Sicily is one of the most famous Italian regions, but I think a lot of people know very little about its food. Let us know if this common Sicilian seasoning technique surprised you!

@sebeckley

2 ай бұрын

Fronds. It's the fennel fronds.

@diannanoe9017

2 ай бұрын

No not at all. I love all that, but I do know so many people that hate raisins. I think their mom didn't soak them.

@mrkiplingreallywasanexceed8311

2 ай бұрын

Oooh you had me at anchovies 😂❤

@margariteolmos3457

2 ай бұрын

Love it!

@marlenesmith5005

2 ай бұрын

When will Eva's Cookbook be available? Love her!

When Eva first said 'pasta of the bad weather', I heard 'pasta of the bed wetter' 🤣

Sometimes I want toasted bread crumbs, but don’t want to dirty a pan. I have found that they toast perfectly and quickly in the microwave. I mix some olive oil into the crumbs and put them into the microwave for a few seconds. Watch them closely because they can burn if you leave them in too long. The end product is very crunchy, much crunchier than bread crumbs done in a frying pan.

@janetmackinnon3411

2 ай бұрын

Thanks for the tip.

In middle eastern food, toasted pine nuts, almonds and yellow raisins are often dressed in top of meat and rice dishes. The sweetness from the raisins brings a nice contrast to the dish.

Those are fennel fronds :D

Your videos make me feel so good. Watching how you combine so much love, education, and humor together is so incredibly uplifting in a world of so much negativity. Keep up the great work!

@PastaGrammar

2 ай бұрын

Wow, thank you!

@nanettedavidson8949

2 ай бұрын

Well said, couldn't agree more.

The intro cracked me up!😂

I planted wild fennel in my backyard a few years ago and it comes back every year in new places. You can get the seeds from Seeds of Italy.

@helenswan705

2 ай бұрын

Indeed it seeds freely. Pretty as it is, if you don't want it everywhere and forever, take the flower heads off, take the seedheads off. The seeds are lovely green as well as ripe. Maybe the flowers too? I have not tried them.

I would guess that Pasta Ru Malu Tempu gets its name because in bad weather the fishing boats either couldn't get out of port, or couldn't back in to land their catch. It seems like an alternate version of Pasta con le Sarde for when you couldn't get the sardines.

@antonellacusimano7070

2 ай бұрын

I agree

The pasta is "swinchy" absolutely a Pasta Grammar tee-shirt!!!

@ElNath645

2 ай бұрын

And the chocolate blood pudding was very "mooshies" 🤣

My mom is full Sicilian, and sometimes made dishes using the breadcrumbs, raisins, and nuts. Since I was born in the States, I thought that was a bit odd. I had no idea it was a Sicilian thing, lol. Thank you!!

This is my favorite channel. I want to do the pasta grammar tour so bad.😢

@MelvisVelour

2 ай бұрын

DO IT! We went last fall and have many, many wonderful memories including meeting the one, the only MAMA ROSA! And having her amazing polpete...there really are no words about how moisty and perfect they were...definitely NOT swinchy

Still the best cooking channel on KZread; thanks for another awesome vid.

A big hello, from me. I have just watched 2 now 3 of your videos, and have subscribed. You two are awesome . I am a Canadian living in Sicily. I'm 72 and am finding it hard to learn the mixture of Italian and Sicilian language. I love it here and thanks to the two of you, I am learning how to make Sicilian / Italian food. Love you both. God bless.

My mom‘s family is from a fishing village close to Palermo. Thanks for the great memories now I have work to do cooking to do.

Great video. I am extremely proud of my Sicilian ancestry and I love discovering new things about Sicilian cuisine and culture.

I can't tell how long I have been searching for my Sicilian mom's pasta c'ancovia. This is it. Thank you!!!

I absolutely, like most people probably, LOVE the sweet and savory combination. When I was a child, I hated raisins but as I've grown up, I love cooking with them. Every one of these recipes look incredible and I love the whimsical way Ava approached this week's video. I love seeing her laugh at herself and not take it so seriously. What a fun one guys!

This was one of the best new pasta dishes I have had in a while. I love bucatini and am glad to have another sauce to have on it

Having Italian heritage, I enjoy your channel so much! Learning that I know such a small amount about the food excites my inner child, every Sunday. ❤

Oh my goodness! I need to try these, especially the eggplant dish! Thanks bunches!

Please make Pasta con le sarde! One of my family's favorites!

