See You in the Piazza

by Frances Mayes

  “Pieno, pieno,” he says. Full, full.

  This evening is anything but. In the vast piazza of Marzamemi, a few souls stroll about then settle, as we have, into one of the bars and restaurants with brightly colored chairs that ring the glorious space. A pretty church sits in one corner, but the main business of the place seems to be eating and drinking. Perhaps in another season, a place to see, be seen. A Facebook friend told me we all go to Marzamemi. I’m not sure who we is, but I imagine an artistic, international boho crowd of fashionista hipsters. (Are they on Facebook?) Maybe summer is like that—tie up your sailboat in the harbor and swan into town for bowls of mussels straight from the sea and cold wine.

  But I’m loving this wan October twilight, still warm enough to sit outside, with the paving stones gleaming like wet soap from the lights on surrounding buildings. For such a tiny town, the piazza is huge. I imagine the summer film festival. Children running wild and fireworks, moon rising from the water. A thousand glasses of Aperol spritz circulating on trays. Tonight, no party yachts anchor in the harbor, just well-used fishing boats and piles of nets. Traditionally the main business was tuna, thousands caught in a series of entangling nets then killed, the ritual called mattanza, essentially massacre. Tonnara (tuna processing and canning) buildings still stand, ruins waiting for condo transformation. To the north stretches a long crescent of sand beach and a colony of small houses. Marzamemi, way south in Sicily—ideal low-key, picturesque Italian beach town. Colorful and crumbly, its evocative beauty makes me want to stay.

  All quiet. We walk until dark.

  * * *

  WE CHECKED IN earlier at Scilla Maris, a small inn down a dirt road. Ah, the sleek room with mezzanine bed has a distant view of the Vendicari nature reserve with its wild beaches, and of the sea, with nero d’Avola vineyards, blackening into autumn, between us and the coast. More nero d’Avola vines in back. From our patio, we are already steeping in the idea of these wines.

  * * *

  ON LANDING IN Catania this morning, we walked into the arrival area and were hit with an array of delicious smells. This has to be a first! An airport permeated with aromas of warm focaccia, dark concentrated espresso, an array of fruit and cream pastries, and best of all—arancini, those delectable balls of rice stuffed with cheese or ragù and fried to crunchy greatness. A long bank of cafés introduced us to Sicily, one of the world’s best places to feast. We have come here to eat. And drink. Anything we see along the way is a bonus. This is our fifth trip to Sicily. Although we’ve explored Palermo, Erice, Agrigento, Siracusa, Taormina, Cefalù, the Greek ruins, and the grand, intricate Baroque cities of Noto, Ragusa, and Modica, we’ve never made it to the southern towns. We’re so far south, we could water-ski to Tunis.

  * * *

  WE FOUND SCILLA Maris by chance—a lucky choice. The landscaping keeps close to the native terrain: low stone walls, borders of lavender, santolina, and rosemary-lined pebble walkways. Relaxing with a prosecco by the pool, we have a chance to watch the antics of eight kittens. Will there soon be exponential population growth with a lot of recessive genes? Meanwhile, they are crazy fun.

  * * *

  THE CANDLELIT DINING room overlooks the courtyard. The cats come to the glass wall by our table, hoping for what? Surely not a bite of our shared tempura di gamberi, scampi, e ortaggi con riduzione al limone, tempura of shrimp, scampi, and vegetables with a tangy sauce of lemon, honey, and apple cider vinegar. (I’ll be reproducing this at home.) Perfect antipasti, so very light. Or do they want a sip of Ed’s chickpea soup with crispy onions, or our beauteous tomato and beef stew with potatoes roasted with oregano? Soon they leave for the evening and we linger at the table over an inexpensive bottle of Note Nere Syrah from Marzamemi. Ed gives it a hurrah, this easy syrah.

  After dinner at home, usually Ed has an Averna, a Sicilian digestivo made from thirty-two herbs, while I’m content with the last of the wine, but tonight we both try the orange digestivo Amara, made on the slopes of Mount Etna. Distilled from Tarocco blood-orange peels and herbs, this rich, essential orange elixir appeals to me much more than its kissing cousin limoncello.

