Sicilia by Ben Tish Cookbook Review
Sicilia by Ben Tish Cookbook Review
Exploring the food of Sicily with a restaurant chef
A jewel-blue cover sets Sicilia by Ben Tish apart from the rest of the cookbooks on the shelf. It’s a new Italian cookbook, based on a restaurant chefs’ recipes from the island of Sicily. Tish goes so far as to call it his love letter to Sicily, and to Italian food too.
And flicking through Sicilia reveals even more saturated photography, all in the same high-contrast aesthetic as the blue cover.
From a purely graphic point of view, it’s a ravishing cookbook that speaks of sun-drenched kitchens and dining tables laden with food.
What are the recipes like in Sicilia by Ben Tish?
The recipes in Sicilia by Ben Tish are laid out in simple chapters, from bread and fried things to pasta and vegetables, and then through to fish, meat, sweets, and ice-creams.
Each recipe has a short introduction, before steaming on into the list of ingredients and method. Most recipes have a full-page, facing picture.
And possibly because Tish is a professional chef, some of the recipes have higher faff-factor than others. For instance, one recipe asks you to pick white and brown crab meat out of a crab, before trimming and stuffing a courgette flower. Another asks you to prepare violet artichokes from scratch, noting that artichoke from a tin or jar won’t really work.
Don’t get me wrong, there are dishes in Sicilia that I’d love to order in a restaurant. But I find aspirational recipes, like some of these, better suited to a professional kitchen, rather than the abilities, resources, and realities of a home kitchen.
You could always just fudge some of the more finicky recipes and use ingredients and methods that work for you. But that takes an element of already knowing your way around a kitchen. For that reason, I think Sicilia is a cookbook best suited to an experienced cook.
Having said that all that, Sicilia also has its share of more achievable recipes that result in delicious food. And it’s a cookbook that’ll show you a lot of new things.
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Pasta alla Norma recipe
I’d never heard of pasta and aubergine together like this until I saw the recipe in Sicilia. Apparently, Pasta alla Norma has become something of a signature dish in Sicily.
And what’s great is that although there is an element of faff, it’s all doable, and justified.
So, have you just been chopping aubergines and using them? Stop. Do this – chop the aubergine and leave to drain for half an hour in a colander with lashings of salt. Then rinse the salt off, pat dry, and bake on the highest temperature for 20 minutes.
It’ll turn into the most delicious, buttery thing you’ve ever eaten. Who knew eggplant could be so silky and biddable?
And could this be the best vegetarian pasta dish in the whole world? I think so.
Baked Conchiglioni recipe
The baked conchiglioni recipe in Sicilia also has an element of faff, in that you need to individually fill each conchiglioni shell with a cooked pumpkin mixture.
Then, you spread the filled pasta shells on bechamel, bake them, and then pour over a rosemary-infused burnt butter before serving. Cue clogged arteries.
It doesn’t take that long to do, but I don’t think the effort is worth the resulting dish. My overall impression is of creaminess and richness. But because it’s missing a crucial contrasting element, it feels a bit claggy. So, there’s no chilli or tomato, and nowhere near enough lemon. It’s a little one-note.
I had some conchiglioni shells leftover and decided to make the dish again, only this time with an equal amount of tomato sauce to bechamel. Much better. Oh, and I didn’t bother hand-stuffing each shell. Life is way too short.
Whole roast chicken recipe
You can’t go wrong with a roast chicken, and the recipe in Sicilia turns out a brilliant version. Tish uses fennel*, lemon, bay leaves and garlic to amp up the roast chicken experience.
*Well, the recipe asks you to use ‘wild fennel stalks and fronds’ but even Waitrose didn’t have them so – whatevs. But happily, I can report that your run-of-the-mill fennel works excellently.
Strawberry, almond and rosewater cake
This has got to be my new favourite cake recipe. It’s really, really, *really* good.
The flavours are gorgeous, but we already knew they would be. Sticky, ground-almond sponge with the delicate taste of rosewater and a zingy strawberry compote – it’s always going to be amazing.
Oh, and you serve it with a whisked and gently sweetened mascarpone. Ugh. I’ve died and gone to heaven. Also, there’s little to no faff in this recipe which I take as a double win.
Overall thoughts on Sicilia by Ben Tish
It’s a weird one. I started out flicking through Sicilia by Ben Tish and happily marking down a bunch of recipes. Then I looked at some of them in more details and was put off by niche ingredients or high-faff levels. Then I tried a couple, hit success, and loved the book all over again.
And now? Well, I’ve learnt a couple of interesting things already from making some of the recipes in Sicilia. And there are still five or six recipes I’m keen to make – but I’ll make them work for me. I’ll use what I have or what I can reasonably get hold of, and I think that’s fair enough.
I’m also excited to learn more about Sicilian food, and I think working my way through some of the more difficult techniques will be a teaching moment.
Have you tried Sicilia by Ben Tish? Do you have any favourite recipes? Let us know :)
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