Your infomercial at the beginning was brilliant, especially with the plastic fork! Interesting that one of the ingredients you needed was wild fennel. When I first visited Southern California, I was amazed at all the wild fennel around me. I thought there must’ve been some Italians running around at some point. Also, as Italians stuck in the middle of the country, Chicago, to be more precise, one of the great and free substitutes for sardines were freshwater smelts. When they were running in Lake Michigan, my older brothers would come home with bushels of them.

Sicilian born and raised in Sicily here, now living in the US. Thank you so much for this! As soon as I started to watch the video I thought "sarde a beccafico", and when you said you can't (obviously) easily find sarde in AZ, I was like "swap them for eggplant"! I feel so seen 😂 . Eva, your understanding and respect for Sicilian food is beyond even that of most Sicilians I know. As a side note, when you whipped out the bayleaves I got emotional: my grandparents had a bayleaf tree in their land when I was a kid and the flavor of fresh bayleaf is some of the most core sensorial memories I have to these days. My grandma used fresh bayleaves instead of basil for her tomato sauce (side note on the "sweet tooth" of Sicilians, she would add a teaspoon of sugar to increase sweetness and a pinch of baking soda to remove acidity), and the "acqua vuddruta cull'alloro" was the go-to infusion when someone had stomachache. Thank you for bringing those memory back. I do miss fresh bayleaves a lot.

Watching from central Portugal...the soft wild fennel fronds are everywhere at the moment! Can't wait to give this a try! just love this channel, and totally agree with all the positive comments! At 74 I'm still more than ready to try new flavours!!

Ava, I want to tell you,I think your one of the finest cooks I know!!!You have such finesse and knowledge of soo many recipes !!! Every time you prep different dishes bread, desserts etc, I wish I could sample it!! I

Watching from England. I need to make Pasta Ru Malu Tempu every. (We have had maybe five days without rain this year). Thanks for the recipe!

Fate un video così per ogni regione d’Italia 🥳

A pleasure to watch you guys on Sunday night and get my dose of real Italian! As a kid we saw our Italian families every weekend and my Mom, who was from Roseto Valfortore in Fogia, made fun and fabulous parties for everyone. Miss those days! We had a beautiful childhood though. Love your videos. Thank you!

I will absolutely be making these. My Nonno was from Carini and my Nonna was from Monreale. I know they’ll be looking down and smiling. Thank you from my heart.

this is your second video i see from sicily. you are really good at cooking our food. hi from Palermo ❤

The cuisine of Sicily is very fascinating indeed. As a Scandinavian, I find it particularly interesting how the Normans (who were descendants of the Vikings) influenced the cuisine and agriculture. There are certain things we know for sure, others we can only speculate about. One thing that strikes me is that although Sicily is not particularly suitable for dairy production, such products have been immensely popular for centuries on the island (while the recipes in this video don't display this trait, an extremely popular dish like pasta alla Norma sure does, not to speak of ice cream and desserts). In sharp contrast to Sicily, Scandinavia is very suitable for breeding livestock and we do know the Vikings consumed a lot of dairy products. Archaeologists have found remnants of barns with room for 100 cows - remarkable considering that Viking settlements were very small. These consumption patterns remain; Scandinavians of today are among the world's leading milk drinkers and the Danes eat more cheese per capita than any other nationality. Butter and cream are used a lot in traditional Scandinavian cooking. It is, of course, impossible to tell for sure if the appetite for dairy products in today's Sicily is a result of the region's ties to Scandinavia, but it's not unlikely and when it comes to food traditions, old habits die hard.

I love your videos because you cook just like my family. So many different dishes and twists, all of the different ingredient combinations. This is how most Italians I know cook. So many people love Italian food, but many folks do not know that it is far more creative and diverse than what is commonly thought in popular food culture.

Fresh sardines are sublime in any dish.

Pasta Con Sarde is always good!😋😋😋

I would never think to combine all that into 1 dish 😮

omg that eggplant dish looks delectable! I can hardly wait to taste it! Thank you.

my new favorite cooking channel!!! Grazie!!

How interesting!!! Textures and contrasts of flavours!! 😊

Great topic would like to see more regions Thank you!

Io faccio le zeppole cresciute con uvetta, pinoli e poi una volta fritte insaporite con miele e vino cotto. Le stesse si possono fare senza lo zucchero aggiungendo acciughe salate. E faccio anche le braciolettine alla messinese. Complimenti per le ricette che hai realizzato.

As a vegetarian friend I thank you for the melanzane recipe! I knew there had to be at least one or vegetarians in Sicily.

Thank you for this great recipe! Takes me back to my roots.

