Cari Amici - Dear Friends,

The lovesicily team wishes you all a great holiday season and a wonderful 2010.

December is a great time to visit Sicily and discover its Christmas traditions; the presepi (nativity scenes) in towns, churches and private houses, the "nuveni ri Natali", with musicians going from house to house playing Christmas carols for children, the magic atmosphere around presepi viventi (live nativity scenes) and traditional food, make this holiday season a great time to enjoy the island's winter treasures.

As usual, we will try to convey this atmosphere through our blog for those who cannot make it to Sicily this time and suggest recipes that can recreate the taste of a special Sicilian Christmas in your house. Below you can find out about 'Mpanati prepared for Christmas eve by Katia's grandmother Marietta and nonna Elvira's recipe for "cucciddato", a typical Sicilian Christmas sweet.

A 'mpanata is a kind of pie prepared using durum wheat flour and, usually, stuffed with a combination of various ingredients such as potatoes and dried codfish (baccala') or cauliflower and sausages. In Ispica, my father's home town, the 'mpanate prepared for Christmas eve are pastry stuffed with home-made fresh pasta and sugo di maiale (pork-based sauce). The dough for both pastry and pasta, is rigourously home-made with semolina flour, water and salt.

Each family has its own way of doing the sauce but the general steps are firstly to stir-fry onions and seal the pork and pork sausage in olive oil, add a glass of red wine, and tomato paste/concentrate (typically home-made "strattu"), bay leaves, some water and allow to simmer for a couple of hours on a low fire.

The resulting sugo is very dense and is added to the pasta with chunks of pork meat, sausage and boiled cauliflowers. Then the pasta is placed in a pie, sealed and placed in the oven. The 'mpanati are often marked to distinguish the pies of those who would like only pork and no sausage, those who want just sausage, etc. The results are absolutely delicious and a perfect Christmas eve dish.

The Sicilian word “cucciddatu” indicates both a typical Christmas sweet and a special kind of bread with cumin seeds prepared on Saint Joseph day. The word comes from the Latin “buccellatum” which refers to food that can be eaten in “buccelli”, meaning mouthfuls.

There is a variety of cuccidatu recipes available and every family has its own version or secret ingredient. Below you find the recipe I found in my grandmother Elvira’s recipe book:

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl to get a soft dough and roll down into a half centimetre thick circle. Cut a smaller circle out of the central part of the dough to obtain the shape of a wheel. Put all the ingredients of the filling in a bowl and incorporate a beaten egg. Place the mixture around the circle of dough and fold the internal and external edges over to encase the filling. To decorate the “cuccidatu” you can leave an open space every two centimetres to show part of the filling or sprinkle with almonds and walnuts. Place in a preheated oven at 180 C° for about 30 minutes or until golden brown.

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The most read blog posts were Katia's recipes for Purpiteddi Affucati (baby octopus in wine and tomato sauce) and Timballo di Riso. Other popular posts were: Cuccia di Santa Lucia, a traditional sweet with boiled wheat prepared on Saint Lucia day, the 13th of December and the biscotti di San Martino recipe.

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Buon Natale e Felice Anno Nuovo!