Prue, Tally and I went to Sicilian Street Food cookery school today. We went to Modica, taking the scenic route, we peeled off across country just before Ragusa and across a pretty deep fertile valley.

Katia our host, show us how to prepare three very traditional Sicilian dishes that would even be easy and possible on board Njord to impress our guests. We learnt about the old fashioned grains which make the Sicilian flours and how they differ from the north with less glutin so need eggs to make then elastic to the south where the flour is more elastic. Sicily was the "grain island" in Roman times and they still cultuvate the original grains rather than high volume modified modern day grains.

We made the pudding first to allow it time to set. Biancomangiare which is between a blancmange and panna cotta but with no gelatine so good for vegetarians and made with milk rather than cream. Our flavour was green lemon straight from Katia's grandma's garden picked that morning.

Next we were kneeding and rolling with a semolina flour making Scacci e Timasini. Scacci is a very thinly rolled out bread made with brewer's yeast but and is as thin as a thin pizza(!). We stopped rolling once we could see the wooden table through the dough. The filling was one day old ricotta (very important not to be fresh that day for this receipe), Italian sausage with fennel seeds and sprinkled with marjoram and then baked in a hot oven.

The next receipe was meatballs cake - Ruota di Polette. A very attractive dish with pork and beef minced meat.

All washed down with a light red from Noto - Planeta. We will go on a wine tasting visit soon.

A great day out - www.lovesicily.com