Day 8: The Dinner

Unni mancianu dui, mancianu tri (There’s always room for one more)

Sicilian proverb

We started the day with a visit to the Greek theatre. Once you enter the theatre, it's easy to see why the Greeks thought this the perfect place to build it. I'm sure they drew constant inspiration from Mt. Etna right there in the background. Can you just imagine the dramas put on here?!

Teatro antico di Taormina

All the world's a stage!

At the theatre, we were treated to a random tourist's serenade on stage. We all clapped at the end.

Then we set off for a 125-mile journey southwest to Francesco's hometown of Naro, with a stop at Scala dei Turchi--a rocky white cliff on the coast. Beautiful!

 

We reached Naro as the sun was setting. Looking up at the little town, it didn't look like much. As our car climbed the hilly streets to the town center, I couldn't help but think of a passage in Midnight in Sicily discussing the Arab influence on many Sicilian town layouts.

"Unlike European architects who were much concerned with a building's external appearance, Arab architects ignored or minimized the outside and turned wholly inward to the harmonies of interior space and interior decoration. The same was true of Arab town plans, with their bewildering maze, for those who didn't know them, of irregular streets, blind alleys, hidden almost private courtyards on to which a cluster of houses linked by family or trade would open."

Photo courtesy of The Internet

Our driving tour and our post-dinner walking tour around town that night would reinforce this image of tiny alleys winding together to form a convoluted spiral.

"Perhaps these horizontal streets weren't in fact parallels, like altitude lines on a map, but a single spiral, one immensely long street winding through the deserted town from top to bottom, like the thread in a screw."

Francesco knew a whole lot about his hometown. He told us about its history as he drove us around pointing out interesting spots. I certainly don't know that much about my own hometown. Then again, I didn't grow up in a city hundreds of years old, once occupied by Arabs, and containing Roman ruins, a Norman church, and a medieval castle... Perhaps Naro had more to offer than initially met the eye. And once inside the Cirasas' home, this became apparent. The unremarkable exterior of the building concealed a truly beautiful home. And then there was The Dinner. A dinner so epic that I'm awarding it proper noun status.

You know when you think something is going to be epic, and you're not surprised when it's as epic as you expected, but when you experience it, it's just...overwhelmingly epic?! That's how I'd describe The Dinner. Finally, we would meet the woman responsible for the arancini recipe that Cliff attempted, using instructions that Francesco translated while his mom recited them by heart over the phone. If the length of this recipe was any indication of what was to come, and if the reputation of Sicilian mothers was true, this dinner was going to be epic.

So, not knowing Italian was definitely a bummer at this dinner, because Stelios and Maria are pretty fluent and thus could carry on conversations with Francesco and his parents. Mr. Cirasa was sad to learn that we didn't even know German (which he does know and demonstrated for us). So we were pretty much bystanders when it came to conversation, but we were active participants in the eating. With continual urgings of "Mangia! Mangia!!" by both Mr. and Mrs. Cirasa, we ate. And we ate. And we ate. You know the trick where the clown pulls something out of a bag, and another thing, and another thing that doesn't even fit inside of a bag? It was like that with this dinner. Just when we thought we were done, Mrs. Cirasa would pull yet another dish out of the oven. Later that night or the next day, I wrote it all down, but I'm SURE I missed something.

I will remember this dinner for the rest of my life. I'd tasted arancini before, but when I tasted Mrs. Cirasa's, I knew that was what all those other arancini were SUPPOSED to taste like. What an awesome treat for us to experience homemade Sicilian cooking! Here is what I remember of the menu:

• Three kinds of cheese (pecorino, sheep's ricotta, and something else)
• Bread
• Two kinds of olives (green garlicy goodness + black olives)
• Dried tomatoes
• Zucchini
• Eggplant w/ red pepper, garlic, basil
• Two kinds of arancini (ragu + prosciutto/cheese)
• Pizza (tomato oregano)
• Focaccia
• Caponata
• Baked eggplant with tomato & parm
• Potatoes with homemade sausage
• Baked ricotta
• Pasta a la Norma
• Nero d'Avola wine
• Assorted homemade liqueurs: limoncella, cactus fruit, mint
• Kirschwasser
• Marsala wine
• Grappa
• Assorted desserts: cannoli, cassatelle (ricotta dumplings typical of Naro--taaasty), and cassata (Sicilian cake)
• Digestif (lemony soda water) and Fanta

Sheesh, good thing we had that digestif, right?

Eventually, although it seemed like it'd last forever, The Dinner wound to an end, and we set off for a romantic, slightly spooky night tour of Naro.