If there is an occasion that unites everyone at the table, it is Christmas. Houses are lively with friends loved ones, streets are empty, between a toast and Christmas carol, we leave work behind and celebrate the end of a year now. Italian tables during the holidays are a feast of flavours and colours.
Here below we are discovering the typical Christmas dishes served in Sicily.
The Christmas menu includes as an appetizer the Crispelle "c'angiova" (fresh ricotta), grown, fried and fragrant pasta that is practically impossible to resist. The "ncaciata pasta", a baked pasta based on ragù, eggs, aubergines and plenty of cheese, and the "ripiddu nivicatu", a folkloric and tasty reproduction of the erupting Etna. Don't call it "squid ink risotto", because this dish is so much more. Fresh ricotta lightly seared on cast iron molds soaked in oil, which acts as snow in the dish along with a red lava flow, tomato sauce flavoured with a handful of chilli, this first is as beautiful as it is good.
Also on Sicilian tables, the fried cod in batter dominates. The Christmas roundup continues with the "falsomagro": we are talking about meat that is anything but lean. An simple roll that hides a diabolical filling inside, made of sausage, cheese, parsley and spring onions, all placed on a nice slice of mortadella (in the Catania area) or pancetta.
For dessert: typical Sicilian sweets. Cuccia, Buccellato (and buccellatini), Cobaita, Nucatuli, Mostaccioli, Sfinci, which in the Christmas period become perfect with filling of custard or cream of strictly fresh ricotta, sweets with figs, Cuddureddi (sweets filled with cooked wine, almonds, cinnamon and many more), cassata and obviously panettone either traditional or in all its modern variations.
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