Good food, the Sicilian way

2018 will in future be known as the year of the Great West Norwood Cookbook Cull. But which books to get rid of, and which to keep? The Random Recipe Adventure will help us decide (you can read a bit more about the premise here). Each week, a book will be taken from the shelves, examined, and cooked from. Losers go to Oxfam – winners stay on the shelves, with a promise that they will no longer be neglected quite as much as they have been for the last decade or so.

WEEK 19

The book

The Flavours of Etna, ed. Giuseppe Maimone

How/where/when did I get it?

It was given to me by my sister-in-law

Have I used it since then?

A couple of times

What Did The Random Recipe Generator throw up?

Oven-cooked chicken with rosemary

So, what about it?

A month-by-month taster of Sicilian cooking, it’s a slim volume, with a handful of recipes for each month. There are some classics of Italian cuisine (pasta with fried courgettes, bruschetta, caponata) and others that seem, even by the ring of their names, more specialised to the locality (pasta cà muddica e anciovi, italeddu chi patate). Recipes are sparsely written, the book is attractively illustrated, and it serves, even before I’ve cooked any of the recipes within, as a basic guide to Sicilian food.

I’m naturally attracted to cookbooks based on seasons – if nothing else, they show by their very layout an understanding of how food works, the rhythms of the year, and what is or isn’t available. And the simplicity of the ingredients and methods speaks to the actual authenticity (as opposed to oh-so-fashionable faux authenticity) of the food. The introduction has this: ‘We have gone over and compiled, month by month, some of the dishes that grandmother used to prepare with simple and genuine ingredients … Today, new technologies, the haste and stress, have led us to forget not only the values but also the flavours of times past.’

Amen to that, for starters.

This book hasn’t been dolled up or glossified for the general market; there’s no cheffery or showing off; no purple prose to entice you in, and no artificially sexed up photos – just food, written about for those who are interested in the heart of the matter.

The chicken dish was simple enough to prepare, and tasted exactly as we’d expected: very good, moreish. Other dishes look promising. There’s little in here that I can’t find in other books on my shelves (Italian cooking features far more heavily than other cuisines in my collection – thanks, Mum!) but that’s not the point.

I’m keeping this book, not because it offers anything especially new or mindblowing, but because it has clearly been made with love and consideration, and because it was bought for me by someone who had (and has) the thoughtfulness to buy things she thinks other people will like.

The Verdict: Keeper or Chucker?

Keeper.