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When Lucy Laucht was a child growing up in Birmingham, her grandfather regaled her with fantastical tales of his youth in Bari, Italy. She never returned to the country, but to commemorate her time there she adorned the walls of the family home with frescoes of the Bay of Naples.
Laucht, who now lives in Cornwall and works as a professional photographer, has been in search of her own Italian stories. Equipped with a film camera that had belonged to her father, she headed south to Sicily, where she photographed ripe oranges and peaches piled in cardboard boxes, bathers lounging on white rocks or wading into the intensely blue sea. From there she travelled along the Southern Rivieras, from the Amalfi Coast to the volcanic Aeolian archipelago and the tranquil calm of the Gulf of Naples.
Those photographs have now become a book, The sweet far nientewhich translates as “the sweetness of doing nothing.” Through essays and photographs, she captures the slower pace of an Italian summer: long lunches at a metal table carved into the pebbles of Sicily. Response Beachsipping an espresso with a view of Ischia Aragonese BridgeWhite and Aperol-coloured umbrellas lined the beach in Puglia, a grapefruit-pink sunset lighting up the evening waters of Stromboli, and a blue-striped linen curtain dancing in the breeze on the Egadi Islands. “What really stuck with me was the repose with which Italians seemed to move through life,” Laucht writes in an essay. “I envy the old Signore who sit together shelling peas in peaceful silence, their decades of friendship distilled into a smile, a glance, a series of simple, repeated gestures. I admired those long, unhurried lunches; the locals’ strong connection to family, community and place; their quiet cultivation of ease and joy.”
Recipes are interspersed between photographs and essays: Sicilian zucchini flowers stuffed with herbs, preserved lemons and rice to eat on the beach, or napolitanas. bucatini with scarpariello (“in the style of a shoemaker”), a pasta dish with tomato, garlic and parmesan that is said to have been invented by shoemakers in the impoverished Quatieri Spagnolo area of Naples. The story goes that shoemakers accepted cheese as payment for their shoes and the recipe served as a way to use up excess parmesan.
The book also includes expressions that Laucht picked up on his travels. One of his favorites was movitifermu: to move without moving. “It’s the kind of thing an elderly country aunt might say to her niece who has come to visit from Palermo and, with her impatient city manners, is anxious to leave.”
An excerpt from Sicily: the inside track By Lucy Laucht
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When you’re sitting at a bar table in Sicily watching people go by, nothing works better to soothe the soul and refresh the body than a glass of latte di mandorla. Literally, it means “almond milk,” but it’s much sweeter than the almond milk many non-Sicilians are used to, as it’s usually made from pasta di mandorla, a block of soft marzipan that can be purchased at the island’s pasticcerie, or cake shops. The marzipan flakes are crumbled in water, bottled, shaken well, and stored in the refrigerator. Any Sicilian bar that takes itself seriously will make its own. If you see someone reaching for a carton of commercial almond milk, tell them “No grazie!” and try the place across the square.
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Cave di Cusa is the biggest Sicilian archaeological site you’ve never heard of. In the sixth and fifth centuries BC, it was the quarry that supplied the limestone blocks and sections of cylindrical columns for the Greek temple at Selinunte, eight miles to the southwest. When the Carthaginians defeated the Greek army in 409 BC, it was abruptly abandoned, leaving huge blocks in various stages of completion, some already carved and hewn, waiting only to be cut away from the bedrock. You can wander freely in a bucolic setting that in spring is covered with bluebells and great yellow spears of Ferula communis, the giant fennel. Hardly anyone visits. It’s an Ozymandias-like place.
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If you’ve seen the second season of the biting television drama series The white lotusYou’ve seen Villa Tasca, a historic villa that serves as the setting for two female friends to escape from their male partners for the night. If you haven’t, all the better: this stately Sicilian home is even more impressive in real life. Built in the 16th century as a country retreat away from the worries of the city, today it’s surrounded by the outer suburbs of Palermo. Yet within its walls, the western Sicilian base of the Tasca d’Almerita wine family remains a haven of aristocratic tranquility. The sprawling park is open for a small daily fee, while the lush botanical gardens can be visited on guided tours. But to see the villa’s ornate interior and stay overnight in its magnificent rooms with their trompe l’oeil frescoes, you’ll need to book the entire complex. Getting married here is one of the most popular reasons to do so. But as the white lotus The episode suggests that not getting married here might be even more fun.
Extract taken from Lucy Laucht’s Il Dolce Far Niente (£35, Handcrafted books). Limited edition prints of Il Dolce Far Niente will be on display alongside works by artist Caroline Popham from 28 June to September at the Holland Street number eight Gallery, St James’s Park Flagship, 34A Queen Anne’s Gate, London