Sicily: Leaving Palermo...tour is gonna starting

8th August


The day after, in the morning we leave Palermo....the tour of the island is still long and we have to hurry up. But the visit to Monreale is a must: first of all because you can have a global view of the city from the upper hills and then because here, a very ancient church is being preserved.

When you get in, you cannot keep your eyes away from the ceiling and the walls...they are completly covered with mosaics rapresenting the scenes of the Bible.
Out of the church, on the right, you can also have a glance at the cloister nearby. The  silence and the order take you somewhere else.

We leave Monreale in direction of Castellamare but, we want to have our first bath and so we decide to stop in Mondello...the beach of the Palermitans. It's August and everybody in Italy is on holiday and the beach is full of people. We look for a square meter of free sand to lay down and we feel surrounded from the locals....it's Midday and in less than an hour, we are afraid, they will be starting having lunch. Under the sun, temperature is around 45°, it's terribly warm and the only thing that our stomach could bear is fruit or an ice cream....but we are not used to their habits.... and, as foreseen, they cannot renounce to fried arancinis, lasagne and ...



PARMIGIANA

Ingredients
1,5kg Eggplants
1kg Tomatoes for sauce
Garlic
Oil
Basil
Onion
Salt
Parmesan Cheese
Mozzarella Cheese
Flour 00

First of all slice the aubergines into 1cm thick slices and pour them in salted water so that they release their bitterness. This could take up to one hour.
In the meantime, prepare tomato sauce:put 2 or 3 lugs of olive oil in a pan, add the chopped onion, the garlic (entire so that, before the end of cooking, you can throw it away) and add some fresh tomatoes, previously cut in 4 pieces and give the mixture a good stir, put a lid on the pan and simmer slowly for 15 minutes. Add some salt, pepper and basil, to meet your taste.
In the meantime, dry up the slices of aubergines. bread them with some flour and fry them in hot seeds oil. Dry them with kitchen paper and start preparing assembling it. Put some tomato sauce on the buttom of a stoneware, then start with a first layer of eggplants, followed by mozzarella cheese, parmesan and tomato sauce.  Repeat the operation till you finish all the ingredients.
Before putting the dish in the oven, pour on the surface some parmesan cheese and mozzarella.
Bake it in the oven for 30 minutes at 180°C until golden and crisp.

In the late afternoon we leave for Castellamare, del Golfo where we are going to spend some days with some friends who hosted an apartment, the owner of which will explain us a lot of secrets in the kitchen.
The Sicilians like talking a lot and if you don't go away, they don't give up!
If you are in Castellamare del Golfo, stop for dinner at Trattoria Peccati di Gola, Via Marcono, 44 and ask for Claudio.