As the car stops we see with surprise that there are two guys inside. The other one looks like he is Polish with blond, curly hair, freckles, a moustache and blue eyes. He seems athletic, well built and tall. Really strange…, it’s 11 p.m. in the dark Mediterranean avenue and instead of one boy, that I already know, there is the other that appeared now and I completely don’t know what to think.
– Ciao, I’m Angelo! – saying this Angelo comes out of the car to help us put the backpacks into the trunk.
– Listen, you are supposed to prepare dinner for us, va bene? – Mauro takes his role of man from the Middle East evidently, I’m not going to become a cook or servant for that two guys. Forget it!
– What we need is lentils, penne rigate, sausages, tomatos, onion, carots, garlic and celery, oh – oranges …I almost forgot.
– What? I though that in Sicily you don’t prepare something like “fast food” from sausages…? – I can’t get over my surprise…
– We don’t indeed, but we use sausages in kitchen very often, because they are very well spiced… – Mauro looks completely serious about his recipe.
– Look, Mauro is a professional cook, you should listen to him.
Ok then. We will cook some completely crazy pasta sauce from lentils, oranges and sausages, for God Sake!
In reality there are two or let’s say: three types of what we use to call “sausages” in Sicily. Salami, mortadella and “salsiccia”, which in reality means always raw, spiced with herbs, the meat put into sausage skins made of any possible animal they eat here. It can be pig, cow, calf, sheep, goat, duck, rabbit, chicken or even horse. Sicilian love “carne di cavallo”[IT]*, they are almost crazy about it. There are the whole long avenues dedicated only to restaurants, bars or street grills specialized in serving meat of the horse.
It is served in dozens of ways: as sausages, cecils, steaks, rolls, stuffed rolls etc. And what is really particular, is that they try to respect horses that had provided them meat, they talk about those noble animals with respect during the meal to commemorate them…
* horsemeat [EN]
TRAVELANGUE 