Travel Notice
For the next six weeks and a bit I will be travelling, so newsletters will be shorter and more whimsical than usual. I will concentrate on what I see and what I eat.
Right now I am in Sicily, first flying in over a quiet Etna, Italy’s most active volcano.
To arrive at the end of the day at The Zafran, a hotel on the beach in Donnalucatta.
Stanley Tuccci Eat your Heart Out
The prefect risotto is something the actor and foodie talks about often on his CNN series. A scene from Tucci’s Searching for Italy shows him discussing risotto.
When I visit Italy, about once a year, I too search for the perfect Risotto. Last Friday night I was in the Jammola, a restaurant in the Sicialian town of Donnalucata, a fishing village that turns into a beach resort in the summer.
I asked for risotto, seafood risotto, knowing that the ingredients would come from the fish market and vegetable stands just 20 yards away from the restaurant.
And next to the market, fruit grown in the lush fields and greenhouses of Sicily.
And now to the kitchen
Gianni Gerratana at the Jammola. He is owner of the restaurant and not usually the chef. He was born in the nearby city of Modica and as a young man left to travel the world and learn the art of food. He worked in Milan, Qatar and Bora Bora. After 19 years away, five years ago he came back and opened his own restaurant on the beach.
And this is the risotto he produced.
An absolutely charming man, somehow we got to discussing the difference between coooking with butter and olive oil. As you might imagine, Gianni is an olive oil man.
This is land of Olive Oil. For thousands of years, olive oil has been the staple of Mediteeranean cooking. This is how they did it during the Roman Empire.
The amphora, those jars in the back, are where they stored the oil and how they shipped it acorss the Roman world.
And today Europe is divided into Olive Oil countries and Butter countries.
And the end of a perfect day from the terrace at the Jammola.