Curious to browse a Sicilian Gastronomic Dictionary? Yes, because this dictionary is much more than a mere list of words: it is an immersion in the deep roots of Sicilian cuisine, “dedicated to those who are passionate about Sicily, by birth or by destiny”. Word of Francesco Lauricella, author of Mizzica! Sicilian Gastronomic Dictionary (ed. Topic).

The book starts from an important premise, namely that cooking brings people and cultures together like nothing else. Even language barriers are broken: by cooking together everyone understands each other quickly. There Sicilian cuisine it is, then, a meeting and a journey: very different individuals have come and gone on the island, in terms of origins, culture and religion; the result are recipes with a highly original identity. The dishes and their ingredients arrived from places, sometimes very distant, and only partially retained their original names: the dialect modified them and, in a sort of very long “Wireless phone”, he transformed them until they reached us.

The Sicilian Gastronomic Dictionary contains then more than 6,550 of these words to tell a special cuisine in his own words. And there are also fish, vegetables, animals, wild herbs, procedures, tools and instruments no longer so commonly used, but which it would be better not to lose track of in order to safeguard a truly important cultural heritage.

We ask the Author the reason for the title, because «funny? «It is a word that represents the most authentic Sicily he explains, «it is the exclamation that every chef would like to hear when he brings a dish to the table, it is an ancient word that thanks to its ability to effectively express thoughts and feelings has crossed borders of the Sicilian language and, since 2006, has landed in Zingarelli vocabulary of the Italian language.

In the dictionary some gastronomic words are explained in more depth than others. Here, in honor of my Sicilian origins, I have chosen a dozen – truly delicious ones.