😂….”beat the meat” with Harper’s 👀! I’m laughing and salivating through this whole video! “Bad weather Pasta” is going to be hitting my plate and palette this week. I adore pine nuts and raisins…❤

@RACHEL2320

2 ай бұрын

The look on Harper's face made me laugh too!

Omg..looks amazing...will be cooking these soon! You 2 ROCK!!

I pinoli sono anche tipici della cucina ligure, li usiamo praticamente per tutto.

Love, love, love! You are an inspiration. Farmers markets will be opening soon...so many ideas due to you. Thank you!❤

If she threw the salad at the camera then tipped the table, I would have believed she was Sicilian 😂😂😂

Wow, everything looks amazing! Bravi ! ❤

Thank you Eva and Harper..☺️ it's always entertaining and interesting to watch your videos, not to mention educational! 👏🧡✨️

@PastaGrammar

2 ай бұрын

Glad you like them!

Hi, white raisins are actually called sultanas I believe. Love your show! You are the best. Xx

Great intro! Eva looks especially great in this video! I didn't know Siciliy had a thing for raisins, learn something new every day

Thanks. Great recipes. Great video. I suggest adding Peperoni alla Siciliana for one more raisins, pine nuts and bread crumbs dish

What a delicious pasta dish made with the Sicilian trinity and fennel fronds. Buon' appetito. Yum yum! Great dish Eva.

In New Mexico we can get local piñon or we can buy pine nuts from China (at Costco); I am skeptical of any food imported from China and there's no guarantee that the local piñon are really local. Pignoli are very expensive also. I know it's not the same, but I sometimes use walnuts or other nuts.

@rochelles.8387

2 ай бұрын

I didn't know Costco's pine nuts were from China. Thanks for sharing that.

@helenswan705

2 ай бұрын

same in UK. Pine nuts are hideously expensive.

You two are too cute! Love your commercial intro to the Sicilian survival kit! Now that’s Sicilian!😂🤣😁😝

That intro was one of your best! While the raisin, pine nut, bread crumb combo may be Sicilian, it migrated because there are some people from Campania who add that mixture to their meatballs, and certainly in the filling for braciole. We used to have a restaurant in Pittsburgh called "Cucina Flegrea," and it referred to the area where this cuisine was popular. We call that part of the fennel the fronds.

I absolutly loved the gastro- history lesson, very interesting! The explanation comments and obviously the recipies...

Just got back from a week in Sicily today. Our first trip there - it’s awesome! Everyone was really warm and friendly; the food was amazing; and the weather was mid twenties Celsius everyday. Somewhat devastated to be back in the UK but glad to see this video.

That looks soooooo good!

loved this recipe, made it last night

Mix Tuna with anchovy bring out lots of flavor.

The spiedini Siciliani I first had as _involtini alla Siciliana_ in a restaurant in Palermo's Mercato della Vucciria. Main difference is that they were, as far as I could tell, shallow fried rather than baked. That's certainly the way I reproduced them when I got home.

I am a 72 year old grandma raised on Sicilian cooking. This program has inspired me to cook Sicilian again! However, my mother almost never used raisins, but a lot of breadcrumbs in everything.

I love Sicilian food. Please do a video on canned sardines,fennel,raisins, etc. with pasta. Zitoni #1? Eva’s hair !!!! My god it’s so beautiful.

Not sure I can put my finger on it, but this episode is way most one of my favorites! So fun! And aside from that, omg every dish looks soooooo darn delicious! Gonna make the past tonight, perhaps with some tinned sardines. Drooling indeed!

My Sicilian father loved to make this a couple of times a week, my favorite fish is Anchovies, I eat them from the jar or put them in bread.

The beginning today made me laugh out loud. Too cute!

Yes I am very surprised and I am from Providence, Rhode Island! Thank you for the video. I just made my broccoli Sicilian!

The PASTA RU MALU TEMPU RECIPE sounds amazing to me. I can just imagine the intense flavor of anchovies, mellowed by the sweetness of the raisins with the slight crunch of the bread crumbs and pine nuts plus the freshness the fennel fronds would add. Would you do another video on vegetables? With the weather warming up I'm craving more vegetables/lighter foods.

@PastaGrammar

2 ай бұрын

Try the pasta, it's seriously amazing! And we'll see what we can do, as things are warming up we're also craving lighter options

I grew up with Sicilian grandparents and every birthday my grandma Katie would make spiedini with me. Tomorrow is Mother's Day and I'll be making my mom a Sicilian ricotta cheesecake.

