Natalia Ravidà - a gastronomic experience in your villa

Natalia Ravidà is a chef, food writer and prize-winning olive oil producer whose passion for Sicilian food stems from her family's love of the land and a gastronomic tradition that has been passed down from generation to generation. Her recent 2007 book, Seasons of Sicily, is published by New Holland and is on sale in good bookshops in Great Britain, Australia and South Africa.  

As featured in the award-winning Food and Travel Magazine (June 2009 edition) Think Sicily and Natalia work in collaboration to provide the following exclusive in-villa culinary experiences for guests staying in the west of Sicily:

• lunch or dinner in your villa. Using only the freshest, most in-season ingredients, Natalia will prepare a delicious meal, talk you through the recipes and provide insights into the history and traditions of Sicilian cuisine.
• hands-on Sicilian cookery lessons either in your villa or at Natalia's family estate in Menfi near Sciacca.

Please contact us for bookings and prices on info@thinksicily.com.

Natalia on Sicilan food

"What strikes me most about Sicilian food is its dual personality: sophisticated in its aristocratic heritage, authentic in its more popular tradition. In both cases, however, it is full of flavour and invention and backed up with at least 1500 years of culinary influences. 

I am strongly attracted by the wealth of Sicilian cuisine whose biggest secrets are the recipes lying hidden in the drawers of Sicilian aristocratic families. The 19th century chefs, the Monsu’, looked beyond the Alps to France for inspiration and created a local haute cuisine that is still in use today in Sicily’s certain restaurants, aristocratic homes and private clubs.

It is the popular peasant food, however, that I am mostly interested in. The great variety of street food in Palermo such as panelle (chickpea flour fritters), crocchè (potato croquettes), sfincione (a thick-breaded pizza topped with anchovies, tomatoes, onions and garlic), boiled octopus served with a little lemon and freshly caught fish barbecued as you wait are good enough reasons alone to spend a day or two wandering around the city’s “Arab” markets.

At the same time, the countryside revels with the intensity of ragu di maiale (a kind of pork Bolognese) that simmers for two days in a clay pot with dried tomato paste, ricotta pies, borage and wild asparagus, broad bean soup topped with wild fennel. It is all food of humble origins but with an intensity of flavours and creativity that sum up the wonders of Sicilian cuisine."

Natalia Ravidà, November 2008