I have been part of a committee which has helped to develop Sweets: Tastes and Traditions from Many Cultures exhibition and the related one day festival event on 18 March 2012.
Sweets: Tastes and Traditions from Many Cultures exhibition and the related one day festival event on 18March 2012 at The Immigration Museum.
Represented in the exhibition are the Indian, Italian, Japanese, Mauritian and Turkish communities of Victoria.
To promote the Sweets: Tastes and Traditions from Many Cultures exhibition and the related one day festival event on 18March 2012, The Immigration Museum invited a group of Melbourne’s most celebrated bloggers to sample a large array of sweets from the communities represented in the exhibition. These are the Indian, Italian, Japanese, Mauritian and Turkish communities of Victoria.
Rosaria Zarro and I were the representatives for the Italian Community.
Sweets: tastes and traditions from many culturesexhibition
Explore the history and cultural significance of sweet food and find out why sweetness is important to so many. Different cultures use sweets for diverse purposes, including marking important rituals, celebrations and life events. Discover special sweet foods from Indian, Italian, Japanese, Mauritian and Turkish cultures, the ways in which many of them are made and the significance they hold. Featuring fascinating objects, lively photographs, multimedia and recipes, this exhibition will reveal unique perspectives on foods of the sweet variety.
Date: 15 March 2012 to 7 April 2013
Cost: Included with Museum entry ($10 for adults, children and concessions FREE)
Sweets festival
Succumb to your sweet cravings at this delectable one-day festival of food and culture, collaboratively developed with sweet-loving Victorian communities. Explore fascinating shared and unique traditions, rituals and contemporary practices surrounding sweet cuisines and refreshments. Enjoy a feast of toothsome food stalls, music and dance performances, cooking demonstrations and workshops.
Date: 11am to 4pm, Sunday 18 March 2012
Cost: Included with Museum entry ($10 for adults, children and concessions FREE)
I received congratulatory email today informing me that my website has been recognised in the Sicily Local Expert Award- Charming Lady.
I feel very pleased and hope that you will look at some of the other websites that have been chosen for this award.
Photo above: Marisa in Via Bellini, Catania.
This is the email:
Dear Marisa
I hope this email finds you well.
I wanted to drop you an email to let you know that your website has been recognised in the Charming Italy Local Expert Awards, as we think your website offers some good information and advice for people looking to visit Sicily.
At Charming Italy we are constantly on the lookout for blogs and websites that offer incredibly useful information for visitors.
We thought it was about time that these sites were given the recognition they deserve, and so we created the Local Experts Awards which covers Sicily, Puglia and Sardinia.
A great Sicilian blog which is all about food, food, food! Packed full of recipes and photos of mouth-watering Sicilian dishes which will tempt any would be visitor
We have created a badge (see above) which (should you wish to) you can place on your site to let your readers know about your award.
I’d like to take the opportunity to congratulate you, and I hope you have a lovely week.
The majority of people love SWEETS and even those who are not gluttons for all sweet things are tempted by some sweets.
For example I am not a great fan of cakes nor large quantities of puddings but I do like dolcetti (Italian for little sweet things) like biscuits, especially Sicilian almond biscuits and torrone.
Pasticceria Erice (Sicily)
How many of you have tried giuggiulena or know what it is? What about pignolata? I love small moist ricotta filled cannoli …. All Sicilian, all exceptional, traditional and exquisitely made….and where else (Melbourne and the world!!) besides Sicily will you be able to sample these sweets?
Pistacchio treat from Dolcetti in Melbourne
You can taste them in Melbourne at the small and brilliant pasticceria, Dolcetti, where Marianna di Bartolo carries on a Sicilian tradition of exquisite sweet-making inherited from her family. But you will also be able to taste and purchase her sweets at the Sweets Festival at the Immigration Museum on Sunday 18 March 2012 (11am to 4pm).
Dolcetti’s Marianna Di Bartolo, her sweets are ‘to die for’
And Marianna will not be the only one offering her sweets and demonstrating some of her craft. This one-day festival of food and culture is a feast of toothsome sweet (and savoury) food stalls, film, music and dance performances, cooking demonstrations and workshops. along with Marianna’s sweets there will be baklava, mochi, moti choor ladoo and napolitains as well as numerous other delicious treats, along with flavoured teas, coffee and sherbet.
During the day there will be short tours of the Sweets: Tastes and Traditions from Many Cultures Exhibition – this exhibition begins on 15 March 2012 to 7 April 2013.
For the past six months I have been part of a group coordinating the Sweets Exhibition at the Immigration Museum. This is a Museum Victoria project and is also part of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. 2012.
The Museum worked collaboratively with a number of Victorian communities to produce an exhibition and festival themed around sweets, highlighting shared cultural traditions, rituals and contemporary practices.The Italian, Indian, Mauritian, Turkish and Japanese communities have been invited to participate. Obviously I am a member of the Italian group.
