today we're in Italy and we're on the
island of Sicily and we're here to eat we can't wait to show you some of the
best local food this island has to offer
Sicilian food is a mishmash of cultures
and some of the most unique in Italy this is our second video from Palermo
and we're here to hunt down Sicily's most famous food watch out for street
food classics, recipes that speak to Palermo's past and traditional Sicilian
food in this three-part series we'll show you some of Palermo's best food from
local restaurants that are off the beaten path to food you'll find nowhere
else you don't want to miss this series get ready for some mouth-watering food
I'm Thomas and I'm Sheena and we're Chasing a Plate we hope you're hungry
let's eat!
we're in Palermo the capital city of Sicily and this city has a thriving
street food culture so that's what this video is going to be all about we're
gonna be zipping all around town to show you the best local street food eats
Sicilians love their offal and this first street food is the ultimate example of
nose-to-tail eating it's called pani ca meusa and it is a chopped spleen and lung
sandwich
this is a real heritage place it's been around since 1943 and they're super
famous for this sandwich so they've got two stations making the same sandwich
and they're churning now them out there's lots of people coming in grabbing one to eat out
on the street so this is a true Sicilian street food well actually it's a Palermo
street food you'll only find this here in Palermo
this is a super unique street food I've never seen a sandwich like this so
you've just got a white bun some sesame seeds on top and absolutely packed with
veal spleen and veal lungs and the the spleen and the lungs are cooked just
very simply I think just boiled probably and then once they've done that they've
done that whole then they get chopped up into little bits and in the shop there
when you order all of those pieces of offal are being cooked in lard in pork
lard and so they're just dipping them in that beautiful glossy lard it's
covering them and so it's a hot sandwich and then once he's taken them out of
that lard just squirted a little bit of lemon on there, sprinkle of salt so very
very simple
that is a beautiful flavour
so the first thing that really stands out is the texture of
that spleen actually it's quite squishy it's a bit like eating liver it's not
offal-y at all it doesn't have an iron-y taste it's got a beautiful taste
from that pork lard and then the lemon actually really comes
through has a nice kick of lemon juice
whoa
that is really good it's a punch of flavour and you can really taste the difference
between the lung and the spleen the spleen has a much more offal-y taste than
the lung I find lung to be quite a clean tasting, a very mild offal whereas the spleen
is a bit heavier so they balance each other out really well and the lemon all
over the top works a treat now you can get this with cheese just a little
bit sprinkled on top but we want to do it properly just have plain the
traditional way and I can see that cheese might add a little bit but I think it
would take away actually because the the taste of the offal is incredible
it's really good and it's quite funny here this is the store just behind me so
it's a tiny little shop all the locals are kind of using it like a
drive-through so they're just pulling up along the curb here they run out of
their cars grab a sandwich jump back into their car eat it on the run
that is a really good really unique sandwich
I love that Palermo has such a strong street food culture and what's also
really neat here is it's a very small place so you can walk everywhere we
approaching our next stop at the friggitoria which is a fried food stand and
we're here to eat a couple of Paermo's most classic street foods
we're here to eat panella which are chickpea fritters and crocchè which are potato
croquettes and they're making them right there in front of us there's this huge wok
of oil and they're frying them up they look so golden and crispy
How set am I? So I've got a beer in one hand and my sandwich in the other so
this is what we've come here to eat we have got a sandwich or a roll stuffed
full with crocchè which are the potato croquette so mashed potato there's a bit
of mint in there and they've just been deep-fried
and then the panella which is hiding underneath so that's those slices of
chickpea fritters which have got parsley inside so made with chickpea flour and
also just deep fried alright let's give this thing a taste
oh that is really good so it's very very creamy the croquettes, the potato croquettes
are very crunchy so the mashed potato which has hit that oil has formed this
beautiful golden crispy crunch and the mashed potato is super smooth the chickpea
fritters are very light so you think that they might be quite dense but the
flour is very finely milled and then it's just very crispy on the outside really
soft on the inside
the roll is super soft
panella is really popular in Palermo it's a Palermo street food and the
chickpeas came to Sicily with the Arabs in the 10th and 11th century so Sicily has got a
really distinctive cuisine Palermo is often regarded as the world's most
conquered city so the Greeks the Spaniards the Normans the Phoenicians of North
Africa the Arabs they've all been here and they've all left their mark on
the cuisine and that's where the chickpea comes in, it's really good
beer is the perfect accompaniment to this sandwich what I love about it is
it's really perfectly seasoned so you think chickpea fritter, it sounds a
little bit bland but it's not at all it's got a real savoury salty hit and
that beer is going down very well in this heat too
our aim with this channel is to always show you the most traditional the most
local the places that are doing it right the next stop's for gelato and we got
