Forget the Sicilian sightseeing, history or weather … Mangia!

And finally, it's time for the food.

Cannoli heaven

This trip was always going to be as much of a culinary as a cultural adventure.  Anyone who's grown up in a family with Sicilian roots knows that food is far more than fuel for the body.  It the glue that holds the family together.  A physical metaphor for history.  The centrepiece of any celebration.  A way to distinguish your family from others.  But most of all it is, quite simply, love.  If Christianity hadn't had a big meal to build its iconography around, Sicilians would have invented the Last Supper.  Frankly, it's amazing they couldn't work food into the Annunciation.  Surely the Virgin might have been having a mid-morning gelato-filled brioche with an espresso when the angel stopped by?

Between my grandparents' kitchen, decades of restaurant dining and some serious cookbooks, I thought I knew Sicilian cuisine.  Wrong.  Actually eating in Sicily was the culinary equivalent of the first time you see the Wizard of Oz, when everything switches from black and white to colour.  All was familiar, but different … and better.

Tastes were brighter, more delicate, more sophisticated … with fish and vegetables taking a far more dominant role than the classics of the Italian-American kitchen.  Part of this, no doubt, is the immigrant celebration of new-found prosperity.  Once-impoverished peasants, now able to afford it, show off with expensive protein.  Meatballs the size of your fist, anyone?  The situation was no doubt exacerbated by the fact I grew up 1000 miles from an ocean.  Even Sicilian cooking can't do much for a Mississippi River catfish.  And the seasonality is intense.  I don't think I've been anywhere that had a more obvious connection with the herbs that are blooming and the fish that are running right now.

The lessons I bring back to my own kitchen?

• Use more herbs.  Particularly whatever is in leaf at the moment.  I thought the Sicilian kitchen was all about oregano and basil.  Hardly noticed it.  We had a huge variety of herbs, particularly what we saw in the hedgerows.  Pasta Palermitana (aka Pasta con le Sarde) was studded with the wild fennel decorating every roadside.  This dish on its home turf was so much more subtle than my recipe.  Far more balanced, with the sardines barely discernible.  The herb was much closer to fennel tops than to the bulb; that's what I'll use next time.  Mint turned up in handfuls in all sorts of pasta dishes, garnishing meat, stirred into vegetables.  Inspired by seasonality, when I got home I cut back my borage and used it for ravioli filling.  Shows potential.

Ravioli Palmeritana at RossoDiVino, Taormina

• Speaking of ravioli … Masterchef has us all over-thinking pasta thickness.  Rolling 'til it's so thin you can read though it is just not the way it's done in Sicily.  We had plenty of more substantial, chewy thicknesses, and they were great.  John and Greg would want something finer, but I don't care.

• Must do more carpaccio.  I didn't expect to have so much raw fish.  From the sweet pink prawns that were in season to delicate platters of raw tuna or swordfish … I kept getting starters that would have been as at home in a Japanese restaurant as in Italy.  (In fact, it turns out that a primary export market for Sicilian white wines is Japan.  Something I now understand completely.)  Granted, I'll never be able to have fresh swordfish cut in whole cross-sections from a creature that was in the Med yesterday … but I'm sure I can source good enough stuff to play around.

• Everything is better with pistachio.  I didn't need a lot of convincing on this point.  But I'd thought of pistachio as something to nibble in its raw form before dinner, or as a base of fabulous desserts.  In Sicily it was used as a savoury crust, sprinkled as a garnish, stirred into pasta.  The varieties were endless.  Particularly noteworthy was pesto Siciliana.  Sicilians swap pine nuts for pistachios, or almonds, or both, and take an equally cavalier attitude to which herb they use.  I made some pesto with pistachio, mint and a generous hit of garlic when I got home as a crust and sauce for salmon.  Success.

Platter for four at Sapori Smarriti

• Have more fun with antipasto.  We had several platters that were works of art.  The varieties and unusual combinations were stunning.  A wafer-thin slice of grilled aubergine (eggplant) over soured cream in a shot glass.  Prosciutto serving as a case for wedges of preserved artichoke.  Sharp cubes of pecorino in a salad of pickled onions.  They take this as seriously as fancy French canapés, and the artistic possibilities are the same.

• Must stop worrying about my cannoli.  I tried a lot here on their home turf.  I expected my favourite dessert of all time to be substantively better at its point of origin.  Nope.  They taste exactly the same.  So next time I buy shells at Italian Continental Stores, whip confectioners' sugar into ricotta and pipe in that filling, I will ditch my inferiority complex.  I still won't, however, make my own shells.  Life is too short for that.