These communities were chosen because of their differences in food traditions and their geographical diversity. I have always been interested in the historical and cultural significance of ingredients and cooking methods and the culinary variations between cultures and even within the same culture.
Readers of my blog and my book will know about my interest in the origins of Sicilian recipes shaped by the Greeks, Arabs, French and Spaniards. Mauritius, Turkey, Japan and India all have unique histories and very different cultural and climatic influences that are reflected in what they eat.
Cannoli in Palermo (Sicily)
There will be performances throughout the day at the Sweets Festival at the Immigration Museum on Sunday 18 March. Naturally there will be Italian performers but these are only some of the performances from the other cultures represented:
Tara Rajkumar Natya, Sudha Dance Company. The performance explores treats of two of the Hindu Gods – Ganesha’ s modakam dumplings and Krishna’s favourite pudding pal payasam.
A dance theatre performance by the Turkish Ekol School of Arts. Discover the importance of baklava at an Anatolian wedding.
A musical concert with a Japanese shiobue flute and taiko drumming from the Fuefukuro trio.
Sego Lebrasse and dancers will present a Mauritian sega.
The Bumbroo Dance of the Bumblebee by the Kashmiri Pandits Cultural Association.
A Japanese tea ceremony demonstration with the Chado Urasenke Tankokai Melbourne Association.
Small cassate Ragusa (Sicily)
I have just returned from a trip to Vietnam and loved sampling different foods and flavours from the street stalls to traditional eateries to sophisticated dining rooms. Desserts, as we know them, are not generally eaten in Vietnam. Meals are most likely to be finished with a selection of fabulous fresh fruit, if anything. But sweet snacks are available on the street all day long. Sweet cakes, snacks and specialties such as coloured glutinous rice enclosing sweet bean paste, are also made for special occasions, Buddhist festivals and other celebrations.
Sweet stall in Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam)
It seems that wherever you go, there is always something sweet to eat. They may not always be nutritious but they always nourish some part of us.
On the whole the places I have eaten in Vietnam have been of high standard. There are many restaurants to choose from and as in Australia or when I am in other parts of the world, I am very selective before deciding where to eat – this can take some researching and sometimes even checking the place out beforehand.
I have perched on small stools to eat in some of the street stalls and have eaten in a bia hoi (beer hall) where Vietnamese men seem to consume large quantities of beer. Sometimes I have not known what I have been eating-; sometimes what I have indicated I wanted has not been on the English menu (if there is one) – I have pointed to what others are eating.
We are all familiar with traditional Vietnamese food – dumplings and spring rolls. and there was certainly much of these to be seen.
But I have also eaten at the high price restaurants and have particularly enjoyed the more sophisticated “fusion” food served in many eateries – most of these has been in Hanoi.
Just like the rest of the world, simple traditional Vietnamese recipes have responded to trends and outside influences. Like in Australia, simple traditional recipes have been enhanced by progress: the increase in printed media, travel, availability of produce and its inhabitants (first mainly European, then Asian migration and more recently from South America, Africa and the Middle East). With easier access to books, the internet, more opportunities to travel and engage with travellers, Vietnamese chefs are adapting and elaborating on age-old staples. As expected there is a strong French influence in the cuisine but also that from different neighbouring Asian countries; the food in these restaurants is described as ‘fusion’ food or ‘modern’ Vietnamese food.
However, last night in Ho Chi Minh City I ate:
Spicy clear grilled beef with kumquat, mustard sprouts, lemongrass, herbs and small, white eggplant (raw).
Mustard leaf rolls with prawns and crunchy vegetables (carrots, lily stems).
Hoa Tuc salad with seafood, fresh palm hearts and lotus stems.
Salad Thiem with lily flowers, bok choi, water spinach and garlic.
I particularly liked food in Hoi An and will write about Lantern Town Restaurant in the near future.
Most readers of this blog don’t have access to the Adelaide Review, a long-standing, free publication of local issues and culture.
A friend sent me a copy of a review by John McGrath (Howard Twelthtree) of my book Sicilian Seafood Cooking. published in The Adelaide Review – how gratifying to receive this while I am visiting Vietnam.
This is the article, published in the February, 2012:
Sicilian Seafood Cooking
February, 2012
Marisa Raniolo Wilkins, New Holland. Reviewed by John McGrath (Howard Twelthtree).
The title Sicilian Seafood Cooking sounds restrictive. Sicilians eat more than fish, surely? And how could anyone write a book about Sicilian food and just stick to seafood? Marisa Raniolo Wilkins has.
A practical, well illustrated book of 383 pages is crammed with recipes, tips, anecdotes and history combined with the culinary tricks that make the difference between a dud and a triumph. The romance of Sicily is so interwoven in the text that it need not be mentioned.
