It’s no surprise that Italian food is so popular around the world. As well as the comfort food most of us grew up with (lasagna! spaghetti!) there are the sun-kissed flavours of tomato and basil and the salty charms of cheese and spicy sausage.
And now there’s a “new” destination in Italy for the food-lover: Sicily. The massive island at the toe of boot-shaped Italy, Sicily has a tremendously diverse history with Greek, Arab and North African connections resulting in a distinct – and delicious – cuisine all its own.
Starting with your pasta course, try one of the signature dishes of the island, the spaghetti Norma, made with local eggplant. Interestingly, in western Sicily you can also find couscous offered, in a nod to the island’s historic ties with North Africa. And since the Mediterranean Sea surrounds the ocean, seafood is never hard to find, from tuna and sardines to clams and mussels.
You mustn’t miss the sweet treats either! You’ll probably recognize cannoli, cylindrical rolls of crisp pastry stuffed with ricotta sweetened with candied fruit (another local specialty) or chocolate. Cool down with a gelato (the ice cream is wonderful wherever you go in Italy) or its cooler cousin: granite, a sort of slushy sorbet bursting with fruit flavours.
Needless to say, there’s excellent wine of tap. Try a flavourful pour from the local Gambino Vineyards (sadly not available in Canada) or one of the famous sweeter wines from Marsala, also a Sicilian winery.
You can discover so much that’s flavourful in Sicily on an independent tour, but if you want to make the most of your time there, Exodus offers a weeklong food-lovers tour which includes all of the above – and more. Your Vision travel advisor will have more delicious details.