Camille Cusumano

The Big Night in Sicily appeared in Women Who Eat, ed. Leslie Miller; 2003, Seal Press

THE BIG NIGHT—IN SICILY

Wound a Sicilian, pay through the mouth

By Camille Cusumano

My sister Grace—who is my junior by a year and four days—and I were once each other’s shadow. We answered to each other’s name, covered for each other’s “crimes,” and generally practiced omertà—before we could even pronounce this Sicilian word for the code of silence. Then things changed. Grace took a husband, a big house, and had kids. I took to the road in search of myself.

A few years ago, my sister, who never shared my desperate need to escape New Jersey, expressed interest in accompanying me on my world travels. I suggested she join me on a trip to Sicily, home to our forebears, during which I planned to lodge in hermitages open to lay travelers.

She jumped at the chance. By the time we reached Catania, the province dominated by the active volcano, Mount Etna, it was apparent how we were set in our ways. Grace enjoyed sleeping late, while I was up early. She liked lots of cappuccino stops, I liked to keep moving. She wanted shopping and beach sitting but I insisted on the pursuit of monastic settings.

The one exception to our contrasting time management was food. We are practically clones on this subject. We were bred in the soulful necessity of a well-composed feast. Our Sicilian grandparents put forth even the humblest meal—crusty bread, sweet butter, and wine, say—with the same reverence a priest bestows upon Holy Communion. Food wasn’t just sacred. It was good. We were fed greens like chard, broccoli rabe, dandelions, and cardoons, cooked right from our grandparents’ gardens. Pasta was often hand rolled and we ate mounds of it, prepared in numerous ways, long before it was fashionable in America.

With hunger pangs uniting us one evening after a day of bumps and grinds, we arrived at Acireale. The baroque town sits on a sloping haunch of the moody firepit, Etna, over the Ionian Sea. We would spend the night in the 18th-century Franciscan monastery, San Biagio, amid cloisters, frescoes, lush gardens, statuary, and three ostriches.
On our way out for dinner, we passed a coarse-robed friar strolling the long halls. He jangled his ring of skeleton keys, reminding us that our lodging had a curfew. Still, we had plenty of time to savor a long, slow dinner Sicilian style. We ambled down the narrow back streets to the main thoroughfare, Via Vittorio Emanuele II, scrutinizing each and every restaurant. We were looking for signs—unpretentious lighting, paper tablecloths, men wearing bibs to guard against red splashes, dented metal pots on a hot stove, a plump grandmotherly type chanting a few bars of the melodious dialect, Ven aca, sedi, mangia (come here, sit, eat!).

With its cuisine (like its liturgy) founded on three farm products—wheat, olive, and grape—Sicily doesn’t lack for tempting menus. But we had eaten a mediocre made-for-tourists meal the night before in Cefalù. I had ordered, assiduously in Italian, the pólpo (octopus), remembering my grandmother’s delicious version stuffed with bread crumbs, cheese, and herbs and steeped in tomato broth. Sadly, the vulcanized fiber laid before us was better suited to the soles of a shoe. We were determined not to repeat the experience.

We finally settled on Oste Scuro at Piazza Lionardo Vigo. It was not quite the snapshot of our grandparents’ kitchens, but its al fresco terrace across from a floodlit cathedral was warm and inviting. We watched two handsome, well-heeled couples step from a shiny black limousine and vanish laughing into the shadowy interior of the restaurant. They exuded a certain snob appeal mixed with sensuousness.
As our eyes followed them, I asked Grace, “What do you think?”
“Let’s give it a try,” she said. I agreed, noticing that most patrons seemed to be Italian, not the Anglo tourists notorious for their lack of discriminating taste. I told the maitre d’ in my best Italian—cobbled together from college courses and remembrance of words passed between Mom and Dad—that we wanted only to eat well, not like tourists as we had in Cefalù.
I began to expound on the previous night’s rubbery octopus but trailed off as I saw his face flush deeply, his eyes dart in the sign of the cross, his nostrils flare. What had I said?

