pillars: good food, and talking/arguing about good food. Uncle Martino, for example, went to his temple, Cataniaâs fish market, every day. Not a very entertaining place, more a kind of stock exchange where men lounge with tense concentration, checking the quality and price of the fish on offer and speculating on tuna belly meat or on whether a belated fisherman will turn up with a swordfish when everyone elseâs needs have been met and they can buy it more cheaply and fresher than fresh. This can take hours and isnât much fun, either. Alternatively, Uncle Martino will take Aunt Teresa mushroom-picking on Etna. He once drove all round the volcano to buy bread, and for eggs he goes to a car repair shop near Lentini whose ownerâs mutant hens lay eggs with two yolks. Granita is only to be consumed at the Caffè Cipriani in Acireale; cannoli alla crema di ricotta can only come from the Pasticceria Savia on Via Etnea in Catania. Once, when I praised the Pasticceria Russo in Santa Venerina for its marzipan, my uncle merely growled disparagingly â then drove there with me at once to check on the matter in situ and subsequently commended me on my palate. Cherries have to come from SantâAlfio, pistachios from Bronte, potatoes from Giarre, and wild fennel from one particular, top-secret old lava field where â if youâre in luck and the Terranovas havenât got there first â you can also find oyster mushrooms the size of your hand. Arancini di riso have to be eaten at Urna in San Giovanni la Punta and pizzas at Il Tocco, beneath the Provinciale and just beyond the Esso garage. The tastiest mandarins come from Syracuse and the tastiest figs â whatever their ultimate provenance â from the street vendor in San Gregorio. If you ever eat fish outside your own four walls, the only place to do so is Don Carmeloâs in Santa Maria la Scala, which also serves the best pasta al nero di seppia . Life is complicated on an island imprisoned in a stranglehold of crisis and corruption, where men still live with their parents until marriage or their mid-forties for lack of employment, but no culinary compromises are ever made. That was what Poldi had always liked about Sicily, being inquisitive and sensual by nature. All she considered execrable was my uncleâs taste in wine, for neither he nor the aunts were great drinkers. Sicilians in general drank little â a glass with their meals at most. This initially presented Poldi with a problem, until she discovered the HiperSimplyâs wine department and, later on, Gaetano Avolaâs vineyard in Zafferana. But Iâm getting ahead of myself.
Poldiâs day always began with a revivifying Prosecco. Then came an espresso with a dash of brandy, followed by a slug of brandy without the espresso. Sometimes, when in a more than usually melancholy frame of mind, she would walk to Praiola, a remote little pebbly beach. An enchanted place with water as clear as liquid cobalt, it was sprinkled with lumps of lava sculpted into black and rust-brown dinosaursâ eggs by the ebb and flow of the sea. She usually had it all to herself. In high summer it wasnât until later in the day that families came with their radios, picnic baskets, cool boxes, rubber rings and sun umbrellas and strewed the little beach with litter until, by October, it resembled a rubbish dump until it was scoured clean again by the winter storms. My Auntie Poldi would sometimes dip her feet in the limpid water, toss a particularly handsome dinosaurâs egg into the sea in memory of my Uncle Peppe, fold her hands, and say, â Namaste , life.â Followed by: âPoldi contra mundum .â
At eleven in the morning came the first beer, accompanied by Umberto Tozzi belting out the 1979 pop song âGloriaâ at a volume that would have driven even Scylla and Charybdis insane. When my cousins came visiting we used to sing the song together, but