Italian Island Cooking

La Cucina Siciliana

Sicilian Cuisine is one of Italy's most sophisticated and certainly the most eclectic; almost every people to sail the Mediterranean -- the Greeks, Romans, Carthaginians, Arabs, Normans, Spaniards, and even the English -- has visited, bringing new ingredients and ideas that the long-term residents adapted and reworked.

A few specifics:
Around Syracuse and Ragusa cooks still draw from Greek traditions, making abundant use of vegetables -- their eggplant parmesan is renowned -- while meats, mostly pork and mutton, were traditionally reserved for feast days.
Palermo's cooking is more sophisticated, revealing French influences that emerge in dishes such as caponata, falsomagro, a rich meats stew, and involtini alla palermitana.
In Trapani fish of all kinds predominate. The area, which faces North Africa, has maintained closer ties with the Arabs than other parts of the island, and is especially known for fish-laced cuscus.
Messina is instead more Continental, with an abundance of fish, many recipes that reveal French influences, and others that hearken back to the peasantry, for example Spaghetti alla Norma.
Finally, there are the sweets: Pasta Reale, Cassata, Cannoli...

Truly a blessed land.

Sicilian recipes on site