The Baroness and the real Caltagirone

In Book #2 of the Vespers Trilogy, Malice Stalks the Leopard, one of the major characters is The Baroness, an old love of Ferdinand de Lerida.  She is presented in the book as the widow of the Count of Caltagirone.  Naturally, she's a fictitious person who was fun to write, but the real family who ruled this region was powerful and always part of the king's counsel.  The city is also one of the oldest in Sicily, dating back to before 1000 B.C.


Today, Caltagirone is known for its ceramics, the beauty of which date back to Arab times in Sicily - 9th and 10th century - because the Arabs brought the greens, blues and yellows to the industry.  They also brought a sophistication to the ceramics with geometric designs and graceful  depictions of animals and plants.  This is typical of Sicilian ceramics today and what this area is famous for.


And of course, the name itself is said to be of Moorish derivation - the name Caltagirone means Castle or Fortress of Vases.

the birth of pasta, pasta asciutta, Arab Sicily and the history of noodles

It seems like I'm always writing about food, you'd think all I do all day is eat. If only. But perusing one of my favorite cookbooks/history books of Sicily, Pompa nd Sustenance , Twenty-Five Centuries of Sicilian Food by Mary Taylor Simeti, she reminds me once again of the origins and birth of pasta and some more food history, like the history of noodles. She talks about pasta asciutta which is spaghetti or fettuccine covered with sauce and cheese. She believes that that dish was born in Arab Sicily when noodles known as rishta were eaten in ancient Persia and discussed in medieval Islamic cookbooks. Al-Idrisi, King Roger II's famous geographer, talks about pasta vermicelli called itriya, an Arabic word that survived as "tria" in Sicilian that, along with the pasta, was taken north by Genoese merchants. Check out page 143 where she lists some of the different forms of 19th century pasta. I never heard of most of them! Melinfanti, pastarattedda, filatieddi and ciazzisi, just to mention a few.