Sicilian Street Food Recipes

Sicily, the ancient Mediterranean island kingdom that’s now part of Italy, is a fascinating place to visit. Hints of Sicily’s past are everywhere, in the architecture, in the church interiors and in the archaeological remains. But even an earnest history-seeking traveler gets hungry. My suggestion is to head to the streets.

Palermo, the capital, is a street-food paradise, with vendors selling traditional items, like panelle (chickpea fritters) and arancini, stuffed risotto balls as big as oranges. For the adventurous, there’s pani câ meusa, a warm sandwich of beef spleen on a bun, which is much better than it sounds.

But a street food with universal appeal is sfincione, a hearty, tomatoey pizza. It is baked in a rimmed sheet pan, which allows the dough to rise to a chewy thickness.

Sicily Street Food

Tomato sauce, bread crumbs, pecorino (or another sheep’s cheese) and anchovy give the topping its flavors.Credit... Julia Gartland for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini.

Sfincione may have regional variations across Sicily, but the basic concept is the same: dough topped with cheap, tasty ingredients, for a filling treat that can emerge from even the most humble home kitchen. (Now, though, most people buy a slice from a street cart or bakery.)

Sfincione is not a cheesy pizza. It’s usually made with only a small amount of sharp-flavored sheep’s milk cheese, just enough to complement the other savory toppings. In this way, sfincione differs from what Americans know as a “Sicilian slice, ” which, though also cut thick and square, can come loaded with cheese or other items.

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My favorite version is one I learned from Fabrizia Lanza. The proprietor of the Anna Tasca Lanza Cooking School, on the family’s country estate near Palermo, Ms. Lanza is passionate about preserving Sicily’s traditional cuisine. As she notes in her 2012 cookbook, “Coming Home to Sicily, ” making sfincione at home using high-quality extra-virgin olive oil gives you an even better version of what you buy in the street.

I adhere closely to the original delicious recipe, with a couple of minor changes. Instead of blanching the onions, as she does, I sauté them in the skillet while preparing the sauce, and I also increased the amount of tomato and anchovies slightly, a cook’s prerogative.

In her recipe, the bread crumbs are stirred into the topping, but some cooks prefer to sprinkle them on after saucing the dough. The choice is yours. As for cheeses, consider caciocavallo or provolone, coarsely grated. But you’ll also get good result with more widely available pecorino Romano.

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As the sfincione bakes, your kitchen will fill with tantalizing aromas. Inhale deeply and dream of Sicily. I’m told sfincione is popular there for Christmas Eve and New Year’s celebrations. In my view, it’s an any-time-of-year delight.

Pizza is nothing to agonize about. It’s hard to go wrong unless you overthink it. Reflexive choices like barberas from the Piedmont region of Italy or Chiantis are just fine. Any Italian red with plenty of acidity will go great, as will lager beer. But if you would like to refine your choice, bubbles are the way to go. Good, dry, earthy Lambrusco with pizza is wonderful. So are some of the lesser-known red sparkling wines from Italy, like Gragnano from Campania or Gutturnio from Emilia-Romagna. If you want to push it, try a good nonvintage Champagne. Or go all out with a well-aged Barolo or Barbaresco. Pizza may be considered simple food, but it goes beautifully with some of the finest wines in the world. ERIC ASIMOV

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section D, Page 2 of the New York edition with the headline: A Beloved Sicilian Street Food Comes Inside. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | SubscribeThey are potato croquettes typically an oval and elongated shape, seasoned with parsley. they are cooked in a couple of minutes in abundant hot oil and are eaten immediately.

Lasagna Bread (scaccia)

They must be eaten hot and crunchy, don’t let them cool down because they lose the satisfying crunch of the shell that counteracts the softness found inside.

Nowadays street food in Palermo has become a real fashion show. Vendors buy these high-end fryers trying to dazzle pedestrians. Usually, all the tourists flock around these vendors so they can taste world-famous Sicilian street food.

What I recommend – and I also wrote it when I talked to you aboutfried calamari– don’t stop at the first vendor you see on the main streets, not saying that the food wouldn’t be good, but you would miss getting to see the spectacular historic center of the city made up of some wonderful architecture that encompasses the entire history of Palermo.

In Street Food On Palermo Is The Frittella, An Authentic Sicilian Recipe

Every time I go to Palermo I stop to go eat the cazzilli together with the panelle or the “paninu ca meusa” in a fry shop on the corner between Piazza Indipendenza and Corso Calatafimi.

Or in the famous Antica Focacceria of San Francesco, in a side street of Corso Vittorio Emanuele, which despite its worldwide fame has kept its classic street food characteristic. Then there are the food trucks found inside the Vucciria Market that sell the ”rascatura” ( they are similar to the cazzilli but they are nothing more than the scraps of cazzilli and panelle in the kitchen) with the cazzilli.

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Sicilian Streetfood Recipes: Arancine And Panelle

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Best Street Food You Must Try In Sicily, Italy

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Pani Ca Meusa: Italian Food Recipe

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Sicilian Street Food

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.It seems that the effects of a 'driver, ' a special drink made with lemon juice, soda water and sparkling soda, used to degrease and digest after over indulging, are miraculous.

And where else could such a concoction have been invented if not in Palermo, Italy, the capital of Sicilian street food – some of the best street food in the world.

Ben Tish's Recipe For Scaccia

In the capital of the sun-kissed island, there are still many kiosks where you can try the mysterious digestive effect of the driver, and you'll more than likely be all the better for it. Particularly if you decide to take a culinary tour of the specialties of a region that offer all possible variations on a theme of fried and carbs.

We have selected just nine of them, to scratch the surface of some of the island favourites. Take your pick of your new favourite street food from Sicily?

Born in the town of Ragusa, in the south of Sicily, the 'scaccia' varies, depending both on the very thin dough – made of water, oil and yeast, and folded several times – and the filling, generally containing cottage cheese, onion, eggplant, tomato, and sausage. 

Best Sicilian Foods (+ Traditional Dishes)

An example of fine typical Sicilian street food for all those offal lovers! Served on the street from 'stigghiularu, ' the lamb intestines (sometimes chicken or goat) are simply skewered and cooked on the grill, seasoned with salt and lemon and eaten when still warm.

This may look like a pizza, but rather confusingly, it's not. Instead, a basic yeast-like dough with a pizza-like topping that can include a tomato sauce with