  * * *

  DEEP SLEEP. SUBMERGED dreams. Is it the ancient farmland? The lagoons of the nature reserve where pink flamingos stand in marshes full of birds, where there are paths to wander as in a dream? Ed wakes me early. “Look out,” he says, sitting up in bed. The sun is wobbling up from the sea, a blood orange, a spilling of silvered gold light across the water. No better place to wake up in this world or the next.

  * * *

  WE ARE BIG fans of the Tuscan Tenuta Sette Ponti wines. How many celebrations have commenced with Ed opening bottles of their Oreno or Crognolo? As everyone knows, Sicilian wines have been on the rise for a couple of decades and now many of Italy’s best come from the island. Antonio Moretti Cuseri, owner of Sette Ponti, bought vineyards here a dozen years ago. We love his grand Mahâris. And Corposo—big-bodied wine we pour at holidays and birthdays. When he learned that we were coming to Sicily, he invited us to stop by his Feudo Maccari. Three minutes from our hotel, we’re there.

  Alessandra, a young woman from Palermo with a passion for wine, comes out to take us around the property. The enormous storage room vaults upward like a cathedral. What a fabulous venue for a wedding on a scalding August afternoon. In the modern tasting room, she’s prepared seven bottles: two whites, a rosé, and four reds. A stellar lineup, as we find out during an easy, contemplative chance to experience each wine. (I’m not really good at this. After a few, I’m lost. I keep wanting to go back to the second one, or the first.) We discuss and toast. Our old friend Mahâris (the name means sentinel tower in Arabic), and, oh my, Saia, whose name is from the canal system for collecting water used by the Arabs centuries ago. Dark, bursting fruit, but with a ray of Sicilian sun in each bottle. That must be, as one swallow makes you think good thoughts. I’d take a glass of this by fire late at night and read Neruda.

  Maybe the soul in these wines comes from growing the vines in the ancient Greek alberello, little tree, form. Instead of espaliering vines, each one is grown separately on its own stake, not touching the next, for maximum exposure to light all day. The vine is kept low, more protected from the sun, and the leaves also protect the maturing grapes. So much of the ancient world still lives in this vineyard. I double back to the white Grillo (cricket); a crisp and mineral fragrance makes it as pleasant to smell as to drink. Fragrance, the hint of pleasure to come. I would love to sip Rosé di Nero d’Avola on a late summer afternoon under the rose arbor in the piazza of Marzamemi and watch the petals fall as our faces brighten.

  * * *

  THE FAMOUS PACHINO tomato grows in the eponymous town a few kilometers south. At first I thought I saw lakes in the distance. Closer, afraid not. Growing that acidic-sweet red bauble we love in salads has blotted the landscape with acres and acres of plastic greenhouses as far as you can see and much farther than you would imagine. Economy dupes aesthetics.

  We reach Portopalo, near the bottom of Sicily, and stop for lunch on the harbor. Eerie to think of Allied troops landing near here in 1943, swarming and spreading into the area on their way to winning Sicily. One or two of the old people dining here might remember.

  Slow service but the view of blue and white boats is lively. I order a simple pasta with tomato and basil. It tastes like a tin can smells. Ed has an enormous antipasto, chef’s choice, and chef has chosen about fifteen of his favorites. One plump little fish stares at the ceiling. The arancini stuffed with mozzarella look very tasty. Then I feel sick. Something orange and squishy on his platter looks lurid. My mound of pasta, no. I feel really sick.

  I’m doubled up in the car, cursing and sipping water. We omit the trip to see the beach of the tiny offshore Isola delle Correnti, the very southernmost point of Sicily. I wish we had another night with the eight kittens, a chance to spot a flamingo, and a dinner at Cortile Arabo, the Arab Courtyard, a
white terrace overlooking the sea at Marzamemi.

  Our destination: Scicli. We’ve got to stop saying Chee clee. It’s SHE-clee.

  NOTE:

  By appointment, you can arrange a tour and tasting at Feudo Maccari. www.feudomaccari.it

  Polpo Croccante su Vellutata di Ceci, Finocchietto Selvatico, e Zeste di Limone

  CRISPY OCTOPUS WITH VELVETY CHICKPEAS, WILD FENNEL, AND LEMON ZEST, SERVES 4 TO 6

  Executive chef Ilaria Navilli combines four of the great tastes of Sicily in one dish. The missing ingredient? The salt-lashed breeze coming in from the sea.

