The Susanne

1. Cozze alla Mar­in­ara. The best thing I’ve ever tasted, with such per­fectly bal­anced, intense fla­vours and the broth was per­fect: just light and deli­cious yet filling at the same time. My mouth threw a party at every bite of mussel and every sip of broth.

2. Fruit trucks. I bought a kilo of the famous Sicilian Bronte pistac­chios and some amaz­ing, tiny little pears from this truck. It all tasted divine. Some of the pistac­chios even made it back to Norway with me. Yey!

3. Gam­boli fritti. Sea­food is of course the greatest part of Sicilian cuisine, so no wonder I man­aged to eat fried squid sev­eral times in sev­eral res­taur­ants. With sev­eral levels of deli­cious­ness, O’Neils in Recanati having by far the best.

4. Gran­ita. It’s like a slushie, only made with real fruit and much, much, much better tast­ing. I ima­gine it might be the inspir­a­tion for slushies…

5. Prima piatti. First course. I love how they have four course din­ners that last hours. Of course I could barely fit one course in me, but I still tried out the dif­fer­ent courses and loved them. I’d love to eat like that at home. If only I could afford it, I def­in­itely would. I’d just eat teeny tiny por­tions so I’d have room for everything!

6. Risotto alla mar­in­ara. This was very much like paella and not like any risotto I’ve ever tasted. First of all, the rice didn’t stick together like a gooey mass and it didn’t taste gooey either! It tasted deli­cious, the sea­food was cooked to per­fec­tion and the rice as well. Every rice grain sep­ar­ate and deli­cious in its sep­ar­ate­ness. Yum! If only I knew how to achieve such great res­ults at home…

7. Tiram­isu. This is my favour­ite dessert and although I really can’t eat it without becom­ing ill, I dared the haz­ards and ate half of this huge block of home made tiram­isu. It tasted heav­enly. A little strong, espe­cially as I was feel­ing des­per­ately hung over after our only night out the night before. But like I said, I love tiramisu!

8. The market: fish! We got to the market when it closed having spent all day look­ing for it in the strange city that is Catania and where no one speaks Eng­lish. So I only man­aged to snap a few photos whils run­ning through it as the Sister was sickened by the com­bin­a­tion of oppress­ing heat and the smell of fish, guts and meat… I’d love to shop here though. Pick up some loveøy fresh fish and cook it up in the even­ing when the weather begins to cool, per­haps after a refresh­ing even­ing bath…

9. The market: veget­ables. It must be the lack of fresh food public mar­kets in Norway, but I am crav­ing the chance to stroll along in the midst of a bust­ling market pick­ing out the fresh food I want for dinner…

10. The market: meat. Notice the almost whole carcases?

First a happy sur­prise: last night mum bought tick­ets to Sicilia for The Sister and I! We leave on Tues­day and will be gone for a week. It still hasn’t really sunk in yet, in fact it feels like a bad case of morn­ing after anxi­ety. Like I was very drunk last night and may not be remem­ber­ing things cor­rectly. But it is true, we are going. Yey! I’ve never been to Sicilia before, nor to Italy at all, and I’m well excited! Will be bring­ing the camera but no com­puter, so there will most likely be about ten new posts up all at once in about two weeks time.. I’m excited to see some of the castles and things from medi­eval times. And the beaches, of course. And I can’t wait to sample the food! Ohhh my good­ness. My mouth is water­ing just at the thought of it!

Speak­ing of food — I woke up this morn­ing crav­ing scones. Now, that is itself is weird on sev­eral levels as 1) I don’t think I’ve ever actu­ally had scones before and 2) scones are made with loads of butter and milk, and thus inev­it­ably make me sick. But I scoured the inter­net for a simple recipe and found one at Smit­ten Kit­chen, and then I set to work. I’m not sure how the dough was sup­posed to be before cook­ing but I do have a feel­ing mine was a little runny. Well, maybe not runny but it was def­in­itely not dry and as soon as I got the scones in the oven they seemed to melt a little. And I know for sure that scones are sup­posed to be much higher than mine, which in fact turned out more like scone cook­ies. But they still tasted divine. Mmmm… I only man­aged one before my stom­ach felt like it was throw­ing some sort of satanic party and I was the guest of honour (read: sac­ri­fice) and I had to capit­u­late. But, it was worth it. It was so light and fluffy and deli­cious, lovely and crumbly yet moist at the same time. I had mine with straw­berry jam and it was simply per­fect. No wonder I craved it…