A few of the world’s biggest dishes demand a nip of wine or spirits to succeed in their full potential. Welcome to Splash within the Pan, the place author and drinks knowledgeable Tammie Teclemariam teaches you the best way to carry them to life.
In case you’ve tasted any Sicilian wine, it was most certainly a sturdy fruity desk purple with the slight bitterness typical of the Nero d’Avola grape. Wines made out of Sicily’s conventional white varieties are much less famend and made in smaller manufacturing, however they provide one other perspective to this range of the area’s viticulture. On the western facet of the mountainous Mediterranean island, high-altitude vineyards permit grapes to completely ripen with out dropping their acidity, leading to recent and structured white wines. White grapes like grillo and catarratto varieties thrive right here, as does zibibbo—a grape traditionally used for dessert wines, and which native winemakers are at present rediscovering for its dry potential.
Outdoors of Sicily, zibibbo is greatest often known as moscato, the identical selection that results in bottles of spritzy-sweet Moscato d’Asti and lots of Southern French dessert wines. Even close by, the cultivar is utilized in sweeter bottles; about 100 kilometers southwest of the Sicillian coast, on the island of Pantelleria, producers make a dessert wine known as Passito by partially drying zibibbo grapes to pay attention their sugars earlier than urgent. Also called Muscat of Alexandria, this historical grape is believed to have first been cultivated in Egypt. It was ultimately delivered to the island by North African Muslims who dominated Sicily on and off from the ninth by means of the eleventh centuries. “After all, they didn’t make wine with it,” notes Marilena Leta of Tenuta Gorghi Tondi vineyard within the coastal Sicilian city of Mazara Del Vallo. As a substitute, she explains, the grapes have been usually both eaten recent or dried for raisins and saved. (The range’s native title seemingly comes from the Arabic phrase for raisins, zabīb, which caught round even after native producers began utilizing the recent grapes for wine.)
Tenuta Gorghi Tondi was created in 2000 and its first zibibbo harvest got here in 2006. “Zibibbo is one in every of our most sought-after varieties, particularly on this space,” Leta tells me. When requested about its growing reputation, she credit the grape’s aroma, in addition to its tendency to thrive on the island, a “well-ventilated place with plenty of solar and salty air coming from the ocean.”
Past native dialect, Sicilian tradition remains to be closely outlined by centuries-old Arab influences and the island’s proximity to North Africa. Lower than a century in the past, Mazara Del Vallo was a booming port city the place fishermen from throughout the Mediterranean—significantly from close by Tunisia—docked to promote their catch. As we speak, seafood couscous is among the most well-known dishes on this a part of the island, and Leta notes that the cities of Mazara Del Vallo, Trapani, and Marsala, every have their very own variations. Not like in North Africa, she provides that in Sicily, it’s common to serve couscous with wine.
As for the wine, most Sicilian zibibbo has the identical rose and ripe lychee aromas that you just may anticipate from candy moscato, however dry and extra restrained‚ like fruit on the peak of ripeness reasonably than cloyingly overripe. This crisp end is right for pairing with savory and closely spiced dishes just like the native couscous.
On a current go to to Sicily, I had hoped to discover a native dish together with zibibbo that may additionally pair nicely with the wine. It seems, whereas it isn’t unusual so as to add a splash of Sicilian Marsala to the pan in Italy, hen Marsala is way extra widespread again within the U.S; there isn’t a lot custom of cooking with wines on the whole on the island.
So once I acquired house, I made a decision to develop my very own recipe. Reasonably than looking for out substitutes for the Mediterranean fish used within the coastal seafood dishes, I selected to make meatballs, that are additionally widespread all around the island—not within the outsized, Italian American Sunday sauce form of means, however smaller, and incessantly made with fish or eggplant pulp in addition to meat. I additionally determined so as to add raisins, which seem all through Sicillian delicacies—mostly within the lemony breadcrumb stuffing used to fill sardines. With a nod to the area’s North African roots, I seasoned the meatballs with tabil, an earthy Tunisian spice combine, then I simmered them in a lightweight zibibbo wine sauce.
Saffron is one other taste delivered to Sicily by Arabs centuries in the past, although now additionally it is cultivated on the island, so to tie the dish collectively, I served the meatballs over saffron-scented couscous (saffron risotto, and even plain basmati rice would additionally work nicely.) Collectively, the wine, fruit, and spice within the dish harmonized with the layered aromas within the glass and evoked the flavors of Sicily, each historic and sophisticated.
