Eat Smart in Sicily How to Decipher the Menu Know the Market Foods and Embark on a Tasting Adventure Eat Smart in Sicily How to Decipher the Menu Know to Decipher the Menu Know the Market Foods

Eat Smart in Sicily How to Decipher the Menu Know the Market Foods and Embark on a Tasting Adventure Eat Smart in Sicily How to Decipher the Menu Know to Decipher the Menu Know the Market Foods

Eat Smart in Sicily is a travel book that you can enjoy in your kitchen long before you tuck it into your suitcase. Authors Joan Peterson and Marcella Croce survey the rich history of Sicily and its culinary influences, offer tips on finding the best local foods, and include glossaries and restaurant guides that ensure successful dining experiences while visiting. One chapter shares more than 25 authentic recipes that can be savored as a preview or a reminiscence of a remarkable and culturally significant island. –Fra Noi Newspaper, Chicago

Sicily is the melting-pot of the Mediterranean, having Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Arabic, Norman, Germanic and French influences, and sitting down to a meal in Palermo is much more than stopping in at the local fast food franchise. Learning more about the food and history of Sicily will make your visit so much richer. It’s what Epicurean Traveler is all about, and it is where the EAT SMART guides excel.

EAT SMART IN SICILY by Joan Peterson and Marcella Croce, is much more than the translation of a typical Sicilian menu. The first 20 pages of this 145-page guide are devoted to the history of Sicily, with the particular focus on how various conquerors affected (or didn’t affect) the cuisine.

Whether it is an indictment of the way history is taught in college, or a validation of the fine writing provided by the authors, EAT SMART IN SICILY explained more about Sicilian history and its various occupiers, than I had gleaned from reading travel guidebooks, or taking History of Western Civilization in college.

Other sections explain local foods, provinces within Sicily, shopping the food markets of Sicily, helpful phrases to use in a restaurant, and an extensive menu guide. You will also find 28 Sicilian recipes here, so you can get a flavor of the island before you go there.

… if you’re going to Sicily, you need this guide your visit will be the richer for it. Part phrase book, part cookbook, part travel book, each EAT SMART guide is the perfect guide for the Epicurean Traveler. –Scott Clemens, Epicurean-Traveler.com

Sicily is, of course, not only a place of romance, but home to its own particular cuisine, distinct from cuisines of the Italian mainland. To help travelers navigate this culinary landscape, Joan Peterson has added one more culture to her extremely useful EAT SMART series, this time co-authored with native Sicilian Marcella Croce. They provide a culinary history of the island, describing local foods, dishes, recipes, and food markets. The lengthy glossary and menu guide give readers significantly more information than does a general traveler’s dictionary. Anyone who loves travel as much for food as for all its other pleasures, will find this an invaluable guide to a realm where food is such an important part of the life and culture of the people. Highly recommended for public libraries. –Library Journal

User Ratings and Reviews

1 Star A real disappointment!
I bought this book because of the five-star reviews it’s gotten. What a disappointment! The coverage is superficial; the recipes don’t mention ingredients in the list; the prose is simpleminded. The author has written eight other guides in the series, but it seems as if this book is the result of a whirlwind tour. It reads more like an expanded, hastily-done magazine article, with only a few pages on each of the regions and their specialties. A good guidebook’s food section would be a better value; Sicily deserves better! Mary Taylor Simeti’s POMP AND SUSTENANCE is far preferable to this.

5 Stars MOUTHWATERING GUIDE
by Sharon Hudgins, author of The Other Side of Russia: A Slice of Life in Siberia and the Russian Far East

Joan Peterson has done it again! Teaming up with Sicilian food expert, Marcella Croce, Ms. Peterson has produced another book in her excellent, well written, and informative “Eat Smart” series. This latest edition, “Eat Smart in Sicily” makes you want to reserve a flight to Sicily on the next plane. Following the format of the series, this latest work begins with a historical survey of Sicilian cuisine, from the Greek, Roman, and Arab influences to the Norman and Spanish rulers of this large island that belongs to Italy today. Since Sicily was a crossroad of many cultures, its cuisine reflects the tastes of a variety of people who have landed and lived on its shores.

The section on “Local Sicilian Food” describes the primary ingredients used in Sicilian cooking, followed by a description of the characteristic foods and special dishes of the different provinces of the island. A chapter on “Tastes of Sicily” provides 28 detailed, accurate recipes for Sicilian dishes, from antipasti to desserts.

The second half of the book is a practical guide for travelers to Sicily, with helpful phrases, a menu guide arranged alphabetically (with recommendations for which dishes are classics, local favorites, highly recommended, etc.), and an alphabetical foods-and-flavors guide where you can look up the English-language translations of Sicilian food terms. Eight pages of color photos of Sicilian dishes will make you understand why the authors of this culinary guidebook are so enthusiastic about the island’s cuisine.

Highly recommended (along with all the other books in this series)!

5 Stars One of the best yet in the ‘Eat Smart’ series
If the recipes and color photos in “Eat Smart in Sicily” don’t get you looking at possible airfares to Sicily for a gourmet eating holiday, nothing will.

This latest in the “Eat Smart” series features a photo spread of dishes incorporating fish, eggplant, saffron and beef, as well as concoctions such as a beautifully textured Eastern lamb made of marzipan.

Recipes tell how to make fried artichoke leaves, orange-flavored pork, stuffed mahi-mahi rolls, and Arab-influenced dishes including couscous with fish. Another recipe I plan to try at home is a pasta dish dressed with a pesto of pistachios, almonds and basil — it’s got to be delectable.

At minimum, “Eat Smart in Sicily” will get readers into the kitchen and trying to recreate their own taste of Sicily or visiting Italian restaurants specializing in Sicilian food as well as the more prevalent styles found in U.S. restaurants, based on the cuisines of Naples, Tuscany, Bologna and Florence.

As with others in the “Eat Smart” series, “… in Sicily” is handsomely illustrated and meticulously researched, with a history of the Mediterranean island as it relates to food, noting the contributions of Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Norman French and others.

A chapter on local foods notes the lack historically of meat proteins on the island, the Sicilian interest in wild vegetables, and the local quality of citrus fruits and passion for gelati, now nearly as popular in the United States.

Joan Peterson of Madison, Wisc., the driving force behind other “Eat Smart” guides to Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, India, Peru and other good-eating destinations, joined forces with Sicilian native Marcella Croce for this latest entry in the series. Let’s hope that it makes its way in many suitcases and backpacks belonging to travelers headed to this world crossroads of history and food.

5 Stars Invaluable tips for shopping in both the Sicilian open air food markets as well as their modern supermarkets
Joan Peterson has now authored and/or co-authored nine superbly crafted and incredible informative travel guides with a distinctive culinary orientation. The newest addition to her impressive roster of titles is “Eat Smart In Sicily: How To Decipher The Menu, Know The Market Foods & Embark On A Tasting Adventure” which she co-authored with Sicilian native, journalist and author Marcella Croce. Enhanced for the armchair browser with a section of color photography showcasing dishes, foods, and chefs, “Eat Smart In Sicily” truly lives up to its name and the sterling reputation of the entire ‘Eat Smart’ series. Along with an historical overview focused on the origins of Sicily’s culinary diversity and a quick tour of local Sicilian foods and their variations, travelers are providing with invaluable tips for shopping in both the Sicilian open air food markets as well as their modern supermarkets. With the inclusion of resource lists, helpful phrases, a menu guide, recommended restaurants, and even a thoroughly ‘user friendly’ Menu Guide, “Eat Smart In Sicily” is a ‘must’ for anyone traveling there for either business or pleasure or both!

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