White Almond Sicily

"I do not envy the Heaven to God because I am well satisfied to live in Sicily" King Federico II of Sicily, 1194 - 1250 AD Last year I received a multitude of emails and messages from people asking my advice about buying a house in Sicily and about life on the island.  I think that with a lot of us spending more time at home in lockdown that many people were using their time to follow a dream of looking for a place in the sun with Sicily in mind due to the amount of coverage in the media about towns selling houses for €1 and also due to the island becoming a more popular destination for holidays.  We did NOT buy our house for €1, our story is a unique one.  This year it will be sixteen years since we first visited Sicily and we immediately fell in love with the island, its culture, its food and its people, so much so that after just three trips we decided that we wanted to buy a house there. This is our story ..... We first chose to visit Sicily after I read an article in...

One of my favourite pasta dishes in Sicily is Pasta alla Norma, it completely embodies the flavours and fresh produce of the island. This dish originates from the city of Catania and there are numerous versions of this homage to music and food based on variations on a theme of pasta, aubergines (eggplant), tomatoes and ricotta salata. The composer Vincenzo Bellini was born in 1801 in Catania and according to legend on the opening night in 1890 of the cities beautiful opera house, which opened with a performance of his opera "Norma", the public were so overwhelmed that they insisted on marking the occasion by naming a dish after the event. Another story attributes the name to a compliment which was paid to a chef from Catania given by a famous Sicilian actor in the 1920's who declared that his pasta dish had been "as good as Norma" Another explanation, with not very much imagination, is that 'norma' in Sicilian dialect means "rule" ...

Naxos or Naxus was an ancient Greek city situated where is now the seaside resort of Giardini Naxos near Taormina. This ancient city occupied a low headland, now called Capo Schisò, which was formed by an ancient lava flow. Naxos was the first Greek colony in Sicily, founded in 734 BC by settlers from Chalcis in Euboea and later from Naxos in the Cyclades Islands. The city was strategically positioned on the east coast, south of Messina and was a natural landing point for ships sailing west to Sicily from Greece. In 492-491 BC Naxos was conquered by the tyrant Hippocrates of Gela and then again in 476 BC by the tyrant Hieron who transferred the citizens of Naxos to Leontini (modern day Lentini). Soon afterwards a new city with a grid plan was laid out and in 461 BC the exiles returned after the fall of tyranny in Siracusa. Naxos as an Ionian city was an ally of Athens in the fifth century BC who along with the colonies of Leontini and Katane (Catania) supported Athens in its c...