Lisa Loves Life: La Bella (but most of all Buona) Sicilia

Finally we managed to go. After years of wanting and months of planning, we went to Sicily!
We landed late in Palermo and were picked up by the bed and breakfast we booked there.
Our first culinary experience of the Island was an Arancina (a deep-fried ball of risotto filled with sticky cheese), it wasn't what we had hoped for, but we were too hungry to even notice the disappointment of our stomachs.
The next day we went out to discover the disordered beauty of Palermo, it's great Opera house and many, many of it's delicious treats. We had lunch at the harbor with Swordfish Caponata and polpette di pesce, followed by Pasta con le sarde e finochietto. Then on our way we tried some mini Canoli, this is the typical sweet of the island. It's a crunchy deep-fried rolled dough filled with ricotta and chocolate. Delicious!
Then in the evening we met up with three Sicilian friends who showed us a traditional Sicilian restaurant in the heart of the city called 'Ferro di Cavallo'. We took a big mix of antipasti; caponata, panelle, prosciutto crudo con ricotta and so on...This was followed by fresh swordfish, filled squid, and more fishy delights. We simply couldn't fit in any dessert otherwise I would obviously have had one.
What a feast it was!

The next day on our way to rent a car, we stopped over for a very much needed cappuccino in a very fancy pasticceria. We discovered these amazing biscuits there called 'I Toto Siciliani' that my Love is now crazy about so I had a go at copying them. They don't taste exactly the same, but they turned out yummy anyway.

We drove towards Trapani, our next stop and had a lunch break in Scopello. A cute tiny village right at the sea. I had an amazing pasta with fresh seafood, the best I've ever had!

We moved on to Trapani where we knew we couldn't leave before having tried the Couscous with fish and so we did in a very charming and elegant restaurant called 'Serisso 47'. The owner made us try several mouthwatering starters followed by the famous, and extremely delicious, Couscous.

The following morning we visited Trapani's harbor and for coffee and more sweets we went to a place called 'Evangelista', this is where we took about half a kilo of almond biscuits as a souvenir (already finished unfortunately...).

We decided to head back to meet our friend in Scopello and finally have our long longed for dive into the blue sea.
That evening I had an (again, I know this is getting boring) amazing pasta with gamberi e pistacchio. I really need to try this at home soon as it was too good to be true.

When we woke up the sun was smiling at us in the blue sky, it was 27 degrees on the 2nd of November.
After a delicious breakfast with homemade crostata we took our little Fiat 500 to the 'Riserva dello Zingaro' A big nature reserve right at the coast. This is where our friend took us to the most beautiful beach I've ever seen. I though I was in the Caribbean or some other tropical place.

Nearly at the end of our trip we found an olive oil factory just outside Scopello. We arrived at peak time as all the local farmers came around to have their freshly picked olives squeezed into delicious olive oil.
We wanted a taste of that and decided to bring home a 3 liter can to dress our salads with or, even better, soak some fresh bread in, Mmm!

I haven't really experienced home sickness to a holiday place before, I always found the though of going back home, sleeping in our own bed comforting. But Sicily has changed that.
I want to go back as soon as I can! Eat the great food, drink the good wine. Soak up the warm sun and bathe in the blue sea. It seems to good to be true!

I've even started a trial and error phase of copying the almond biscuits, the raisin bread and this week I'll start on the challenging Caponata...