Do Not Try This At Home!

If you try the Sicilian Orange Cake recipe I posted yesterday, your cake will look like this.

Not very appealing, is it? The flavor is good but the cake is a 1" high disc of rubber--not at all like the light, slightly dry cake I had in Catania. I am at a loss as to what went wrong, and I apologize to anyone who tried this recipe on my recommendation. It's a puzzle to me: all my ingredients were fresh; it's true that I interpreted a "bicchiere" of orange juice in the original recipe to mean a "glass" which I assume is about 8 oz; my oven (as you know) is new; I converted the amounts in the recipe to standard and re-checked the amounts; I even made the cake a second time using more baking powder, less butter, and creaming the eggs, butter and sugar together first; and I used a smaller diameter pan; and I used 1/2 the amount of orange juice!

But the second result is pretty much the same, a little bit higher but with that same dense, rubbery consistency. Can anyone help? I'd love to know what went wrong. I'm going to contact La Vetreria and try to get to the bottom of this. I'll let you know.

Mi dispiace molto.

Sicilian Orange Cake

...Back in the States, with two feet on the ground now, and I wanted to make sure I published Rita Pantino's recipe for Sicilian Orange Cake. The folks at the lovely hotel in Catania, La Vetreria, were kind enough to send me the recipe. Wouldn't it be nice to have local oranges to use in this recipe as they do everywhere in Sicily? But I guess we'll have to be satisfied with Whole Foods fresh-squeezed. The measurements in the recipe are charming and soooo metric so I've converted most of the amounts to standard English. It is a very simple recipe as are many of these kinds of simple Italian, 1-layer, cakes. It's perfect for breakfast, at tea-time, or to take to someones home for brunch. Let me know how yours turns out! Ciao!

Rita Pantino's Sicilian Orange Cake
from La Vetreria
for 1, 10" round, buttered cake pan

Ingredients:
--125 gr Burro/butter (1/4 lb);
--200 gr zucchero/sugar (about 7 oz. by weight);
--2 uova/eggs;
--250 gr farina/flour (about 1/2 lb., weight);
--1 bicchiere di succo d’arancia o mandarino/a glass of orangesquash or mandarinsquash (about 1/2 cup fresh-squeezed orange juice);
--scorza d’arancia grattugiata (an orange rind grated);
--1 bustina di lievito per dolci (about 1 tsp. baking powder).

Emulsionare tutti gli ingredienti e cuocere a 180° per 30 minuti (mix everything together i a bowl and cook for 30 minutes at 350 degrees).

Cool on a rack then turn out onto a plate. When cool, dust with powdered sugar and decorate with fresh orange slices.

Enjoy!

Sicily One

And so it ends. Good bye, Taormina! What's left of the Sicily Seven is just me, solo io, killing time in a lovely, friendly hotel in noisy Catania (La Vetreria),
waiting for my all-day journey back to Boston.

Being here, suddenly alone,is strongly reminiscent of a long flight I took once when I was 19-years old, from Amsterdam to Boston via Icelandic Airlines. The flight was delayed out of Amsterdam and I was directed to a small hotel in the city to spend the night--the loneliest 18 hours I think I've ever spent. But I was young, and scared and dying to get home. Now I'm not so young but impatient and still dying to get home--some things never change (fortunately!).



But this morning I had a wonderful breakfast in the hotel's homey dining room, something all the others (the Sicily 6) missed since they had to leave this morning at 5:00 AM to catch their 7:00 AM flight to Rome, then Boston. It was quite a buffet as you can see--eggs, cereals, prosciutto, breads, pastries, yogurt, juices, 3 kinds of cakes (tutti fatta in casa)!!!


