Sicilian gastronomy is a real patchwork made up of legacies inherited from the peoples who have followed one another in the domination of the island.
La Sicilian gastronomy it is a real patchwork made up of legacies inherited from the peoples who have followed one another in the domination of the island. The territory with an innate agricultural vocation and fishing that cannot be missing on an island, provides excellent products with which to make real delicacies that make up the typical dishes of San Giovanni la Punta.
Now let's discover some of the most famous ones San Giovanni la Punta recipes.
Pasta with sardines in San Giovanni La Punta
A real hymn to Sicily is pasta with sardines, one of the typical dishes of San Giovanni la Punta.
To make it you will have to clean the fennel using only its most tender part which you will boil in boiling water for about ten minutes before draining it. The water with which you boiled it, set aside.
Clean the sardines by removing the head and tail and opening them in two, removing the bone. Soak the raisins in water then proceed to finely chop an onion which you will put in a large pan together with the oil, anchovies in oil, salt and a little water and put on the heat until it turns golden.
At that point put a bag of saffron, the raisins that you squeezed to remove the water and the pine nuts, mixing everything for at least a minute.
Add the sardines and the fennel adding the pepper and cook for a couple of minutes covering the pan with the lid.
At the same time, take the pot where you boiled the fennel and put the pasta in the same water that you will bring back to the boil. Drain it while it is still al dente and dip it into the sauce pan, continuing to cook it until it is ready.
Recipes San Giovanni La Punta, the Pasta ncasciata
It is a particularly rich first course and should be considered as a single dish. In Messina it is tradition to prepare this sort of baked pasta for the day of August. It is called incaciata or ncasciata due to the presence of the cheese, although some claim the origin of the name to the type of pot that was used in ancient times to cook it.
Take the aubergines, remove the tip and wash them before peeling them and cutting them into not very thin slices. Then arrange the slices in a colander, taking care to salt them abundantly on each layer and put a weight on the last one so as to apply a certain pressure. Leave them in this position for half an hour so that they purge themselves of their bitter taste. Eliminate the salt and squeeze well slice by slice, frying them in abundant seed oil until golden brown and then leave them on kitchen paper to remove excess oil.
Pour the oil, chopped onion and minced meat into a saucepan and cook over high heat until it browns. Once cooked, pour the tomato puree and season with salt, leaving everything over low heat for half an hour. Once cooked, add plenty of basil.
Boil the peas in plenty of salted water and once cooked, add them to the sauce.
In a saucepan, cook the eggs until they become hard-boiled and, once cooled, shell them.
Move on to cooking the pasta and, once it is al dente, drain it and season it with a little sauce.
Take a non-stick pan and pour a layer of sauce and then put a first layer of pasta on which to add the peas, the slices of hard-boiled egg, mortadella, mozzarella or other type of stringy cheese, sprinkling plenty of grated cheese before placing the aubergine slices fries covered with more sauce.
Do the same way a second layer.
Take the tray and place it in the preheated oven, leaving it all to cook for 20-25 minutes at 180 degrees.
Sicilian rolls
Another typical meat dish of San Giovanni la Punta are the Sicilian rolls which see the use of ingredients belonging to the tradition of the island such as raisins, pine nuts, onion and caciocavallo cheese even if there are many variations such as, for example, the one that provides for the addition of spicy salami in the filling.
Pasta alla Norma recipe from Catania
Known as a specialty of Sicily, pasta alla Norma is a very tasty first course enriched with fresh tomato sauce and obviously fried aubergine slices. In order for them to be truly Norma-style, there must be the addition of garlic cloves, grated sheep's milk ricotta on top and plenty of fresh basil.
The procedure is complex but simple.
We start from the aubergines that must be cleaned, washed, dried and sliced to place them on the colander for the purging process that will take place thanks to the salt that you will have to put on each layer. While you wait for the end of this process, wash the tomatoes which you will put once cut in half in a pan with three cloves of garlic, oil and salt with the addition of plenty of basil which you will leave to cook over low heat for half an hour. Then take the well-peeled and dried aubergines and fry them until they are browned and then drained. Boil the water to cook the pasta al dente which you will transfer to the pan with the sauce where you will have put a little oil with which you will have fried the aubergines.
Serve the pasta on individual plates where you will add the fried aubergines and a generous dose of grated salted ricotta.