Marisa’s easy style and light touch give the impression that a further 383 pages could be written without repetition.
A chapter called ‘How to make a good impression’ is devoted to sauces and dressings that put the pretty summer frock on your best cooking efforts. The undefinable, because Nonna won’t tell you, is defined.
Statements like, “I find herbs chopped in a food processor taste grassy rather than fragrant…” are wonderful to read. Your carefully portioned out mound of herbs ground into, horrors, exactly the right word – grass.
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, one of the founders of Futurism in the early 1900s gets a mention. He denounced pasta and championed rice. He may have been a titch strange, but he didn’t lack guts; wading into his country for eating the saintly pasta. Marisa tells us that rice was grown in Sicily before 1000 BC.
The first dish I made to Sicilian Seafood Cooking rules was pesce al cartoccio or fish in a bag. Everything sounds better in Italian; we have to face up to it. Fish in a bag is an easy scene-stealer. Follow Marisa and your dining room will smell like the ocean.
Another dining room star is pesce incrostato di sale or salt crusted fish. This is not easy. Have a few trial runs before inflicting this dish on guests. Buy a new hammer and wield it casually. But, above all, follow Marisa.
Tuna testicles are eaten in a recipe that, naturally, smirk, make extravagant suggestive gestures, is, of coarse, good for virility. Have you ever made a tuna/testicles/human link? I certainly hadn’t.
Fish stock is nasty for novices and professionals invariably get around it by using fish sauce. Fish heads and bones start to get bitter after 15 minutes when the vegetables have barely started cooking. The solution: use a saucepan for the vegetables, another for the fish bits.
Marisa doesn’t pretend that Sicily is without stain. The ‘Menu for the Incorruptibles’ honours the anti-Mafia magistrates and investigators who were killed by car bombs in a terror reign in the 80s and 90s.
All this fish can’t be eaten alone so there are many vegetable dishes and salads included. Nothing boring though. A lemon salad, which is mostly pith, for instance. I was taught that lemon pith is an emetic. The first time I tried this salad it was far too delicious than it had any right to be. But still I waited for the inevitable vomit. Nothing.
No, this is not Sicily, I am in Hanoi, in Vietnam. And the Vietnamese eat kohlrabi and the green leaves just like the Sicilians do. I do not know how they cook kohlrabi in Hanoi, but I know how some of my Sicilian relatives cook them.
My relatives who live in Ragusa (south-eastern region of Sicily) make causunedda (Sicilian). These are small gnocchi shaped pasta with a groove in the middle, similar to casarecce. Causunedda is known by different names in other regions of Sicily, for example, gnocculi,gnucchiteddi,cavati andcaviateddi(in Sicilian).
The kohlrabi that my relatives buy are usually much smaller in size and can also be tinged with purple. The bulbs have abundant leaves and are sold in bunches. The kohlarabi and their leaves are always boiled in water with some cotenne –strips of freshpig skin. The pig skin may not sound very appetising, but the results are a velvety flavourful broth that enhance the taste.
Most of the time the Ragusani add borlotti beans as well . The causunedda are cooked in the boiling soup after the kohrabi and leaves are cooked and the pasta is added last of all. In the dish below is a photo taken at my aunt’s house in Ragusa.
The final result is a wet pasta dish and very delicious. Of course, it is never bought to the table without having had fragrant extra virgin olive oil drizzled on top.
In Vietnam, I am also eating the leaves and tendrils of some sort of pumpkin. These greens are very much like tenerumi that the Sicilians love. In Sicily they are made into a soup.
Here in Hanoi they are stir fried with garlic and presented as greens.The photo below shows the pumpkin tendrils.
FRESH PRODUCE (and I did not have to go to SICILY to buy it). The Melbourne Showgrounds Farmers Market
Although the vegetable markets in Hanoi may look different to those in Sicily, the produce is very fresh and like the Sicilians, the Vietnamese shop daily.
Italianicious – January 2012 Fuelled by Passion
Italianicious – November- December 2010, For the Love of Sicily Seafood News launch of Sicilian Seafood Cooking
Magazine, a Melbourne publication called Italianicious
This is the cover of the January – February issue of 2012 Italianicious magazine.
It is a beautiful bi-monthly publication about food and wine, Italian regional recipes, travel stories and features on Italian restaurants and chefs and cultural events both in Italy and Australia. The photos are also stunning.
The current editor, Danielle Gullaci, is continuing to develop the quality and look of the publication established by previous editor, Jane O’Connor. In the January-February issue Danielle has written a feature about me.
Marisa Raniolo Wilkins
FUELLED BY PASSION
And these are the two beginning paragraphs:
“Although Marisa Raniolo Wilkins spent most of her early childhood in Trieste before moving to Australia with her Sicilian parents, a love for Sicilian food and culture has remained close to her heart. Her first book, Sicilian Seafood Cooking, represents eight years of hard work and a lifetime of culinary experiences.
