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Walking into Salvatrice’s kitchen is like stepping back in time.
Although she lives a mere kilometre or two from our door, not for the life of me could I give you directions or lead you to her table. It’s deep, deep in the countryside, down the sort of hidden lane that Google Maps has yet to discover and only the locals know.
Her husband farms and Salvatrice cooks. She has a kind of kitchen-restaurant. You call her to book but there’s no menu. She invites you to sit at her table and share what she has prepared.
One night a couple of week’s back we did just that with our next-door neighbours.
Salvatrice welcomed us with a warm and gentle smile. The table was set in full view of all she was cooking. This was Chef’s Table in the truest sense. I was struck by how well organised she must be to prepare so much food in so small a space. I’ve noticed this often, not only in Sicily but in other parts of Italy too. The magic of Italian home cooking often happens in the smallest of spaces. And yet I can’t imagine this modest kitchen is ever used to throw a frozen pizza in the oven or microwave last night’s takeaway!
Everything that comes out of this kitchen is seasonal, artisanal , fatto in casa, homemade
We began with antipasti. The star of the show was a soft, snow-white and only just freshly made, ricotta of sheep’s milk. It was silky smooth and delicately flavoured, a perfect foil to the strong rustic, home-cured salame. The pan Salvatrice uses to make her ricotta is so big that it takes a full hour and a half just to bring the milk up to the right temperature, so she can begin the cheese-making process.
An array of small bowls arrived to the table. Sun dried cherry tomatoes under oil flavoured with fresh garlic. The tomatoes had been dried outside in the garden, under salt from Trapani and the Sicilian sunshine. And olives fresh from this year’s harvest that had been brined and were simply bursting with flavour.
There was grilled zucchine, bite-sizes potato croqueti and a wonderful, rich mound of aubergine or melanzane alla parmigiana – a staple Italian dish. Even if you think you don’t like aubergines it’s worth trying, so full of the taste of Italy, rich with tomatoes and cheese. And of course there was bread – a rustic loaf freshly baked in the dedicated bread oven in the corner of the kitchen. Salvatrice starts every day by baking bread.
Wine was poured liberally, their own red wine, from their own vines. Salvatrice’s husband came in and we asked him to join us. We chatted a lot about food (of course), about wine, about the problem of getting the local commune to clear our road of overgrown canes and clean the canals that take rainwater to the sea to prevent flooding. It may not rain often it Sicily but when it rains, it rains hard and another neighbour had suffered a disastrous flood three years back, decimating his vines and his garden and writing off the two cars in his flooded garage. His parents’ house lies abandoned now, the metre high tide mark left by the muddy flood waters a clear reminder of what happened. They had neither the heart nor the resources to put things right and so they’d had to walk away. Nobody wanted to see that happen again. While all this chat went on around me, in Italian of course, I smiled inwardly, grateful that bit by bit I’m able to understand more, contribute more and become part of our community here in Pozzallo.
But back to the food…. our cook wasn’t finished with us yet. The barbecue had been lit and a platter of pork and veal arrived next to the table. Meat from animals reared right there on the farm by Giovanni, then perfectly seasoned and perfectly cooked under the pergola by Salvatrice.
Of course, no Italian meal is complete without fruit so we ate grapes and apples from their land. And then just when we thought we were done, a perfect crostata di ricotta landed on the table, impossible to resist! Crostata is a rustic open tart, often filled with jam, fruit, ricotta or even Nutella. It’s usually eaten as dessert although I’ve seen it make an appearance for breakfast too! It was the very first thing my Italian sister-in-law, my dear cognata in Rome, taught me to make!
The evening wound down as we sipped coffee and an amaro and thanked Salvatice for a wonderful meal, paid our modest bill and headed for home knowing we’d be back under this roof again. Back many times I’d imagine, to eat real Sicilian food, cooked with skill and love in equal measure by a woman who understands the Sicilian proverb “A contented stomach, a forgiving heart”… Everybody leaves Salvatrice’s table a better person.
