Posted by evan on Friday, May 19, 2017 in 2017 Blog post.

Experience Blog 3

As much as I have loved Italian food, I had very little idea on how the food was actually cooked. All the appetizers, pizzas, and pastas have been masterfully presented to me but last Wednesday offered an opportunity to see how our food was prepared. Our group traveled into the mountains to take a cooking class and begin to learn the art of Sicilian cooking. A word of warning: I heard the names of the various foods we cooked but I have yet to replicate them by their proper Italian names so I just described them from my culinary perspective.

To start, the owner’s house was gorgeous in terms of cooking and growing products. After exploring around the beautiful house a bit, I discovered a number of trees in his backyard, growing all kinds of fruits from lemons to oranges to fruits I’d never heard of before. The cook would use these same fruits to prepare his countless meals particularly the one we were preparing.

We began by preparing an antipasti of rice balls filled with eggplant or meat. We first made a layer of rice then added a section of the eggplant.meat and finally encased it with a layer of rice to make a neat little ball. To ensure it didn’t fall apart during the frying stage, we had to pack it down hard. Suffice to say, having 24 amateur chefs working on a meal of this size took quite a while but we had some great conversation with each other and the Italian homeowners!

Making the rice balls

After the delicious appetizers, we moved onto the first and second courses of the meal. Fresh pasta with lentils and then sausage wrapped in leaves provided the bulk of our food. Surprisingly, despite Sicilian climate usually providing warm nights, the mountains brought chilly weather. Fortunately for us though, cooking the sausages required a roaring fire which we all promptly gathered around. We finished our wonderful meal off with homemade crepes that just melted in my mouth.

Sausages in Leaves 

The cooking class was a terrific experience in learning how to prepare Sicilian food (or at least the rice balls since we were most involved with that) but it also demonstrated how important food is to the Italian culture. We spent a good 6 hours preparing the four course meal, all while talking to each other and dining. I noticed this lengthy process across most of my other meals in Cefalu, with our meals sometimes taking up to 2 or 3 hours to complete due to the time between courses and fully enjoying the atmosphere. For me in America, I usually try to grab a quick bite or spend no more than an hour at a restaurant. For Americans, the objective is to get food with conversation or atmosphere being a second priority. Here in Sicily, the food, conversation and atmosphere are all important components of the eating process. I have certainly enjoyed relaxing and taking a long time to appreciate the Italian food.

Evan Mercer