L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, JULY 23, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 22 L'Italo-Americano I m e t s o m m a c c o p r o p e r l y t h e w a y most of us do these d a y s : o n s o m e o n e e l s e ' s c o o k i n g . A Lebanese friend had dusted a plate of roast chicken with something dark and purple- red, and when I asked what it was, she said sumac as though everyone knew. It was tangy, almost lemony, w i t h a s m o k y l i t t l e s i g h underneath. What she didn't tell me, because she didn't know, and why would she, was that the spice on that chicken had a Sicilian pass- p o r t a s g o o d a s A n d r e a Camilleri's or Luigi Piran- dello's. Because here is the thing y o u m a y f i n d h a r d t o believe: this most Middle Eastern of spices has been grown in Sicily for a thou- sand years even though, for most of that time, it wasn't even used for food! A shrub that loves poor ground Let us start with the plant itself, which is a humble, entirely un-glamorous thing. The official name of som- macco (my friend's sumac) is Rhus coriaria, a scrubby shrub of the same botanical family as the cashew and the pistachio, with the wonder- ful habit of thriving exactly where almost nothing else will: in the arid, sun-pun- ished soils that so much of Sicily's interior has in abun- dance. In late summer, it produces clusters of small reddish drupes, and those are what we're after. Dried, ground, and sifted to sieve o u t t h e b i t t e r n e s s , t h e y become a coarse powder the color of old wine, tasting b r i g h t , s o u r , a n d f a i n t l y e a r t h y … l i k e l e m o n t h a t comes out of soil. A small word of caution: the berries are actually poi- sonous if you eat them fresh off the branch. Only drying tames them. The Arab inheritance Sommacco came to Sicily t h e w a y s o m u c h o f t h e island's most typical culi- nary flavors did: with the Arabs. Between the ninth a n d e l e v e n t h c e n t u r i e s , when Sicily was one of the j e w e l s o f t h e I s l a m i c Mediterranean, Arab grow- e r s t o o k a w i l d E a s t e r n shrub and turned it into a p r o p e r c r o p , c o a x i n g i t a c r o s s t h e c o u n t r y s i d e around Palermo and Tra- pani, and later Agrigento and Ragusa. Even the name is a souvenir of that age: our sommacco comes straight from the Arabic summāq, meaning, simply and per- fectly, "dark red." When a spice was worth almost as much as wheat A n d n o w t h e p a r t t h a t genuinely astonished me: for m o s t o f i t s l o n g S i c i l i a n career, sommacco was not a seasoning at all, rather, it was used in manufacturing, because its leaves and bark are extraordinarily rich in tannins, the natural com- pounds that turn raw animal h i d e i n t o s u p p l e , l a s t i n g leather. So, while a little of the fruit no doubt found its way into the kitchen, the real money was in tanning and in dyeing cloth, with Sicilian growers even sorting their crop by grade, distin- g u i s h i n g t h e p r i z e d s o m - m a c c o m a s c o l i n o o f t h e western island, dense with tannins and thus sold for leather production, from the gentler femminello of the southeast. By the early nineteenth century, Sicilian sumac was g r o u n d i n s t o n e m i l l s , bagged, and shipped abroad in enormous quantities to France, to Great Britain, and even to the United States. At its height, sumac ranked as o n e o f t h e i s l a n d ' s m o s t v a l u a b l e e x p o r t s , s e c o n d only to wheat. A farmer and Garibaldian patriot named Francesco Paolo Carini brought in the first steam- p o w e r e d m a c h i n e r y t o process it and, in 1899, the Florio family – the same Sicilian dynasty that made Marsala wine world-famous a n d t u r n e d t u n a i n t o a n empire – founded a whole company for the harvesting, grinding, and export of Sicil- i a n s u m a c . A n d l e t ' s b e clear: back then, when the Florios put their name on something, it meant it was a goldmine. As strange as it may seem to us, who think of sumac as something to keep in our k i t c h e n , i n t h e 1 9 t h c e n - turies there were shiploads of it crossing the Atlantic from Sicily, bound not for anyone's dinner but for the tanneries and dye-houses of a r a p i d l y i n d u s t r i a l i z i n g A m e r i c a . S o m e o f t h e leather in your great-grand- p a r e n t s ' w o r l d m a y w e l l have owed its softness to a shrub from a Sicilian hill- side. Faded, and found again Nothing built on tannins could survive the twentieth c e n t u r y u n s c a t h e d : s y n - t h e t i c t a n n i n g a g e n t s arrived, cheaper and faster, and the great sumac trade withered almost to nothing. The shrubs stayed on the hills, useful mainly to the birds. For decades, sommac- co was something Sicily had half-forgotten it ever had. But spices, unlike industries, get second lives and, as Mid- dle Eastern cooking became m o r e a n d m o r e p o p u l a r across the world, sumac has c o m e b a c k i n t o f a s h i o n . T h a t ' s w h e n a h a n d f u l o f Sicilian producers and chefs looked at the wild shrubs on their doorstep and realized, with a jolt, that they were sitting on a flavorsome trea- sure all along; it is, in a way, thanks to the same Middle Eastern roots that brought it to the island all those cen- turies ago that, today, som- macco enjoys a renewed – and well-deserved – popu- larity. How to taste a thousand years The lovely news is that s o m m a c c o i s t h e e a s i e s t spice in the world to fall for, because it asks nothing of you but a pinch: where you m i g h t r e a c h f o r l e m o n , reach for this instead, dust it over grilled fish or roasted chicken; scatter it on a salad of raw onions and tomatoes; stir it into a yoghurt sauce; slip it into a marinade. The Sicilians, gloriously, even sprinkle it over granita, and believe me when I say that sharp red bite against the cold sweetness is a small revelation. So next time you find a jar of sumac, look at that deep red powder and know what you're holding: a taste of Arab Sicily, a relic of a van- ished fortune, and one of those threads that ties the Italian table to the wider world, and to us. All that history, and it still fits on the tip of a spoon! CHIARA D'ALESSIO Ground sumac in a metal spoon, showing the spice's distinctive deep red color and coarse texture (Photo: Ziashusha/Dreamstime) LA BUONA TAVOLA RECIPES COOKING TIPS SEASONAL DISHES Sommacco: the little red spice that once made Sicily rich

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