Food in Sicily students make traditional Sicilian dishes in the Ibleian mountains

Students interested in the Food in Sicily study away program, scheduled for May 8-28, 2025, are invited to attend an upcoming information session on Microsoft Teams.

"Like ice cream, cheesecake, and chocolate? What about marzipan, cannoli, and sumptuous pasta? Then, come experience the cultural and historic foodways of Sicily, the Mediterranean's largest island. We'll travel Sicily's eastern 'Greek' coast to see and taste this unique island's rich history of food traditions. You may even meet the Chef's Table star while visiting Caffè Sicilia in Noto, Sicily," said Food in Sicily Co-Director David Bell, Ph.D., chair and associate professor of linguistics in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Interested students are invited to join an information session via Teams. Join the meeting now at one of the following dates and times:

• Every Tuesday and Wednesday beginning September 17 through December 11 at 7:30 p.m.
• Monday, December 9 at 7:30 p.m.

The Iblei mountain range stretches across the southeast corner of Sicily through the provinces of Ragusa and Siracusa. The mountains, which  form a plateau more than  3,000 feet above sea-level, are rich in Greek and Roman remains. But as you drive through the mountains, you will be struck by the immensity of  the limestone walls that snake through the region, between farms, pastures and cultivated land, often formed into intricate terraces made for cultivating vines and olive trees. 

This vast system of dry stone walls was the product of the Italian agricultural system of sharecropping called the mezzadria or sharecropping. Mezzadria, from the Latin “he who divides in half," consisted of  the owner or padrone of an agricultural farm and the mezzadri, or farm laborer who worked the land and kept half of the produce to sell and feed their families. These families made wine, olive oil, grew vegetables and wheat, and raised animals - cows for milk and cheese, chickens for eggs, and other animals. The system lasted as late as the 1960s.

The story of the contadini or farm people of the Iblei mountains is told in a network of ethnographic museums in the Iblean area. The museum system not only seeks to preserve the artifacts of the self-sufficient lives of the mezzadri or farm families: farming tools, kitchen utensils, equipment for weaving and embroidery, and recipes of folk medicine, but also to promote and teach current generations the skills of self-sufficiency that in danger of being lost. Food in Sicily students visited two of these museums to better understand Sicilian food culture and identity by participating in the making of cheese and cooking traditional Sicilian dishes.

At the Ethnographic Museum “Nunzio Bruno” in the town of Floridia, we met master cheese-maker Alessandro of the Caseficio Trinacria di Lucia La Paglia, who showed us the process for making tuma and ricotta. Tuma is both a fresh, white, soft cheese that can be made from sheep's, cow's, or goat's milk, and also a stage in the production of pecorino cheese before salting and maturation. Ricotta is produced fresh from the whey left from making cheese, and with the addition of a small amount of fresh milk, the new liquid is re-boiled, hence the name ricotta, or "cooked again."

While the milk was being heated to the right temperature to coagulate into cheese, the students took a tour of the rooms of the museum displaying artifacts and tools of daily farm life in the nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth centuries. Artifacts from animal husbandry, wheat cultivation and bread production, along with those from the work of seamstresses, shoemakers, beekeepers and coopers fill the museum. Students learned of the zero-waste farm life and were especially struck by the pot mender or concialemmi, who repaired amphora and other ceramic containers.  Perhaps the biggest attraction were the painted Sicilian carts. The painted carts symbolized wealth and status and the power to transform an object of work and utility into an object of beauty. Back at the cheesemaking, the students were ready to continue making ricotta and enjoy their cheeses with lunch.

Later in the trip, Food in Sicily students were back in the Iblei Mountains in the town of Canicattini Bagni at the Museo TEMPO, where they learned how to make three local dishes: polpette di finocchietto–sauteed patties of wild fennel fronds with pine nuts, eggs, and cheese; 'nfigghiulata–baked bread pinwheels with wild mint; and biancomangiare–a dessert with medieval origins made with cow's milk and garnished with toasted almonds. 

After the students had lunched on the food they prepared, they visited the rest of the museum. Exhibits featured textiles from the region and the use of local plants for fabric dyeing and for use in folk medicine remedies.

But the most extensive part of the museum documents the area’s history of emigration. Every part of Italy has a museum of emigration that tells the story of the diaspora of the Italian peoples from the late nineteenth century to the 1920s and again from the end of the second world war up until the 1970s.  Estimates of Italian migration during these periods are as high as 25 million, making Italy one of the countries of the largest voluntary emigration in recorded world history. Letters, postcards, photographs, and the objects that returning migrants brought back as evidence of their new-found wealth, such as the first electric razors, tell the story of both the emigration and return of the people of the Canicattini Bagni area. 

The story of migration is critical to the musuem’s purpose. 

"Our museum tells the true story of men and women,” as the ethno anthropologist Paolino Uccello said in an interview with Isabella Di Bartolo in La Voce di New York in November 2015. "The desire for redemption of a people, the suffering of those who left their land to find another land, another homeland. Another place of the heart. It tells the story of the passion of those who found their place in America, bringing a piece of Sicily with them.” The museum docents and staff bid farewell to the students, hoping that they too will carry at least the taste of Sicily back with them to Ohio.

Food in Sicily is a faculty-led program for Ohio University credit. In OHIO study away programs, students earn OHIO credit, take courses with other OHIO students and are taught by OHIO faculty. A student's financial aid package applies the same as it would for on-campus courses.

Food in Sicily is open to undergraduate and graduate students, and students can earn six credit hours while learning how to make mozzarella, practicing Italian with a "Table and Market" meeting with local social enterprises, helping with dinners at a local soup kitchen, taking cooking classes, and visiting farms, olive oil makers, and wineries. (For additional information see the articles on "Singing, Dancing and Churning the Cheese in Sicily" during the 2019 trip, "Food in Sicily students experience how service changes people's lives" and "Food in Sicily students discover the power of community resilience" during the 2022 trip, and Food in Sicily students explore the island’s ancient Greek past and Food in Sicily students see how emigration changed Sicily as integration threatens its identity during the 2023 trip)

Visits to markets and sites in Ortigia, Italy, include the Catacombs of San Giovanni, the medieval Jewish quarter and Castello Maniace. Day trips are planned to Catania, Italy, where students will visit the fish market, historic city center, Benedictine Monastery, Greek Theater and Cathedral. Students also will hike on Mt. Etna and enjoy time on Sicilian beaches, as well as tour the historical towns of Noto and Taormina

For more information, visit the Food in Sicily webpage or contact Bell.

See more about Experiential Learning at OHIO.