• Pasta con la Norma, in the land of its birth, is different.  No basil!  (My recipe has handfuls.)  But a topping of baked, smoked ricotta.  I didn't even know this existed.  My first 49 years have clearly been blighted by its absence.  It's soft yet firm, sweet yet slightly bitter, delightfully wood smoked  … and elevates the aubergine and tomato to a whole different place.  As I have never seen it before, I doubt I can get my hands on any here.  But it may add fuel to an argument for a smoker.

Since returning home I've taken Gorgio Locatelli's Made in Sicily back off the cookbook shelf and am reading it with a whole new understanding.  I feel like I'm starting over, and am totally inspired.  For the best of the meals that are triggering my Sicilian cooking renaissance, read on.

Best restaurants … and the meals of memory

Bricco & Bacco - Near the duomo in Monreale, this elegant restaurant is all about meat on an island that celebrates fish.  This is the kind of place where the manager dispenses with the menu and tells you what's good tonight.  We listened.  A starter of baked, new-season artichoke and ricotta, a bit like a simple soufflé, had us both deconstructing to try to recreate at home.  Then came the best Bistecca Fiorentina I've ever had … 800 miles south of where it's the speciality.  Herby and charred on the outside, perfectly rare in the centre, superb quality that needed little adornment (or cooking).  Pats of butter melting over it the only additional flavour needed.  We had some grilled vegetables.  Mostly because we felt guilty about consuming that much red meat without any mitigating factor.  The only disappointment was dessert, when they talked me into what they claimed was "the best tiramisu ever".  Ordering one simply proved the point that the best tiramisu ever is … mine.

Girgenti's swordfish carpaccio

Il Re di Girgenti - Gourmet, new-style take on the classics, consumed on an open-air loggia overlooking the temples of Agrigento and the sea.  Stunning experience, if a little slow on the service.  Prosecco with little squares of deep-fried chickpea flour as an amuse bouche.  Amazing what great seasoning can do for a peasant staple.  The antipasto of swordfish was simply marinated in a sharp olive oil, dusted with pistachio bits, garnished in the centre with a mound of rocket and very soft, fresh ricotta.  Piers' squash-filled ravioli was a bit underwhelming, but I triumphed with Sicilian wild pig in a sweet and savoury tomato sauce with pappardelle.  Piers was much happier with that pork in fillet form for his main course, with the delicious novelty of beetroot sauce below it.  I had red tuna loin rolled in sesame seeds, grilled on the outside and still raw in the centre.  Prices on par with fine dining in London; worth it for a special meal.

Exquisite alalunga

Osteria RossoDiVino - A tough-to-find little gem down a side alley in Taormina, run by two sisters who are obsessed with local specialities and seasonal fare.  On a night in early May that meant a celebration of Alalunga, aka Albacore, that delicate, whitish-pink member of the tuna family.  Lightly grilled, topped with sweet and sour red onions of a delicacy we don't get in the UK, complemented by a drizzle of balsamic glaze and a dab of apple puree.  Strange, but it worked.  The excellent seafood also included an antipasto platter of raw baby shrimps and carpaccio, and I had the best take on pasta con la sarde I had throughout Sicily.  Top all that with the fact that the chefs could turn out a killer chocolate fondant, and the girls knew how to pick out some fine wines.  This is definitely on the gourmet end of Taormina's options.  Try Il Giardino for excellent, but homier and more humble fare. (Including my best pasta con la Norma of the trip.)

Il Gusto dei Sapori Smarriti - A deli and gourmet shop at the edge of the market in Ortigia that elevates antipasti to a high art.  The inspiration for my comments about this Italian amuse bouche above.  They hand carve and compile everything on order, so it can take a while.  But the wait is worth it.  The beguiling variety of cured meats was a testimony to the marvellous diversity of the pig.  Cows and sheep strutted their stuff in a wide range of cheeses, and there's a surprisingly broad range of wines for such a casual place.  Build your sightseeing around it.

After all this gluttony, I was amazed to have returned to Weight Watchers and have lost half a pound.  I'd guess that I have the dominance of fish, and a lot of walking, to thank for that.  Lord knows it wasn't the portion sizes.  Proper Sicilians serve bowls of pasta in the same quantities as Sicilian Americans.  "Mangia! Mangia!" The more you eat, the more you feel the love.  La vita e bella.