I love anchovy paste😊 In my family, we make a pasta sauce with anchovy paste, but we just cook the anchovies down into a paste. It has an amazing flavor😊

Learned so much today! As a person who hasn’t tried too many eggplant dishes (bad experience ruined it) I think this one might convert me! My mouth was watering too and I was just watching! These look so interesting and delicious! Thank you for a great, fun video ❤❤❤👏👏👏

@helenswan705

2 ай бұрын

Do try. I didnt used to like aubergine (I am in UK), I was converted when it was finally cooked soft enough.

Fennel grows wild in Southern California. We planted it in our garden only once, but we had it every year. It volunteered profusely. I loved to throw it fresh onto coals when grilling chicken. Everyone thought it was the best chicken they had ever tasted. And it was one of the simplest things to do. By the way the fronds are leaves.

What a very enjoyable episode you two! Such an interesting combination of texture and flavor! Bread crumbs, pine nuts, and raisins. What could be a good binder to include in such a tasty trilogy to bake as is? The gift of this episode has to be that awakening of the thinking cap to try something different! -Bob...

I love this video! I definitely want to try the Eggplant because I enjoy Eggplant and the Buccatini with the Beef. Those would be a good combination for my client who loves Buccatini and a little bit of meat. The flavor combination sounds so much like a Thanksgiving Dressing my Grandmother used to make. The raisins added a dimension of flavors that are incredible together. TY Two! Enjoy you so much! 💚❤️

Eva is by far my favourite Italian cook these days. And heard bed wetter to😂 to funny

I'm from Croatia! So extra greetings if that was the Ragusa you meant

Great presentation, as usual. Educational too - I've just found out that the rest of the world doesn't call white grape raisins 'sultanas'.

The eggplant dish looks yummy 😋

" That's why we invented the Sicilian Kit Survivor!" I love Eva and I love this food!

My Grandmother from Abruzzi added raisins to the ricotta filling for lasagna with Marinara sauce and in meatballs. She also used pine nuts and raisins in stuffed veal pocket.

This reminds me of the cauliflower pasta recipe with bucatini. I need to make that one again.

I found some wild fennel growing on the sidewalk near my house and used that.

Now I'm really hungry those dishes looked delicious, you talked about the sardines and I wished to see them as well

@PastaGrammar

2 ай бұрын

It's kind of funny because right after we shot this, Eva found some fresh sardines in the area so we had it for dinner last night!

As my nonni came from Campania, the lard cracked me up. It’s funny because it’s true. 😂❤

Nice T-shirt Harper! I love Hayden Flour Mill. I buy the Sonoran white wheat for tortillas.

@PastaGrammar

2 ай бұрын

Yeah, we went and visited them in Phoenix and wow, what incredibly nice people they are! Good people make good food

Oh my goodness, these dishes look amazing. I must try, and may my culinary skills do them justice lol 🙏

Ha ha. I was in Sicily last fall, incredible food.

Great show kids!

Dude, you’re sporting a Hayden Flour Mills shirt. I was just at the Gilbert location today talking to Jeff Zimmerman. That’s so cool.

Love your hair it is beautiful and your cooking is amazing the fennel tops are called fronds

Oh good grief, I haven't seen 5 crown raisins or sultanas for over thirty years. What a blast from the past, so nice to know someone somewhere still has standards above those of the Aus supermarket monopoly.

Wondeful!!! Why don't you try to do this for every italian region or province? For example a serie of dishes from piedmont with garlic: lingua col bagnet verd, carpione (uova, petto di pollo, trota), bagna cauda.

Wow that is a pasta dish!!!

From personal experience. There is no need to soak the raisins beforehand; they'll rehydrate while everything cooks in the pan. Fennel fronds don't taste like anything when cooked; use dill instead.

My family was from Catania. Their influence was mainly Greek. The sweetness features more on the west coast, Palermo et al. My nonna never cooked with cous cous, or used raisons and pine nuts.

@perthguitar5160

2 ай бұрын

Same here. It is very regional. My family are from province of Messina. Never used any of that stuff but occasionally breadcrumbs.

Amazing! So happy for a vegetarian dish… just love how much fun you had with this video.. pasta comedians🤪

The use of bay leaves brought to mind something mother made when we were kids. Do you ever make fegatelli? I haven't had it in ages, I'd love to see you make this!

🙋🏼‍♀️🕊. I’m so amazed. I have never seen this made but,buy , my mother. . My mother made this and her mom and my self. My mother passed when I was 32… my mother was born in the early 1920s Hopefully someone will try it.