I was raised in an expressive culture. My own mercurial father could display passion, anger, disappointment, tenderness with a mere glance and my sister and I translated his meaning the way a blind person reads Braille, or a fisherman the sea.
My complaining had vexed the man, stirring up animosity for us implacable tourists. Perhaps we should leave, I thought. But he took a deep breath and with a dignified and ceremonial flourish he ushered us to a table. “Sit,” he ordered tersely. We obeyed like the dutiful girls we had once been in our traditional Sicilian family.
“What did you say?” whispered Grace who had not missed the surfeit of climate changes in his face.
“I know what I said,” I told her, still wondering if we should just bolt, “I’m not sure what he heard.”

Presently, the maitre d’ returned with two other men, a waiter and one dressed smartly in a suit. They had obviously been clued in that we were complainers. Our longed-for repast would be foiled again.
A carafe of red wine was set before us. After allowing us to briefly study the extensive menu, the three concluded that we should let them feed us. Their imperious tone told us not to object. A side serving table was set up next to ours. This lovely weekend evening had brought many diners to the popular Oste Scuro. Yet none seemed to be getting the attention we were receiving.

Oste Scuro’s menu featured at least 20 different antipasti, representing every flavor of Sicily that has seduced discriminating palates since a Sicilian, Archestrato from Gela, wrote the first cookbook, The Sweet Taste, 400 years before Christ. Grace and I were served in slow procession tangy-sweet caponata, platters of fried eggplant, fresh, creamy ricotta, buffalo-milk mozzarella, prosciutto; citrus and onion salad; broccoli rabe and wild fennel redolent of garlic and olive oil; conch tender as a first kiss; fire-roasted peppers. We took a few breaths and forked onto our plates fritto misto of artichokes and squid, frittata larded with pancetta, fresh fava beans, and peas, and roasted potatoes with caramelized garlic toes.

Every taste sensation between earth and sun, from the pungent to the sweet to the sour was laid upon our tongues. Generosity is nourishment in and of itself and we would have felt sated, even if these dishes had been less phenomenal. To our astonished delight, more antipasti were set before us—marinated porcini, fresh sardines, mussels, shrimp, and sautéed calamari. We worked the goodness from each morsel like bees sucking nectar from flowers.

As the parade of dishes crowded the serving table near us I learned that the smartly dressed man regaling us was none other than Oste Scuro owner Carmelo Muscolino who has run the establishment for more than thirty years. The pride Muscolino takes in his country’s cooking was evidenced in these time-honored ingredients, from the fruits of sea and earth to the piquant kiss of garlic, fragrant embrace of olive oil, and tingle of lemon.
“Don’t look now,” I said to Grace, “but one of the guys waiting on us is il Padróne himself, master of the house.”
“I’ll kiss his ring,” said Grace, smacking her lips, “his food is fabulous.”
“I’m afraid he’ll kill the cook,” I said, “if I tell him it’s anything but.”

Catania’s specialties include the aromatic pasta Norma, a rigatoni with tomatoes, fried eggplant, basil, and the sharp ricotta salata; pasta cc’a muddica, made with toasted bread crumbs, olive oil, and anchovies; pasta cc’u trunzu, with specially cultivated cabbage; and pasta cc’u niuru, mantled in a dark, sweet mix of squid ink and tomatoes. We were served Oste Scuro’s versions of each one, plentiful enough to feed six people. Grace and I looked at each other. We understood that to stop eating was tantamount to trampling the flag.

But with each delightful swallow, my eyes bulged. My waistline felt no more distinct than the middle of a bell pepper. The taste of the food and the sheer abundance transported me back to my childhood when not one of our parents’ ten children dared leave the table before cleaning their plates.
“Take small portions and eat very slowly,” I advised Grace.
“Easy for you to say,” she said, noticing that I would offer to serve her first, then fill her plate with more food than I took. I pushed the thought of the bill away. It loomed like an unreal dénouement in a Fellini film.

I began to understand how my cavalier criticism had desecrated these Sicilians’ cherished patrimony. That they were ashamed of their compatriot who had fed us so poorly that I had felt compelled to broadcast it. The abundance and diversity of food served us—with nary a hint of fawning—was an implicit gag order. We accepted the “penance” for my blasphemy.

