A Classic Christmas Dessert Recipe from Sicily

Updated 2018. When writing my guest article on Italian Christmas desserts, I asked my friend Maria Louisa Manca, who is a very good cook from Catania (a beautiful city situated on the slope of Mount Etna) to share a favorite dessert from her native Sicily. Here is Maria Louisa’s classic recipe for Croccante alle Mandorle Siciliano: Ingredients: (for 7-8 servings) 500 grams almonds, …

New App: Italian Menu Decoder

If you’re traveling to Italy soon or just really devoted to Italian food, there’s a new app that might be right up your alley — the Italian Menu Decoder. Travel writer Dana Facaros (who has contributed to Dream of Italy) started a list of bizarre and regional food names while she was writing the Cadogan guides (along with partner Michael Pauls) …

A Reading List for Sicilian Cuisine

Barrie Kerper, the author of The Collected Traveler series of travel books, introduced to two incredible Sicily cooking schools in our October issue. Here she shares her reading list to immerse yourself in Sicilian cuisine: Two excellent books that generally cover Sicilian cuisine are Pomp and Sustenance: Twenty-Five Centuries of Sicilian Food, Mary Taylor Simeti and Sicily: Culinary Crossroads, Giuseppe …

In Palermo Sicily: Marzipan and La Martorana

In our October issue, Barrie Kerper wrote about two incredible cooking schools in Sicily. Here she shares one of her favorite Sicilian treats and its provenance: It’s hard for me to accurately describe the creativity of Sicilian confectioners, who shape and color marzipan into incredibly life-like treats – sea creatures, fruits, nuts, baskets, spaghetti, eggs, etc. Marzipan is an island-wide …