich cultural past, Sicily enjoys a healthy Mediterranean diet with a few treats for good measure.

Sicily is a great place for anyone who likes a healthy Mediterranean diet. The sea swarms with fish, the land is dotted with olive and citrus groves, almond trees, fruit and vegetable gardens and vineyards thriving on fertile volcanic slopes. Markets are awash with fresh produce and down in the lanes, the local trattoria serve Sicily’s food and wine at their very best.

From savoury dishes to cheese and wine, Sicily’s traditional cuisine was shaped by waves of invaders over the centuries. The Greeks brought olives, grapes and wine making, the Romans pulses and grain for pasta, the Arabs almonds and fruit, plus artichokes, cinnamon, saffron, sesame and an unwavering taste for sweet desserts.

Sicily’s Healthy Mediterranean Diet, Traditional Cuisine on Italian island

Sicily’s healthy Mediterranean diet is based on fresh produce and olive oil with only a little meat, mostly lamb or goat, or the acclaimed veal Marsala. Favourite starters include caponata, a hot dish or salad of aubergine, capers, olive and celery, panella or chick pea fritters, and crocche, potato dumplings with cheese, parsley and egg. Artichokes and aubergines are popular in season as are the sweet glossy tomatoes of Pachino.

Pizza alla Norma is named after Bellini’s opera and there’s plenty of pasta but fish comes top along the coast. Grilled swordfish, snapper, cuttle fish cooked in its own ink and sardines with fennel are delicious healthy choices.

Sicily offers a rich variety of cheese. Pecorino, made from ewe’s milk, and Caciocavallo are often grated on pasta dishes while Canestrato is served as a table cheese. Piacentinu from central Sicily comes from ewe’s milk flavoured with saffron and in the Ragusa province, Ragusano owes its taste to Modica cows grazing outdoors year round. Ricotta and Provola, which can be smoked, are found everywhere.

Sicilian wines are generally strong and full bodied, sure to reduce cholesterol if claims are true. They range from the fortified Marsala to Malvasia in the north east, the highly popular red Nero d’Avola and Etna wines. There are liqueurs made from almond and prickly pear and a fiery grappa distilled from grape must.

Mediterranean Fruit and Sweet Sicilian Desserts

Peaches, melons, grapes, pomegranates or apricots, summer fruit are abundant, bursting with vitamins as they ripen in the sun. Blood oranges are particularly delicious, fresh from street stalls and carts, or squeezed into juice as visitors relax on the café terrace.

Among the favourite desserts are cannoli, or ricotta and sugar pastry tubes, cassata and pasta reale, the attractive marzipan sweetmeats coloured and shaped to look like fruit. Ice cream, they say, was invented by the Romans quenching their thirst with the snows of Etna and comes flavoured with jasmine, pistachio, hazelnut, mulberry and more.

Flavoured crushed ice, or granita, is pure heaven on a hot day, and there’s Modica chocolate from Ragusa and honey from the Iblei mountains.

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