SICILY

Add the clove with a little cinnamon and
fill the couscous pan, an earthenware
or metal pan with holes in it. Place the
couscous pan on a saucepan with suitable
diameter, fill it with water to 10 cm from
the rim and seal the meeting point with a
damp cloth. Cover partially and cook for 2
hours, stirring every 20 minutes.
If you use ready-cooked couscous, follow
the instructions on the packet and
flavour it with the oil. From this point the
preparation will be the same for readycooked
and steamed couscous. Revive the
sultanas in half a glass of raisin wine of
Pantelleria. Toast the almonds in a frying-
pan with a few drops of oil and chop them.
Prepare half a litre of fragrant water by
boiling for 20 minutes 1 sliced apple, a
cassia bark, the peel of half an orange and
the peel of half a lemon. Pour the couscous
into a soup dish and sprinkle it with the
fragrant water, boiled and filtered, the hot
almond milk, the melted butter and the
raisin wine used to revive the sultanas.
Add the pistachio grain, the chopped
toasted almonds, the chopped chocolate,
a little powdered cinnamon, the zuccata
in cubes, the chopped dates, the drained
sultanas, the grated peel of an orange
and half a lemon. Mix and smooth the
couscous thoroughly with a fork. Cover it
and let it cool.
You can serve it as it is or accompanied
with an orange sauce made from 2 yellow
oranges of Ribera, 20 g of icing sugar, 15
g of corn starch and the peel of an orange.
Mix it all together while cold, taking care
not to form lumps, and thicken by heating.
Enjoy the sweet cous cous with a glass of
white wine. Best choice is a dry and flavoured
wine. Sicilian, of course.
Cooking school
Pasta
with sardines
alla milanese
There’s Palermo-style pasta with
sardines, aristocratic and goldencoloured
through use of precious
saffron. And there’s that of Agrigento,
rustic and mysteriously named ’a
milanisa, Milan-style. The strange name
has given rise to a range of hypotheses
to explain the link with the city of Milan.
Personally, I’m convinced it has nothing
to do with it, and the name comes
from cuttlefish ink, or milanu
(from the Greek mélanos: black).
It is also called, in fact, pasta cu’ milanu.
It is likely, therefore, that, to colour
the pasta, cuttlefish ink was originally
used in place of saffron, which was too
expensive. It has since been replaced
with tomato, but the name remains.
45