The hotel staff here is charming, English-speaking and very helpful. Both the hotel concierge, Alda Lo Bianco and the hotel chef, Rita Pantino, have agreed to send me the recipe for Rita's delicious Sicilian Orange Cake. Rita is planning to start a cooking school at the hotel. Guests will shop in the Catania markets for the ingredients and return to the hotel (or to another kitchen location) and prepare the recipes. I hope to have more information about this new venture soon. Here is a picture sent to me by the hotel of Rita displaying her ricotta muffins and her orange cake, yummmm--recipe to follow soon!


But now I have a taxi and a plane to catch, and hopefully a husband waiting at the other end.

Arrivederci Sicilia! Spero ritornaremo.

Cinque Mille Questo Giorno

November 12, yet here we sit in the Piazza San Antonio, warm and comfortable in the sun, with our gelati. It's 75, perfectly dry degrees. As a family group, we've finally hit our stride, striking out down the mountain in separate untethered groups; arriving at our various destinations without even getting lost. The air here takes on an almost palpable softness, and Taormina is breathtaking.

This morning we visited the Teatro Greco-Romano, the 2nd century amphitheatre that is one of Taormina's main attractions. The brochure states that the theatre was used by actors, and later for animal shows and for gladiator competitions. Today it stands in ruin, but still commands spectacular views of Mt. Etna, the surrounding mountains, cliff-clinging villages, and the sea dizzyingly far below.


















I wanted to mention that Catherine, daughter #6, has been our resident IT geek, helping us all out with cameras, computers, cell phones--all the gadgets we saddle ourselves with on vacation these days. Here she is at the Greco Roman Theatre this morning with Debra.

She's been coaching Mom, too, to join the 21st century and start using her debit card just this week!

But consistent with the rest of the week, this morning started out with a minor calamity--there was a gecko loose in the kitchen. I don't know who noticed it first but Donna reacted by jumping up on a chair

and Debra felt compelled to rescue it from behind the cupboard.

Hope the poor thing got away...
And later this morning we had to say good-bye to our beautiful housekeeper, Tiziana, who has been so helpful and who speaks excellent English! She was great.

After lunch today

we walked and shopped and took the funivia to the beach resort below Taormina.





Then, as night fell on Taormina and we had our last dinner here

we toasted arrivederci Sicilia with a bottle of Prosecco and the waiter took our picture.

Although Joyce, daughter #1, is the least photographed of us all, we owe an awful lot to her for making the whole trip possible. So to Joyce, and to us all, we wish
Cinque Mille Questo Giorno, Five Thousand Days Like This One! Mille Grazie!

No Sleep For You!

Of all the beds in all the rooms in sprawling Villa Parmina, none so far has suited Debra (daughter # 4, on left).

Like Goldilocks, Debra has had the hardest time finding a comfortable bed to sleep in. This is a picture of the bed she slept in the first night. It looks pretty nice doesn't it?

But the room that the bed occupies has a sickening smell of damp and plug-in air freshener--no one could sleep there. So, on the following night (Sunday) she moved out and slept in this bed.

This bed was OK but the room was really cold (that was before we figured out how to turn-on the heat!). So the next night she tried to sleep on a short sofa in the living room. In order to sleep on it, she had to prop up her legs on the back of the sofa, kind of like this.

Needless to say, she didn't sleep well that night either. So she moved--again--and the next night tried sleeping in the big bed with Mom.

However, Mom snores.
Debra was losing it but determined to get at least one good night's sleep in Taormina. She started thinking about moving out of the villa and began to comb the internet for inexpensive hotels nearby.
We talked her out of it.
Together we agreed on a new sleeping configuration: Debra in the bed in the room in the picture above (third picture down), alone, and now with heat. Susan (daughter #3, the Night Watchman) in the huge bed with Mom; Joyce (daughter number 1, and the one Mom likes best) in the double bed on the lower level with me (daughter number 2); Cathy (#6) in an extra bed set-up in my room (she had been sleeping every night on a large sofa in the living room); and Donna (# 5) in the same bed she's been in from day one.
We'll see how it goes tonight and check back with you tomorrow ...

