Seeking The Wine and Food Holy Grail on Mt. Etna and in Noto

Cathy Whims on her most recent trip to Sicily.

My new business partners and I always knew that the Oven and Shaker menu would largely be pizza. After all, the restaurant’s name refers to our massive wood burning oven shipped directly from Milan (I call it the Bentley of pizza ovens).  But we also decided that fried antipasti would be an important aspect of our menu as well. When the opportunity to travel to Sicily with my friend Faith Willinger, food editor for the online Atlantic Magazine, I thought what better way to research Italian street food than to visit the place that elevates this cuisine to its highest. 

October 1, 2011      

Day one of my ten day food adventure and research trip for my new bar and pizzeria.

Arrived in Catania, Sicily through Rome –There are an astonishing number of flights between the two cities and I know this because we missed a late afternoon flight and were still able to get there that night.

Awoke at the lovely Donna Carmelo resort with a view of Mt. Etna and the sun rising over the Ionian Sea (even sleep starved I became excited).

Met with Guido Scofa, a forward thinking and elegantly spoken heirloom fruit tree farmer at his palmento in Zafferano.

He is slowly restoring and planting trees with aid from the Italian government.

After talk of green clementines and the rare zu Matteo grape that only grows on Mt. Etna (which he hopes he can be the first to make into wine) we followed him on his scooter to one of his favorite seaside restaurants, La Grotta, in Santa Maria La Scala.

He chose huge, but tender, calamari, gamberi and occhi di bue (a rare and prized mollusk) which they combined and weighed at the kitchen counter together, one price fits all.

They were swept away for an insalata di mare, quickly boiled and dressed with lemon, oil and parsley. 

After much discussion he chose a fairly large fish to grill that fed all seven of us, again garnished only with good olive oil and parsley.

You can choose to sit inside in a tiny actual grotto or outside overlooking the working harbor.

We enjoyed a crisp Carricante white wine, a lovely Saturday afternoon.

We then moved on to Linguaglossa, on the northeast side on Mt. Etna at the Shalai resort, a beautifully restored hotel with health spa and a fantastic restaurant.

After glasses of Murgo, a sparkling wine from Etna that tastes like you are drinking a red wine, we tucked into spaghetti with a puree of wild cime di rapa (bitter greens) with garlic and chili on a bed of black olive puree and followed that with the slow food Presidio sanctioned Nero di pork stinco (shank), meltingly tender and delicately sauced. 

How do the Italians make their potatoes so delicious, crunchy on the outside, but creamy on the inside? Determined to find out.

Per bere, Etna Bianco from Alfredo Graci (who we are soon to be reunited with after meeting him in the delightful San Francisco wine shop, Biondivino, a year ago) and the fantastic bright, light bodied blend of Nerello Capuccio and Nerello Mascarello.

Tomorrow Taormina. Dreaming of “Mighty Aphrodite”.