Sicilian-style soups: “poor” cuisine but rich in taste
Although cold weather is not often at home on our beautiful island, the winter months bring with them a strong connection to warm dishes such as soups and stews. The Sicilian tradition boasts numerous recipes from the cuisine often referred to as “poor,” especially because of the type of raw materials that are used. The hot dishes that are part of it not only keep the cold at bay, but are also healthy and full of wholesome ingredients-primarily seasonal vegetables.
Fresh vegetable soup: grandmothers’ detox
How often is vegetable soup associated with the classic “hospital meal”? Or to starvation diets? Over the years, the somewhat “negative” connotation given to this dish has hidden all those characteristics that, instead, make it an excellent ally of both health and diet: taste, vitamins, minerals and lightness. Vegetable soup, in Sicily, is not the classic soup you make when you are feeling unwell or want to lose a few extra pounds. It is a dish that is safely included in meals, as a first course, accompanied by pasta or bread croutons, or even as a side dish. Grandmothers prepare it strictly with fresh, seasonal vegetables, which they always choose according to taste, certainly, but of their grandchildren.
For example, in January, cabbage, broccoli and savoy cabbage, typical of this month, certainly cannot be missing from Sicilian-style minestrone. Tradition calls for the vegetables to be cut into small pieces and boiled all at once, for at least one hour. This is then often flavored with herbs, particularly bay leaves. More modern grandmothers, to please even the most unforgiving palates, blend all the vegetables at the end of cooking, thus creating real creams.
Legumes year-round with fava bean macco
As we have already seen, the “poor” cuisine of the Sicilian tradition features a wide variety of soups and stews that are prepared according to the seasonality of the products. But there are exceptions, one of them being the
Macco di fave.
It seems that in ancient times this dish, originally from the Agrigento area, was considered auspicious and was offered by landowners to all farmers to celebrate the end of the harvest.
Macco di fave has the consistency of a cream obtained by prolonged cooking of the fava beans until they completely crumble. This is a balanced and healthy recipe that can be enjoyed all year round. In fact, it can be prepared either with fresh legumes, such as the green broad beans typical of May and June, or with dried ones, which are always available. Moreover, as is often the case with other delicacies, it turns out to be even better the day after it is prepared.
In many areas of Sicily, in fact, it is compacted inside baking pans or containers and cooked again on a griddle or fried.
Wild chicory soup: a health boon
Among the many field herbs that grow luxuriantly in the Sicilian territory, wild chicory stands out. This herbaceous plant, with sky-blue flowers, contains many beneficial properties and nutrients that help the liver and kidneys in the disposal of toxins.
The most common method of cooking chicory is to boil it in order to create a very simple soup. After cleaning the plant of its roots and soil residue, the leaves are placed in water and left to boil for about an hour.
Chicory prepared in this way is served within its broth, which is a real health boon. In fact, it aids digestion and stimulates intestinal transit precisely because it is rich in inulin, a substance released by the plant during cooking.
It is precisely because of the many beneficial characteristics it brings to health that, often, wild chicory cooking broth is stored inside glass bottles and drunk even several days later. These are just a few of the many soups belonging to Sicilian “poor” cuisine.
But they manage to make perfectly tangible, those characteristics that are common to somewhat all dishes of this type: simplicity, authenticity, goodness and freshness of raw materials.
by Giada Saglimbeni