Buona Notte!

Terror in Taormina

You may soon be seeing this picture posted in the Taormina post office (we look rather harmless and nice, don't you think?). But so far here is our list of offenses:
* one of us inadvertently kicked over a ceramic angel in a cramped souvenir shop on the glitzy Corso Umberto, and left without paying for it;
* another of us dropped a kitchy 1940's figurine at the Villa Parmina which the cleaning lady, Tiziana, says we have to pay for but which we argue was already broken;
* one of us (we're not naming any names but it's the innocent-looking one in pink in the picture) has transformed her rental car into a cash for clunkers candidate (how's an American driver in a fat car to know that that intriguing-looking alley would get narrower and narrower the farther into it she drove?!).
Through it all, we've managed to stay level-headed; drinking helps; even Mom is getting into it as you can see from this picture of us eating chestnuts; notice all the empties lined up near Mom.

See what I mean...so it's a good thing we only have 2 days to go!

On Tuesday, after the usual morning mishaps (like driving down, down, down into town for the umpteenth time and still getting lost; or driving back up to the villa and arriving in a cloud of burning clutch fluid--we'll have to check that later), we drove in tandem to the vineyard Murgo where a lovely lunch and wine-tasting awaited us.

This is the gracious Pietro Scammacca, owner of the vineyard, one of 8 brothers, who had the flu but nonetheless agreed to take us around to tour the wine-making operation.


And here are a few more pictures of our activites in Taormina. The first is Donna, daughter number 5, with the Sicilian Soccer Team.



Next is of me buying chestnuts from a vendor on the side of a road

Another of Cathy, daughter number 6, buying something at the outdoor market near our villa

One of me and Mom buying mapinas at the outdoor market today!

And finally--It's what's for dinner tonight!!!!

Susan, The Night Watchman

All told, there are probably 16 doors in this villa we're renting in Taormina, each with its own key and locking mechanism--Susan has them all memorized. She also holds the code for the giant ornate metal gate which frequently slams shut with the wind, locking everyone out. Susan is sister number 3 and each night keeps us in lock-down mode, safe from invaders and conquering Romans.
Today, we visited Trecastagni, the small city where my mother's mother and father were born. Trecastagni is known for its almonds and citrus fruits and does indeed sit in a lush, agricultural landscape. But to get there, about 1 and 1/2 hours from Taormina, we had to drive the 2 big Fiats we had rented, something that pushes us all close to the limit of tolerance, family or not. Mostly so for Susan who I think secretly wants to be the driver but whose name is not on the rental agreement--so she's relegated to backseat driver status, and is really good at it! Fortunately, after getting lost yet again getting out of Taormina, we're all still friends. Debbie, sister number 4, whose name IS on the rental agreement, had decided early on to give up driver staus all together. So Joyce, sister number 1, was recruited (even though, in Susan's opinion, Joyce shouldn't be driving a stick shift!). Are you following this...

So, off we went to Trecastagni, in two cars, mine with a Tom-Tom, the other with 4 women who had no idea where they were going only that they needed to follow my car, in search of our long, lost relatives. Naturally, we got separated and spent the better part of the morning trying to meet up at the main church in Trecastagni. I arrived at one "main" church, and (you guessed it) the other car arrived at an entirely different main church (they were both gray). As we tried to hone in on each others locations, with the help of cell phones, we passed several other main-looking gray churches--which of course was the problem.

My mother's mother's maiden name is Petralia--a name that shouldn't be too difficult to track down we thought.

Little did we know that not only is the mayor of Trecastagni a Petralia, but so is about 5% of the population. Without detailed information on births and deaths it would be next to impossible to track down another Petralia. The very sympathetic officials at the Municipio told us we'd have to return another day.

But we managed to salvage the day with a relaxed dinner back at the villa, with plenty of the local Nero d'avola, and a lot of laughs.
Lungamente vive la famiglia!