Limoncello

I've been driving through Italy and finally spent 10 days in Sicily.

This comes from a Friend, Emad, with whom I stayed in Siena Sunday before last.

Limoncello

Take the skin - peel but not the pith - of 15 or more UN-waxed lemons. By preference organic so they don't have any other contaminants.

Cut very fine julienne and soak in 1 litre 95% by volume commesible1 alcohol for 1 month or more.

When time's up make a syrop of 1 l water to 500 g white sugar (or more to taste).

When the syrup is COLD add the alcohol strained of the lemon peel, bottle, store in the freezer and sip at leisure.

Lomoncello is famous as a digestif throught Italy and can be had in many subtle varieties and even more unsubtle varieties of funny bottle.

The method works for any citrus fruit (I would love to try it with blood oranges) but amounts of sugar syrup will need to be adjusted to the varying falvaours and acidulity.

Emad's was fantastic!

1 NB, very important that the alcohol is suitable for consumption: many industrial alcohols are downright contagionous.

Now for something that only gets back to food at the very end; although I hope in a good way.

Don't go on holiday with Alan Bennett. He'll keep you up all night chatting - quite contrary to the cocoa at nine image fostered by Thora Hird - and this in not in the plan while early rises and intensive sight-seeing are.

I have, it should be admitted, not really got Alan Bennett with me, just his latest oeuvreUntold-Storieswhich occupied me far too long last night. It is both disconcerting and wonderful how reading his work my mind's ear supplies the voice, tone and cadencies until it's almost as if he's reading it to me. No other author has had such a strong effect although that might be simply explained in that there is no other author whose voice is so familliar and that familiarity comes from his reading is work rather than speaking extempore. Still it was highly enjoyable and I look forward to taking him up again. To be honest I think I would rather enjoy going on holiday with Bennett and his partner.

The Italians, the Sicilians or the Palermitans have done something wonderful. Where when last I visited there was a deary court in front of the Zisa and a building site apparently beyond high fences there is now a quite extensive park with a long water feature that, being modern, echos rather than reproduces that which would have existed when it was the favorite palace of William I and II at the turn of the twelfth century.

It is a truely remarkable building. From a distance is mbuttive form and cenelations (a Renaissance addition) made it appear foreboding. But with a clear view of the facade nothing could be furth from the truth. A tall arch opens a central chamber two tall stories high to the open air and the gardens in front. Water comes from a fountain, flows through the hall and out to the fish pond beyond. This palace was build with Norman ideas of masonary construction lightened by Saracen decorative arts and skill in design that brings light into most of the interior rooms and decorates the barrel vaults with the inverted sprires typical of Saracen interiors. It's a quintisential illustration of the fusing of four cultures on the island eight or mor centuries ago that made the kingdom of Sicily one of the three powers of Western Christendom while Palermo and Naples grew to be the largest and wealthiest cities in Europe. The two Rogers and the two Williams all believed they could rival and perhaps even conquer Byzantium and but for a few chances thy might well have done so.

This is the cradle of the twelfth century renaissance. It was this court that combined Norman, Greek, Jewish and Arab peoples and valued learning so highly that was instrumental in reintroducing many things previously lost to the west. The Great Book of Roger - a geography compiled by questioning every sea captain that landed on the island and combining the first hand accounts thus accumulated with written sources to produce a description of the world as was then known. It begins with a description of the world as a sphere. Well we knew that didn't we?

I mentioned earlier a strenuous program of sight-seeing but should admit that I was being a bit tounge in cheek. It quickly dawns on you that the best was to appreciate Sicily is to relax and let it happen. A lot of things that I intended to acomplish on this holiday I have relegated to another time. Not that they were poor ideas but that there is so much. I hadn't intended to re-visit the Zisa for example but found myself having had lunch and a short walk away with time in hand because arranging my return ferry had been acomplished far more rapidly that I anticipated.

So too a couple of days ago I had gone to Agrigento and the valley of the temples intending only to spend the morning but stayed the whole day. I didn't get to see the museum last time because the guide book was wrong about the opening times but this time I managed it and was delighted to have done so.

Of the temples themselves there are four large Doric edifices that stretch along a 2km via sacra plus half a dozen others of varying forms and states of preservation on the site some of which might get more comentary when I do the photos.

However what I think may well be my favorite spot in Sicily is not a temple but the Giardino della Kolymbetra pool was built here by Carthaginian prisoners but it soon silted up and became farm land. The current form is of Saracenic origins with a system of irrigation they developed and which was retained until the garden fell into wilderness with the dissapearance of the last share-croppers a quarter of a century ago. The Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano (bit like our NT) has been comissiond to restore it and it now forms a part of the archeological park preserving tradional forms of citrus groves, olives, mixed horticulture and both wetland plants on it's river and Sicilian maquis on the hights.

Here I made a picnic of artichoke hearts in oil, stuffed olives, grilled aubergine in oil and sun-dried tomatoes accompanied with crusty sour-dough bread and finished off with local blood oranges.

With that to deal with why hurry elsewhere?

Matthew