Megaliths .... those big stones ... and their stories ... on the wireless today

Now I never really took to megaliths or for that matter the New Stone, or the Neolithic as I came to describe it.

Dolmen situato sul monte Bubbonia, Sicilia, 2010

But I am hoping that today's edition of In Our Time might change my mind.*

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss megaliths - huge stones placed in the landscape, often visually striking and highly prominent.

Such stone monuments in Britain and Ireland mostly date from the Neolithic period, and the most ancient are up to 6,000 years old. 

In recent decades, scientific advances have enabled archaeologists to learn a large amount about megalithic structures and the people who built them, but much about these stones remains unknown and mysterious.

With Vicki Cummings, Professor of Neolithic Archaeology at the University of Central Lancashire, Julian Thomas, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Manchester, and Susan Greaney, Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Exeter.

Picture; Dolmen situato sul monte Bubbonia, Sicilia, May, 2nd, 2010, Transferred from it.wikipedia to Commons by Memorato.Spiccolo at Italian Wikipedia, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publishes it under the following licenses: GNU head Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License.

*Megaliths, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001jkzg

Sapori di Sicilia …….. the Flavours of Sicily

Now I like the Italian custom of taking cakes and pastries when visiting family and friends.

A selection of the pastries

Last week at Rosa’s when the family gathered on the Sunday, Johnny brought a tray full of them.

Inside the shop

And yesterday, when we decided on breakfast out, we gravitated to Sapori di Sicilia, which is on the Viale Belforte 68, 21100, in Varese.

The area is a mix of residential properties, a range of everyday shop, including a supermarket and some industrial units.

My favourite is always a bombolone which is a doughnut filled usually with custard, jam, or chocolate, and for me it is always custard.

But these you can get almost anywhere, while at the Sapori di Sicilia, they specialize in Sicilian food, and along with a range of wonderful pastries there are piles of savory ones not unlike our own pasties.

And of course ice cream ....

And of these the one they make filled with a mix of rice and vegetables, is just perfect.

So that is it, I could say more, but I won’t.

Location; Varese

Pictures; Sapori di Sicilia, Varese, 2020, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

A taste of Sicily amongst the forests of Switzerland

We woke to one of those grey days heavy with the promise of rain.

Saturday afternoon with a bit of sunshine on a wet day

You knew it was coming because the mountains and the Lake across the valley were shrouded in grey mist.

All a contrast to yesterday and earlier in the week when the sun shone down and made everyone feel happy.

But the rain held off long enough for us to leave Varese and travel the hour and a bit to Virginia’s flat in Switzerland.

And it came down in torrents accompanied by thunder and at the termination of each outburst vapour rose from the forest by the playing fields.

The added surprise

Not that we were over bothered. 

There had been no plans to venture out and anyway it was time to eat, and had we wanted a bit of warmth and the promise summer the meal Rosario offered up .

Rosario is from Sicily and at the centre of the meal was parmigiana di melanzane which is a wonderful dish of fried aubergine slices interspersed between a mix of parmesan and mozzarella cheese, a little beaten egg and topped by tomato sauce.

Rosario's aubergines

That said his version was different from the one we usually eat which is from the recipe Rosa uses. 

She is from Naples and she fries the aubergines in flour while Rosario left out the flour and used a different Italian cheese creating a dish which was similar but different, and was accompanied by deep fried potato balls, some locally baked Sicilian bread a jar of sundried tomatoes.

It was simple, colourful  and filling which at the end of the day is what you come to expect of the food of the south.

Home made sun dried tomotoes

So there you have it two versions of one aubergine dish from two places in southern Italy, from the same family.

All of which just leaves me to ponder on how many more I might come across.

Location, Sicily and Switzerland

Pictures, parmigiana di melanzane, 2017 from the collection of Andrew Simpson