  2 pounds octopus, cleaned

  1 onion, chopped

  1 carrot, chopped

  1 stalk celery, chopped

  Salt and pepper, QB

  Extra-virgin olive oil, QB

  2 cups chickpeas, previously soaked overnight

  A few fennel fronds

  1 lemon, zested and thinly sliced

  Boil the octopus and half the vegetables for about 50 minutes in a a large pot with water to cover. Season with salt and pepper. Let the octopus cool in its water.

  Separately, in a medium saucepan, sauté the rest of the onion, carrot, and celery in olive oil for 3 minutes. Add the chickpeas and enough water to cover them. Season with salt and pepper, cover and simmer for 20 to 30 minutes, or until the chickpeas are just done. Drain, reserving the liquid. When the chickpeas are cool, add 4 tablespoons of oil and blend with an immersion blender until you’ve reached a creamy (not too thin) mixture. Use a little of the chickpea water if needed for a smooth texture.

  Remove the octopus from its water. Cut into pieces and pat dry. To crisp the octopus, quickly fry the pieces in a hot skillet with a little oil. Test for seasoning.

  Spread some of the chickpea mixture on the plate and put the sautéed octopus on top. Add a few drops of oil, sprigs of fennel, lemon slices, and lemon zest.

  Scilla Maris, Marzamemi, Sicilia

  A first trip must include at least one of the great Baroque towns of southern Sicily: Noto, Modica, and Ragusa. Why the burst of Baroque in the rural south? On January 11, 1693, at nine P.M., lower Sicily was shaken apart by an earthquake. Seventy towns were reduced to rubble and more than sixty thousand people—some quote ninety-three thousand—killed. Now estimated at 7.4, the tremor lasted four minutes. Aftershocks lasted three years. Little remained of the medieval architecture and no one chose to repeat an old style. The three towns rebuilt in the exuberant Baroque. Bring on the new. Not usually mentioned in the story is our destination, the small town of Scicli, near the coast.

  * * *

  WE’VE RESERVED AT Eremo della Giubiliana, south of Ragusa and only a short drive from Scicli. Feeling a bit iffy, I fall asleep on the way, but hitting sudden potholes jars me awake, plus Ed is exclaiming frequently over the landscape. Finally, I pay attention. Jungles of fichi d’india, prickly pear, line the narrow roads. Well-made bone-white stone walls cross and recross and divide and subdivide the land. Cribs for animals, border markings, bracing for hillside terraces, field separators—back-breaking labor. The stacked irregular stones are topped with a line of tight-fitting cut stones designed to stabilize and keep excess water off the lower wall. These are called coltelli, knives, in Tuscany and are very pleasing to my eye. (We learn later that here they’re simply called traversa, across stones, and that the cut surface is called pietra viva, living stone.) Half-collapsed houses and agricultural buildings add to the hallucination that we are crossing a vast archeological site.

  * * *

  EREMO, HERMITAGE. OUT in the expanse of farmland, you come upon Eremo della Giubiliana as you do the lonely haciendas in Spain or the great ranches in Mexico. “Benvenuti,” welcome. A young man rushes out to help with our bags. “L’Eremo,” he gestures with a sweep of his arm around the limestone complex surrounded by giant twisted olive and almond trees, and the ubiquitous prickly pear. He’s Marco, immediately warm and ready to show us around. The structure somehow escaped the 1693 earthquake. Occupied for millennia, it was an Arab home and fortress against marauding Turks, later a stronghold of the Knights Templar (Malta is visible from nearby Punta Secca on a clear day), then held by the Benedictines. In the 1700s, the convent was bought by the Nifosì family, who still owns it. The venerable heir, Signora Vincenza Jolanda Nifosì, Marco tells us, sits all day in a strategic position between reception and the dining room door, benignly overseeing comings and goings. She gives me her frail, cold hand to shake and nods.

  While Marco checks us in, Stefano—love it that they introduce themselves right away—brings cold glasses of almond milk to the lofty stone lobby made cozy by a low, cinnamon-red sofa and fringed chairs, books, and lamplight. The signora sits across the room, upright in her chair, a little mutt curled at her feet. She looks at us now and then and resumes her stare into the distance. We pretend we are distant American cousins, upstarts who’ve come back to the family roots to make trouble.

