Two islands surrounded by the same sea and very different. This is how the evening opened that on June 18 filled the office of the Italian Trade Agency, in New York, for the Italian Talks “Endless Summer”, dedicated to the products, culinary traditions and wines of Sicily and Sardinia. A conversation between chefs, importers and experts, followed by a buffet inspired by the two kitchens.
The meeting is part of a series that ETA launched to celebrate Italian cuisine, enrolled last December by UNESCO in the intangible cultural heritage of humanity. “We have just finished the ITA Talk dedicated to the Endless Summer, with the cuisine and wines of Sicily and Sardinia, two islands that offer excellent products,” explained Raimondo Lucariello, head of the Food and Wine division of ITA in New York. The Italian cuisine, he added, was recognized by UNESCO as a kitchen “which belongs to all”.
To lead the conversation was the journalist Donatella Mulvoni, correspondent from the United States, Sardinian of origin but not willing to tifo for his island. “When they ask me where to go, whether in Sardinia or Sicily, it is difficult for me to say Sardinia, because I love Sicily too”, he told. “They are two different lands for traditions, landscapes and people, and it is impossible to take a part”. That variety, he added, was the theme of the evening: how the wealth of the two islands is reflected in food, wines and products.
On the front of Sardinian wines Giovanni Caveggia, director of the portfolio of Empson USA, told how Americans are discovering Sardinia also thanks to tourism. “When people come back from Sardinia, they no longer want to go to Coney Island,” he joked, before explaining that the most popular wine is Vermentino. He then insisted on the autochthonous vines of the island, from Cannonau to Carignano, and on a curiosity of Sulcis, where the sandy soils protected the vines from the fillossera, leaving one of the highest concentrations of vineyards on the free foot of Europe. “The wine for Italians is food”, he observed. “It is not food and wine, it is food: a part the mastichi, a part drink it”.
For Sicily spoke Filippo Pistone, owner of Bacchanal Wine Importers, born in Catania. He told the island starting from his wines, from Etna, where it is cultivated up to a thousand meters and survive vineyards more than centenaries burst into the phylloxera, up to Marsala. “Everyone here ate Chicken Marsala in a New York restaurant”, he said, however, remembering that Marsala is much more than a cooking wine, a historical product made of reserves aged decades. On the island’s symbol grape, Nero d’Avola, used a New York image: “It is like Manhattan for New York, the heart of Sicily.”.
The dialogue between the two islands continued between cheeses, oils, bottarga and carasau bread, with the moderator to keep alive the joking rivalry between the Sicilian and Sardinian tables. To close the convivial part was the menu of the evening, presented by chef Damiano Rosella, of the Italian Chefs Association of New York. “Sardinia and Sicily are two different islands, but share the same respect for the Mediterranean and for the quality of the ingredients”, he said, announcing a path that goes from the oranges and palermitane panels to the caponata, from pasta to Norma to the cheeses of the two islands, to the cannoli.
The thread of the evening was only one: to make known to the Americans two kitchens that, as Lucariello recalled, belong now to anyone who knows how to appreciate it.
L’articolo The cuisine of Sicily and Sardinia on stage at ITA in New York proviene da IlNewyorkese.