chatting with some guys at that last stop some locals from Palermo and they said
that this place is top of the list for gelato here in Palermo and there's a key
reason for that so this particular shop right behind me uses natural ingredients
everything is real so real fruit not powdered milk that sort of thing and
it is quite hard to find here in Italy I mean you see a gelato shop on every
corner but a lot of them use powders and packets and they taste very chemically
so you've really got to find the places that do it right and apparently this
place is doing it super right really natural so let's get some gelato
holy moly check out my gelato so it's very common here in Palermo to get your
gelato in a brioche so I got two flavours I got salted pistachio and also extra
dark chocolate and there is a ton of gelato in here and it's rapidly
melting so I'm just gonna get a huge bite of that extra dark
oh my goodness
it is
beautiful the texture of the gelato is very creamy the chocolate is so intense slightly
bitter and not very sweet let's get into this salted pistachio now I love
pistachio gelato so that's why I chose this flavour but also because Sicily
grows pistachios they grow on the eastern side of the island by Mount Etna
the volcano
oh my goodness it is good it's just got a hint of salt there's chunks or
actual pistachio nuts in the gelato so they're really crunchy there's just a
beautiful earthy flavour and like Thomas was saying
the gelato doesn't have that chemical aftertaste you can really taste the
quality ohhh this is good let's just get a bite of this brioche
the brioche is quite sturdy the bun is quite dense but I suppose that's because
if it was too soft it would just sort of disintegrate and so it's a really
great vessel for the gelato ohhh and you get so much of it
heaven
we're on the hunt for our next street food it's called sfincione it's sort of Sicily's
pizza I suppose and we're told that the most authentic version is sold from
the back of a tuk-tuk so it's a mobile street food so we're literally walking
the streets of Palermo trying to find these mobile vendors who are selling
sfincione, fingers crossed we find one
the hunt was a total failure a total bust so we didn't find any of the roaming
sfincione vendors we wandered the streets of Palermo for ages but
didn't come across any so next best thing we jumped on a local bus and we've
come to a bakery that's really famous for its sfincione
the bakery is so busy locals are pouring in grabbing their lunch we had
to wait a few minutes for this sfincione it came fresh out of the oven and how
good does it look so I know that before I referred to it as sort of like a
Sicilian pizza but in reality it's really nothing like a pizza it's got a
dough and then you've got this topping on top which is really
unique because it soaks itself into the dough as it's baking so the name
sfincione translates to or comes from the Latin and Greek words for
sponge so you've got this really spongy base and then a topping or a sauce which
is made up of tomatoes, there's oregano, breadcrumbs
anchovies and then also caciocavallo cheese which is like a
stretchy curd cheese but enough talking this is smelling way too good not to
get in all right I'm gonna get this end bit here
oh my goodness
that is so so delicious alright so you've got this base which is light as air it
really is sort of spongy in texture really light and that toppping is full of
flavour the tomatoes are so juicy and sweet
it's sensational you get a really strong hit of oregano from that dried oregano
on the top and the breadcrumbs are a little bit crunchy there's onions cooked into that sauce as
well so they're very sweet
I cannot get over how good this sfincione is the
cheese so that's the like brown-y yellowy stuff on top the cheese the caciocavallo
it is very very subtle but it's almost crunchy like it's crisped up in
the oven
the tomato flavour is just insane
Palermo's street scene is brilliant
now we're gonna have a very Sicilian street food it's some intestines grilled
up on a barbecue I can see them just up here behind the camera and the smell is
unreal so this is going back to kind of like the start of the video doing the
whole nose to tail thing like we talked about here in Sicily they love eating
nose to tail
that delicious meat sizzling on the grill is stigghiola so the lamb
intestines the smell is just sensational we can't wait to get in
we have emerged from the smoke with the most beautiful looking plate of stigghiola
so these are lambs intestines now intestines is an offal that I absolutely
love and the reason I love it is because it crisps up on the outside gets some
beautiful charred bits and these are super charred from being on the barbecue so
they're just sitting on some really hot coals but the inside is often really
creamy and stays nice and runny let's see if that's the case here
there's so much flavour in that hmm
the outside has that beautiful charredness on it tiny
bit of crunch from that and a little bit of caramelization and then the inside is
completely creamy really really creamy and it had just a little bit of salt and
some lemon put on it after it came off the grill and was cut up so it's very
simply seasoned oh that is delicious let's get a whole lot more look at all
that nice char on the outside and you can see that crazy creaminess in there
Ohhhhhh
it bursts in your mouth you bite in and the outside is that little bit more
solid and the cream just pops out the side so it sorta just coats your mouth
beautiful flavour it's got a real nice meaty flavour it really does taste like
lamb but that beautiful texture difference between the outside and the
inside
we decided that these would probably go perfectly with a nice cold beer
I think that was a good decision
drinking food that goes perfectly with the taste of
the super refreshing cold beer I'm loving it