The four paste were delicious, perfectly al dente and balanced in the pairing of chewy and tender textures and of flavors—sweet, salty, robust, mild, aromatic. Each attested that the true genius of Sicilian cooking is in the use of honest, fresh ingredients mingled in imaginative ways. I wanted to convey my innate understanding of this ancient alchemy to our waiter, but he was not interested in small talk. He nodded to the maitre d’ who came by, smiled, and asked, “How is everything?”
“Extraordinary! Superb!” we assured him too eagerly.
“Bene,” he said and told us to follow him. We stood, not without difficulty, and followed him inside the restaurant where we all leaned over a case of silver and iridescent fish on ice. He asked us to choose which we wanted and when he saw the clouded look on our faces, he pointed to a four-to-five-pound red snapper and asked, “Will this one do?”
“There’s more?” asked Grace, panicky.
“Uhh . . . si . . . of course . . .” I answered wistfully. I’d never been humbled by food in quite this way.
“How would you like it?” he asked.
“To go, tell him,” said my sister who was on her first trip abroad. How to explain to her, whose mores have been steadfastly shaped in north Jersey, that she was no longer in Hoboken. I felt her eyes egging me to request that doggie bag.
“Grigliata?” he asked.
“Si, si,” I mumbled. Grilled snapper it would be.

Back in our seats, I felt like a character in Jean Genet’s theatre of the absurd, uncertain of which side of the playwright’s master-slave equation we represented. We sipped wine to revive our long-gone appetites for the fish course and I refrained from telling Grace that oste scuro translated to “dark host.” My thoughts grew even darker as I recalled that the thick menu included many types of carne, from rabbit and pork to veal scaloppini and famous Florentine chianina beef, all of which I ordinarily love.

The snapper arrived. Discreetly, I loosened my belt two notches. Grace grabbed the serving utensils and served me the larger portion. “Hey, look!” I exclaimed, “over there, that handsome man is staring at you!” I shoveled food from my plate back into hers as she turned. Of course, she didn’t fall for that old gag but the comic relief was welcome—even if it hurt to laugh. We were drunk, not on wine, but on food.

The snapper was meltingly sweet and moist and we washed it down with more goblets of the rugged Catanese wine. Another platter arrived. It contained beautiful fresh fruit, including loquats, the sweet white-fleshed Mediterranean fruit that would be criminal to pass up in Sicily. Just as I expelled the last of their mahogany pits, three different pastries appeared. I had always admired the Arabs’ legacy to Sicily—an inventive finessing of almonds, pistachios, chocolate, sugar, eggs, and ricotta into an array of delectable dolci—until that moment. But we worked through the meal’s crowning opulence like the actors with their death wish in La Grande Bouffe, even as the waiter posited a surreal trio of liqueurs—lemoncello, arancello, and cioccolato—in front of us.
Tears filled our eyes and we pondered the existential question of whether we’d died and gone to heaven or hell. About the time the espresso arrived, we scared up the courage to ask our waiter to please bring a check—any check.

Ma, perché avete frétta?—What’s the hurry?—he asked. You must try our gelato next. E fatto in casa.
“No, please! We love homemade gelato! Right, Grace?” I said, vaguely aware that my shrill tone belied my words. Grace wrung her hands. And then, in my desperation, I remembered some received wisdom, the one thing in Sicily that might trump their need to compensate their wounded pride—a woman’s chaste reputation.

“Signor,” I begged, standing to block the way of our “dark host” to the kitchen that held our torture and delight. “We are lodging at San Biagio. They lock the doors at midnight. It’s quarter to twelve—we must get back—or we’ll have to sleep in the streets.”
My plea magically triggered the evening’s anti-climactic climax. Our check arrived within minutes. It would be astronomical. We didn’t care. Oh, we would pay anything for the pleasure of waddling away from that wonderful restaurant. But the full bill was only 158,000 lire, about $75 for two of us.

Ecstatic at the unexpectedly low total, I offered to treat Grace and pay the entire bill, which she accepted. It was a small price to pay for lessons learned on both our accounts. While I imparted a modicum of traveling etiquette to my younger sister (like there is no Italian word for “doggie bag”), we both learned that one must also be prepared for the dark host. He could be lurking just behind the next prèzzo fisso menu. Next time, my sister and I will remember what to do: Omertà.