CaSale - Dinner

Chef Rex cooked a special dinner tonight.  The main course was Pollo Siciliana alla Rex (chicken cutlets, ham, and cheese), caramelized fennel bulb in pastis, tomato and mozzarella cheese, and salad.  Rex had a good time at the Supermercato speaking Italian with the butcher and selecting the wines.  Pastries for dessert.  The dinner was outstanding, as can be expected.

Museum of Salt, Trapani

Toured the Museum of Salt.  The Phoenicians were the first to set up basins here to collect salt.  The same process has been in place for many centuries.

Selinunte

Selinunte, founded around 628 BC, was one of the most important of the Greek colonies in Sicily.  In 409 BC, the Carthaginians sent a force of 100,000 men and destroyed the city, which had a population of approximately 19,000.  The city continued to be inhabited up until 250 BC.

Erice

Took the cable car from Trapani to Erice , a town located on  a plateau 2,463 feet above Trapai.  The town was founded by the ancient Greeks.   Great view of the surrounding area and salt fields.  Also home of one of the best pastry shops in Sicily –Maria Grammatico Pasticceria.  Maria was there and willingly agreed to poise for my camera.  She is Sicily’s most famous pastry chef.  At age 11, her father died.  Her mother, pregnant with a sixth child, sent her with her sister to the cloistered San Caro orphanage in Erice to lean the art of pastry making from the nuns.  She toiled in brutally hard conditions making pastries until she was age 22.  In order to survive, she started making sweets and pastries – and the rest is history.  Her cannoli filled with fresh ricotta is one of her signature items.