A siculoisraeli salad

One of the most heart-warming rituals I take part since I am living in the holy land is the pomelo break: during the pomelo season, my boss comes in the morning with this giant heavy orange and we all gather after lunch to have a piece of the holy citrus, amen. As passionate as he is for italian cousin, the idea of exporting pomelo (unknown to most of Europe, as far as I know) into italian food came naturally, so hey, challenge accepted :)

POMELO, FENNEL AND SYRIAN OLIVES SALAD

I peeled the pomelo (which is already quite a challenge, as this obese orange has a very thick skin :) ), squeezed half of it and cut the rest into pieces. I sliced the fennels keeping the small leaves for decorating the salad. I took the seeds out of a bunch of green bitterish olives (yes, sometimes I buy food only because it has a fancy packaging!) and mixed them with the pomelo pieces and the fennels. I made an emulsion with half lemon, oil, the squeezed pomelo, salt and pepper to season the salad. Nice :)

SICILIAN LINGUINE WITH CARAMELISED CHERRY TOMATOES

As refreshing and patriotic as it was, a salad is not enough to have two young and sporty people still in their 20ies satisfied (me and A), so I stayed on the track of Sicilianness and made this linguine with breadcrumbs, anchovies and caramelised tomatoes. 

I cut the tomatoes in halves and place them in a baking tray with some caster sugar, salt, oregano and oil EVO. They need to dry in the oven @ 150 for about one hour. I boiled the linguine; in the meanwhile, I took a large pan and add oil EVO, two garlic cloves and the anchovies. When the anchovies were melted, I take the garlic cloves out and add breadcrumbs (a shame I didn't have real bread!). I fried the breadcrumbs in the pan for a couple of minutes and seasoned the linguine with this mix and the cherry tomatoes.