Despite the fact that her parents both hailed from Sicily, Marisa says that she was born on the Italian island “by accident”. Marisa’s mother had lived in Catania, Sicily, before moving to Trieste in northern Italy with her siblings; and her Sicilian father (from Ragusa) was stationed in Trieste during the war, learning to be a tailor. “
From Left – Marisa Raniolo Wilkins, Marianna Di Bartolo (dolcetti Pasty shop), and queen of Sicilian Cooking – Mary Taylor Simeti
I was also featured in Italianicious magazine in the November-December issue when Mary Taylor Simeti and I discussed a Sicilian Christmas at Dolcetti, Melbourne’s little gem of a pastry shop. Naturally Pastry Chef Marianna Di Bartolo contributed to the discussion and we ate some of her delectable sweets. The editor was Jane O’Connor (now group editor of all Prime Media magazines), the three camera shy women and the photographer Patrick Varney of Raglan Images all had a grand old time.
Mary Taylor Simeti is one of my heroes – I think that sometimes it takes a “foreigner ‘ with a passion to rediscover and tease out the history behind the food ( not that she is a foreigner, she is part of Sicily, having dedicated so many years to it.).
Mary and I talked to Gus about his produce at the Queen Victoria Market.
Gus from the Queen Victoria Market showing Mary and I one of his special sculptured cauliflowers
The time before that Italianicious published an article and my recipe for Caponata, that was in December 2009 – February 2010 and the editor was Glynis Macri now Director/Editor of The Italian Traveller – Food, Wine and Travel Consultant.
Marisa Raniolo Wilkins
Mr Bianco’s recipe for Goat with Nero d’Avola (recipe from Italianicious)
For the garnish:
12 baby carrots, peeled and roasted with olive oil, garlic and rosemary
4 potatoes, peeled and cut into quarters, then roasted with olive oil, garlic, sliced lemon and rosemary.
Reader’s Feast Bookstore
The Logo for Readers Feast Bookstore – my favourite bookshop
The other nice thing that happened this week is that I went into Reader’s Feast Bookstore. Sicilian Seafood Cooking has been featured in their Summer 2002 Book Guide and has been written by Helen.
Helen is only one of the helpful, knowledgeable and personable staff who has been working with Mary Dalmau at Reader’s Feast for a very long time.
“Our bookstore will be a place of interest and enjoyment, peopled by committed and enthusiastic staff, who present a range of books to suit all visitors” Mary Dalmau, 1991
Finally my cookbook of the year is Sicilian Seafood Cooking by Marisa Raniolo Wilkins.
After this event I went home and made a wild fennel frittata and had it with a bottle of Rocky Passes Estate syrah – a very fine wine and the only bottle left over from the book signing event held in Readings in Hawthorn (Sicilian Seafood Cooking).
Friends Vitto Oles & Candi Westney own and run Rocky Passes Estate and they graciously donated the wine for the Readings event.
Vitto is the viticulturist and wine-maker of exceptionally good Syrah and Candi is just as important because she is responsible for the entertainment – the music concerts, performances and art exhibitions. Both manage the cellar door and the range of appetising Argentinian/Spanish inspired morsels (tapas) that are available when you visit their winery.
Rocky Passes Estate is at the spectacular southern end of the Strathbogie Ranges, near Seymour in Victoria. If you look at their wine label you will notice two eagles – these birds are often soaring above their very attractive property.
The winery is relatively new and had its first vintage of Syrah in 2004 and every vintage since has been highly rated by James Halliday. The winery is open Sundays 11-5pm or by appointment and Tapas also served onthe last Friday of the month as well as during art openings and special events.
I love wild fennel and when I find it I use it.
I have written about frittata in a previous post and as you see it is not difficult to make. The fennel can be replaced by any wilted green vegetable, for example spinach, endives, spring onions or asparagus.
Wild greens are superb or you can use bulb fennel, but keep the greens.You can vary the amounts of vegetables but as a general guide I would use 3-4 eggs to a cup of greens. For this frittata I used 12 eggs and it fed 4 of us (we were greedy).
Remember to use a spatula to lift the cooked part of the frittata as it cooks and release the uncooked egg. Need I say that I only use free range eggs?
Then flip it over – I used a pizza tray. Finally, slide the frittata out. At the Readings book signing event I accompanied the Rocky passes with green Sicilian olives (olive schiacciate), marinaded anchovies.
Marianna Di Bartolo from Dolcetti made more fish shaped biscuits for this occasion and once again these were perfectly matched with Brown Brothers’ Zibibbo.
And once again it was an other fine celebration for Sicilian Seafood Cooking.
![Zibbibo[1]](https://i0.wp.com/www.allthingssicilianandmore.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Zibbibo1.jpg?resize=595%2C850)