Chocolate Factory (without Charlie) and other places.

 On Monday afternoon we all went off without golden tickets but certainly to visit the chocolate factory. After listening to a talk by the owner in which we learnt that chocolate in Sicily - well, in Modica anyway - was not initially considered a luxury for the rich but almost a staple food to give workers energy, we donned silly caps and overalls and went into the "laboratory". 
 
Modica chocolate is cooked at very moderate temperatures during preparation and as a result has sugar crystals which you can feel on your tongue. They also mix it with a variety of flavours including orange, lemon, cinnamon and other expected things but also salt and various spices. But then, the Aztecs used it as a spice in the first place. 

 Strangest of all was the use of chocolate mixed with meat to make “empanadigli”, almost a kind of rather superior mince pie. The name comes from Spanish “empanadilla” – Sicily once belonged to Spain – and I must say that “empanadigli” are rather better than many empanadas and empanadillas I have eaten in Galicia. 

We were all impressed and plan to go back and buy slabs of chocolate before going home. Quite what happens to our 10 kilo hand-luggage allowance I dread to think. 

After eating chocolate we moved on to aperitives, which here had to mean prosecco.  And then more food, but our evening meal was nothing really to write home about: rather a surprise really, as everything else has been very good.

Yesterday we were back on the Montalbano trail cum gastronomic tour of Sicily. We visited Scicli where we took a look at the town hall, used as the police station for the invented town of Vigata, where Commissario Montalbano has his office.

We even paid a couple of euros apiece to go into the room which serves as the office of “quaestore”, Montalbano’s superior who is always telling him off, and stood behind his rather impressive desk. 

Incidentally we visited yet more baroque churches destroyed by the 1693 earthquake and then rebuilt.  One of these had a statue of the amazing Santa Maria dei Militi, a warrior Virgin Mary who is said to have appeared in the sky during a battle between the Sicilians and the Saracens. It is said that she scared the Saracens so greatly that they fled!!


On our way to visit the remains of the caves which were used as dwellings for quite some centuries, we came across an old blacksmith working away in a minuscule forge. He chatted away to us and then asked for a contribution.

We also admired the balcony supports decorated with gargoyle-like faces, mostly pulling tongues out at passersby. These were partly a way that the rich people could point out to the poorer folk that they, the rich bourgsoisie, had plenty of money.

Lunch was an amazingly photogenic collection of seafood dishes at a place called Sampieri, in the TV series playing the seaside place “La Mannara”. 

Some of our party went into the sea for a swim. while others  just paddled. After that we moved to another beach location, in real life Donnalucata but in the series “La Marinella”. There, next to the ruins of an old brick factory we played Montalbano, looking for dead bodies and so on. 




It’s amazing how silly a bunch of grown-up people can be. It must be the sun, the seafood or maybe the prosecco!