  Marco takes us on a tour. We stop in the original kitchen, a tiny museum of antique cookware, where we taste the just-harvested olive oil. It’s rich and fruity, but without, as Ed says loyally, the piquant hit that Tuscans prize in their oil. I like the mildness. It will marry well with a squeeze of lemon juice for a salad.

  On the grounds, we find the remains of a cemetery, five stone graves cut into stone outcrops. Fifth-century B.C. children used to romp here. A brindled cat curls in one and looks up at us with his one good eye. Also on the grounds, black pigs, who have their own swimming place and mud baths. They are fed organic fava beans, acorns, barley, wheat, and chickpeas, all raised here.

  The peace of the Benedictines who once chanted in these halls permeates the monastic corridors. (Wear white and drink almond milk.) Preserved are early Arab water channels spilling down two levels, creating music. A grass-surrounded swimming pool. All the layers of history in one place.

  Terra-cotta pots are treasured in Italy. Around the courtyard, still prolific with roses in mid-October, are several fine old orci planted with flowers and held together with wire, earth showing through the cracks. That’s it: The pot kept.

  Our room is small, with an ornate iron bed; some monk used to snore here. We booked late and probably have the last-choice room, but with one of the musical Arab fountains right outside the window, I’m content.

  * * *

  THE RESTAURANT IS named for Don Eusebio, an ancestor whose photo shows a corpulent man almost muzzled by his unruly mustache. He ate well, as will we. Before dinner, an antipasto feast is served with prosecco by the fire. Nuts and big olives, crisp chickpea sticks, caponata, bite-size arancini, squares of ricotta crusted and fried. Dinner?

  The signora disappears at dusk. We’re alone but the silence is suddenly interrupted by an American group just in from a day of touring. Two of them have fallen and one has lost his computer. They look exhausted. We overhear Lorenzo telling them about tomorrow.

  “What’s in Modica?” a man asks.

  A woman responds, “Chocolate.”

  Lorenzo slyly adds, “And the Baroque.” Doubtless I’ve made a fool of myself in Greece or Peru. And probably in Italy, too.

  They only light briefly. Quiet returns once the bus has carted off the group to a restaurant in Ragusa. Ed reminds me, “He travels fastest who travels alone.”

  * * *

  THE TABLE IS laid with white linens, the china and silverware embellished with a coat of arms. Candlelight and gliding waiters—that enticing moment of the day, the anticipation of dinner.

  Back to the black pig. We order the roasted tournedos. First, the best onion soup ever, oregano scented and served with a dollop of fondue on top. Not the crusty cheese-covered French onion soup I know, but a rich broth and a creamy topping. The basket of homemade breads that taste of wheat and rain. My favorite is the one mad
e with capuliato, the sun-dried tomato sauce. A pitcher of beef broth comes with Ed’s tortelloni pasta filled with onions, mint, and a cream of almonds. “Extra primo good,” he says. I have a taste. Yes. A swirl of three flavors, each sparking off the other. Stefano, our waiter, tells us that the onions come from Giarratana, famous for the delicacy of its onions.

  The pork! We take the first bite simultaneously and Ed looks at me wide-eyed. “Dio! This is al di là.” Beyond the beyond. Texture like the tenderest beef filet but the taste soars beyond that—a deep and amazing flavor, juicy and succulent. A stack of thin-skin potatoes topped with a sprinkle of crushed almonds. Simple but not easy to achieve; you must have the best of everything. The pork’s sauce is its own pan juices with olive oil from Tonda Iblea (a well-known region for excellent oil) and field herbs. We want to thank the chef but he is away. He can be proud of his staff.

  I remember from past trips to Sicily that the food was the best. The sun-warmed soil, the sea, the assumption of freshness—even a simple ragù, roasted vegetable, or grilled fish is somehow uplifted. The pork deserves a generous and open-hearted wine. We order close to home, Gulfi Nerojbleo, 2011, a nero d’Avola from Chiaramonte Gulfi. So much character and variation in these nero d’Avola wines. This one tastes as dark as the black pig, with a nice spice behind the fruit.