There isn’t a long history of celebrating New Year’s Eve or Day in Sicily. Only over the past century has it become a milestone holiday. Therefore, modern Sicilians celebrate New Year’s Italian-style–eating sausage (cotechino), grapes, and lentils (pictured here). Lentils, with their coin-shape, are thought to bring good fortune for the year ahead. I’m eating lots of lentils today, as you can see. Bring that good fortune on! Best wishes to you and your loved ones for a healthful, peaceful, and 2015 full of good fortune!
That dish looks good and I imagine tasty with just the right Italian seasoning! Eat those lentils (just curious how you flavor them) and bring on the good fortune! Thanks for the good wishes for health, peace and good fortune, too. 🙂 <3
I followed the recipe in Coming Home to Sicily, a beautiful book by Fabrizia Lanza. I didn’t do it exactly because I wanted to it be thick (and we had pasta al forno as a separate dish, so I left out the pasta with the lentils.) The additional special ingredient was wild fennel, which I keep a stash of (in Sicily, you can buy it as a preserve to have it for off-season, but for us in the Eastern US, that’s all we can get–no wild fennel here!). Having DOP lentils from Umbria and carrots from my sister-in-law’ garden helped too! It was delicious!