Cooking in Sicily is tightly connected to the history and culture of the island, as well as to the religion and spiritual life.
It is indeed a very complex gastronomical culture which show traces of every culture estabilished in Sicily in the last two thousand years.

Food habits of Greece, recipes of "Monsu", Arabian sweets and Jewish cooked bowels... each of them contributes to the huge variety of cooking in Sicily.

It is exclusively used extra-virgin olive oil to cook and dress foods. Butter is rarely used.
Main ingredients are vegetables and sea-food. Meat is not much used, except bowels. Fish is traditionally very present on tables, fresh and dressed with oil, garlic, olives or capers, breadcrumbs and orange.

Foods are refined by the many herbs growing over the island's lands: basil, mint, bay, rosemary, sage, onions, fennel, jasmine and many others. Almonds, hazelnuts and pistachio are used to prepare drinks and sausages.

A special place is took by the road-gastronomy: it is easy to buy and enjoy fast and cheap foods sold by vending stands on the road, like bread and "panelle", bread and spleen, "stigghiole", "quarume", fried vegetables, "arancini" and so on.

Bread is always served with very meal, often spreaded with sesame. It is very important in many sacred rituals.
Various cheeses and wines are also produced.

Sicily has a huge variety of sweets, fried or baked with fresh and dry fruits: they are often linked to religious traditions. Ricotta cheese is largely used, as wellas chocolate, prepared in seven types to cook "Setteveli" in Palermo.

Finally, ice-creams and "granita" are an important ailment: after all the modern production of ice-creams started in Sicily during the XVII century.