Giorgio Locatelli - Made in Sicily

That generosity carries over into the Sicilian home. Even if you don’t have as many dishes to share when family and friends are around the table, if a little bit of food is left over you can congratulate yourself that you made enough. And nothing will be wasted. Whatever is left over will be used again, maybe in a different way, for the next meal.

The production of food, in the Sicilian mind, never seems to be a problem; I never felt that anyone was thinking, ‘I have to cook for all these people’, perhaps because there is no pretension to Sicilian food. Instead there is an understanding that you will feed people with whatever you have, which is summed up by the Sicilian word companatico, which translates as ‘what you have to go with the bread’. And since most of Sicily is a vast garden, what you have most abundantly is vegetables, and, because it is an island, there is a greater emphasis and pride in fish, rather than meat.

As someone who comes from northern Italy, where the antipasti is much more about cured hams and salami, it feels very different to sit around a table filled with bowls of caponata, the sweet and sour vegetable dish that you find made slightly differently everywhere; plates of beautiful gamberi rossi (red prawns, eaten raw with just a little olive oil and salt), sarde a beccafico (stuffed sardines), perhaps some polpettine (little balls of tuna or swordfish), deep-fried squares of maccu (the most delicious paste of broad beans and wild fennel), baked aubergines with sultanas and pine nuts, chargrilled artichokes under oil, octopus salad, parmigiana di melanzane, served at room temperature, or perhaps fried courgette flowers, stuffed with ricotta, again served cold.

Because verdure (vegetable dishes) feature so strongly in Sicilian eating, I have given them a chapter all on their own, which follows this one; however, all of them are fantastic served as part of the antipasti.

Insalata di mare

Seafood salad

This is a typical antipasto all over the island, and will reflect what has been fished at any one time, so there might be more, or less, mussels, squid and octopus. Sometimes there will also be pieces of tuna or swordfish. Any fish goes, as long as it doesn’t have any bones. I have seen people adding things like apple, or carrot, or spring onions, to add a bit of crunch, but I think the best insalata di mare is this simple one, just with celery, which is very important to the flavour, parsley, garlic, lemon and oil. If you only have one kind of fish, you can make the same salad. One day we had boxes and boxes of seppia (cuttlefish) come into the kitchen at Locanda, too much to use up in the pasta, so we made this salad, but with cuttlefish only. Serve it at room temperature, not chilled, or something of the flavour will be lost.

Ask your fishmonger to clean the octopus and squid for you, and to give you the body and the tentacles.

Serves 4

1 octopus (about 330g), fresh or frozen (and defrosted), cleaned, with tentacles

330g squid, cleaned, with tentacles

450g medium prawns

600g mussels, clams or both

80ml white wine

2 celery stalks (preferably with leaves), chopped

50ml lemon oil

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 tablespoon parsley and garlic

If the octopus is fresh, beat it with a meat hammer to tenderise it and rinse it very well under cold running water, with the help of a clean sponge, to remove any excess saltiness. If it has been frozen, you don’t need to do this, as freezing has the effect of tenderising it.

Bring a large pan of water to the boil and add the octopus, but don’t season it, or it will toughen up. Cover with a lid, turn down the heat and let it simmer gently for about 20–30 minutes, or until tender.

While the octopus is cooking, bring another pan of water to the boil and drop in the squid bodies and tentacles. Simmer for about 10 minutes, then remove with a slotted spoon and drop the prawns into the same water for about 2 minutes, until they have changed colour and are just cooked. Peel most of the prawns, reserving a handful for decoration. Drain and keep to one side with the squid.

Scrub the mussels and/or clams separately (pulling any beards from the mussels) under running water and discard any that are open. Put the mussels and/or clams into a large pan with the white wine over a high heat, cover, and cook, shaking the pan from time to time, until all the shells have opened. Remove from the heat, strain off the cooking liquid and reserve this. Discard any mussels and/or clams whose shells haven’t opened. Take the rest out of their shells and throw the shells away.

Remove the octopus from its cooking liquid and cut it into small pieces. Cut the squid bodies into strips.

Arrange the octopus, squid, mussels and/or clams with the celery in a shallow serving dish. Whisk 50ml of the strained cooking liquid from the mussels and/or clams into the lemon oil, season to taste and drizzle over the seafood. Scatter with the parsley and garlic and serve.

Insalata di gamberi ai pomodori

Warm prawn salad with sun-dried and fresh tomato

This is a Sicilian dish that we refined a little for the menu at Locanda. The bread dressing is something I first made a long time before I fell in love with Sicily, when I started out cooking with Corrado Sironi at Il Passatore in Varese – but the use of breadcrumbs, lemon juice and olive oil has a very Sicilian feel to it, and when you combine it with tomatoes and sun-dried tomatoes, I feel it brings a little bit of the island to our menu at Locanda.

Serves 4

120g sun-dried tomatoes

olive oil

4 large tomatoes

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 teaspoon parsley and garlic

12 big prawns, unpeeled

a handful of lettuce

2 tablespoons Giorgio’s dressing

For the prawn cooking liquor:

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 carrot, chopped

1 onion, chopped

2 celery stalks, chopped

½ leek, chopped

450ml white wine

300ml white wine vinegar

10 peppercorns

2 bay leaves

For the bread dressing:

2 handfuls of breadcrumbs

juice of ½ lemon

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon garlic oil

a little white wine vinegar, to taste

To make the cooking liquor for the prawns, heat the olive oil in a large pan and add the chopped carrot, onion, celery and leek. When they start to colour, add the white wine, the vinegar and 500ml of water, along with the peppercorns and the bay leaves. Bring to the boil, then turn the heat down and let it simmer for 15 minutes.

With a pestle and mortar, or using a blender, blend the sun-dried tomatoes with a tablespoon of olive oil until creamy.

To make the bread dressing, mix the breadcrumbs with the lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil and garlic oil. Taste, and if you like a little more sharpness, add the wine vinegar.

Cut the tomatoes into wedges, put them into a bowl, season and toss with the bread dressing and the parsley and garlic.

Bring the cooking liquor for the prawns to the boil, put in the prawns and cook for 3–4 minutes. Lift out and peel them while hot. Add them to the bowl of tomatoes, mixing well.

Spoon the tomatoes and prawns on to plates. Dress the lettuce with Giorgio’s dressing and arrange on top, and drizzle some of the sun-dried tomato dressing around each plate.

Insalata calda di polpo

Warm octopus salad

Serves 4–6

1kg octopus, fresh or frozen (and defrosted), cleaned, with tentacles sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

750g potatoes, cut into 2.5cm cubes

75g whole green and black olives in brine

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, plus a little extra for finishing

1 tablespoon chopped flat-leaf parsley, plus a little extra for finishing juice of 3 lemons