Tuesday, 15 September, 2009 12:17 PM
'Sweet Honey,
Bitter Lemons: Travels in Sicily on a Vespa' is a good cookbook
| 
Book
cover: media.us.macmillan.com
"Sweet
Honey, Bitter Lemons: Travels in Sicily on a Vespa"
|
There
are two books that I've been reading this summer: The 30-Day
Heartbreak Cure by Catherine Hickland and Sweet Honey,
Bitter Lemons: Travels in Sicily on a Vespa by British
chef Matthew Fort. Fort takes us on his trip to Sicily, Italy,
as he rides his scooter to try out the latest dish morning,
noon, and night -- meeting interesting people along the way
that shares his company as well as a love for food, family,
and community.
It is a cookbook that contains recipes of the most unique meals
made on the other side of this world, so if you're ready for
spaghetti or pasta with a twist (like squid or octopus, for
instance), know Italian, and have a strong stomach, then this
is the book for you. This is also a diary, as Fort compares
the time he spent in Italy with his brother back in 1973 and
his recent return, as he also explores the world of Sicilians,
which has been stereotyped thanks to films such as The Godfather
trilogy, and though organized crime continues to exist, Fort
explains he's not on a mission for justice nor trying to be
a crusader, but understanding their way of life, which includes
philosophical and soulful quotes like these on pages 116 and
118:
"Poverty of every kind encloses the human spirit, turns
it inwards. All choices are restricted to the point where there
are none. Nothing is left but personal pessimism or fatalism,
and acceptance of the will of others. But such is the energy
of the human spirit, it seemed to me, that these people without
hope, without choices, had found self-expression through personal
and family loyalties, through criminality and subtle, almost
abstract subversions of the conventional world. I was beginning
to think that food was among these visible signs of collective
resistance.
"Above all, history was in the people, both in their kindliness
and their opacity, in their generosity and obliqueness. If you
have been occupied, dominated, and exploited for 3000 years,
I suppose you learn to supress direct expresssion of your natural
instincts, open discourse and individual behavior. It teaches
you to be watchful, wary, to be careful, to have regard. It
teaches you to listen, to be aware of the mental, emotional
and social processes of your occupiers. And it teaches you how
to survive - more, how to work with them, how to manipulate
them, how to coax and cajole, how to insinuate, how to achieve
your ends by other means, without upsetting your lords and masters
along the way. It breeds a subtlety of intellect and a suppleness
of manner, a judicious realism, a clarity of judgement as to
why and how people do things. Sicilians have few illuisions."
Quotes like these can really make us think, especially since
we're in an recession, and fantasizing that we're in Italy walking
in Fort's shoes -- experiencing life like no one else has before
and getting something out if it in the process, which may include
finding ourselves and knowing them a little bit more.
Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons is available on your local
bookstores right now.
