Banish meat, fish, milk and eggs from the table. It is the philosophy of vegan diet, which completely excludes the use of animal products and their derivatives. Considered a niche phenomenon until recently, nowadays more and more people, mainly women aged between 25 and 34, “converted” to such diet, making a choice not only connected to health, but also ethics. Wandering Chef Carmelo Chiaramonte will accompany us through a new journey in the section “coffee and surroundings”, and will make you discover how vegan cuisine can be delicious, easy to prepare and within everyone’s means.

In the silence of spring nights, they boom like very slow fireworks: magic plants in form of suckers, sprouts, spears, buds, flowers and blooms. The vegetal rainbow starts with a kaleidoscope of fantastic flavours. “New” plants feature that nice energy of Mediterranean kitchen that has been left aside a bit, actually the one that enchanted nutritionists of half of the world and was defined in the first Sicilian vegetarian cook book written by Duke Alliata di Salaparuta in 1930: Vegetarianism and raw naturism (Sellerio ed.). Here we have one of the fifteen Sicilian variations of Caponata, famous for including vegetables of any kind in sweet-and-sour spice.

The butcher’s broom (ruscus aculeatus), is unusual and only knows by few people, but can be replaced with asparagus taken from uncultivated fields. Very many don’t tolerate garlic, but the new one is very delicate and worthily scented.