My wife and I spent a week in Sicily with another couple to celebrate some birthdays. Our home base was a beautiful villa atop a hill overlooking the city of Noto. We even had our own lemon tree in the courtyard.
We rented a car at the Catania airport and explored the towns in the area.
Sunday
Arriving at our villa, the host had already set up a little spread in the kitchen: apples, nectarines, cheese, foccaccia, strawberry jam, and the most amazing cherry tomatoes. These were the Pachino variety and were intensely sweet with thin skins.
That night, we had a reservation at Manna Noto. What a beautiful, beautiful setting, surrounding by cactus and flowers in a courtyard, shared with a hotel.
The cocktail menu had a long list of special gin and tonics which looked interesting, but I did not have one. The food menu isn’t long, divided into starters, firsts, and mains. There is an elaborate, colour coded allergen system that highlighted the presence of things like dairy, peanuts, as well as lupins!
Some of the things we tried:
Deep fried and marinated fish in sweet and sour tomato (raisins and capers served with pan fried organic corn polenta cubes)
Crunchy cuttlefish in sauteed artichokes wedges salad (black olives and orange dressing, aromatic bread croutons). We never did figure out what the crunchy flat square was, vaguely like a corn chip? I recall that all the components were super flavourful: the olive oil, the croutons, the olives.
One of the specials that night were prawns, intact with their heads.
My main was the panfried crispy saffron risotto, topped with stewed veal chunks “ossobuco style” (served on a 36 months aged Parmigiano Reggiano cream sauce)
The dessert we all shared resembled an orange pretending to be a rice ball. It was described as sweet orange cake “Arancina” in toasted almond and corn flakes crumble (filled with chocolate ganache served with caramel sauce).
It was a beautiful introduction to Sicilian cuisine of the area, and the first of many delightful experiences and meals we were to experience in the following days.
More later!
