A Birthday Banquet in Mezzojuso (a little village close to Palermo)

"Could I come with you on Sunday? I can help you". She surprised of that unexpected question but that it gave her an instant of happiness and so she answered in instinctive way and with some embarrassment "Yes, of course, you can." But she changed her mind immediately after, not because she did not want him with her or it was not a pleasure for her have his company, rather just the opposite, but she was afraid of herself.

She knew how she metamorphoses herself while is working in the kitchen, if something had not gone for the correct way she would have been able to have aggressive reactions which would be interpreted badly. They had been frequenting for two days, perhaps three, he didn't know her and she is not be liked to show him hers "dark side of the moon" he would be to do a wrong or led astray idea. But she didn't want to give up spending some time with that man was "fallen" in her life almost accidentally.

Fillets of sea bream with pistachio of Bronte

She waited him for the supper that evening. She liked to be with him. Intelligent, pleasant, of good manners, ironic he debated in the correct way even the most banal theme. She also found him very nice and with a beautiful sporting physique. The evening was prospected interesting and she was certain that they would be had a good time together. She prepared everything with care and she took care of every smallest detail. Especially in the choice of the menù, convinced as she was of the symbolic importance of the food. She elaborated it doing so that the table it was the prelude of the thalamus and she created for them a simple recipe but refined that it predisposed their bodies and souls to the sharing of the pleasure: Fillets of sea bream with pistachio of Bronte.

Marinated anchovies

The kitchen is tradition and, as such, culture. A lot of recipes of the local kitchens are impregnated with history and they have been being handed down for centuries for generation in generation. Some typical products, in many cases, also become symbol and media protagonists of a territory for their rituality, their content artistic-manual and the aesthetics that express them.

In Sicily the whole food is symbol and the island traditional kitchen shows all the characters of its people: from that more "aristocrat", of the baroques and opulent dishes left each other by the Monsùs; to the more "plebeian", that it finds again in the dishes of the agricultural and seafearing custom.

Today, luckily, in the society don't exist anymore social barriers due to titles and to honors and the same revolution has been transferring in the vision of the gastronomy. So many gods, considered in the past a dime a dozen, have been rehabilitated by the dietary and nutritional point of view and recognized as of the delicacies, thanks also to their territorial exclusiveness.

Among these we find all the "blue fish": mackerel, needle-fishes, longfin tuna, sardines, alaccie[1], anchovies. This type of fish has been being for centuries the fruit of the island fishing and we have many recipes in which it is protagonist: fried, roasted, all’acqua pazza[2], in bittersweet, marinated, with the onion, with the tomato sauce.

Mine prefer are the anchovies, then if they are marinated I find them irresistible. Greek and Romans were teachers in the maintenance of the fish and, possibly, the recipe of the "marinated Anchovies" comes us from them. Here I propose you that of my family.

Fresh noodles with cuttlefish’s ink

"Do you not have a boyfriend?"

"No", she answered.

"How is possible?", said him

"The men have terribly bored me."

Then he bent, he gave a kiss on her lips and he said: "Can I be your Valentine?

She looked at him with surprised air and she answered: "No, you cannot be him. You are too much young."

But, in that same moment she felt a worrisome scrunch in the wall inside which she had barricaded her emotions, months and months of job of construction that it was crushed in few second. She didn't want it, squashed on the crack a mortar anti-passion, and she went.

The mortar however it didn't have a good taking, fortunately for her.

In the ten days departed intensely together, that little boy come from far made her discover that what she wanted from the Love, her Idea of Love, was not illusion or romantic dream but it existed in the reality. Surely he was not the man of her life, the variables ages and distance didn't play in favor of them, but what happened reopened her a breach from which to see again the life colored to strong shades.

The awareness that the present has already passed made enjoy her every instant of that history. They almost never separated themselves and, knowing that soon this would have happened instead, she tried to satisfy him in everything. And an evening also taught him to make the pasta with the cuttlefish’s ink.