Nancy Harmon Jenkins leads The Culinary Institute of America’s culinary tour to Sicily each year and knows where to find the island’s best chefs, wines, olive oils and cheeses. After hearing her, you’ll understand why she loves this Mediterranean island and why she keeps going back. Meet Mediterranean food authority Nancy Jenkins.

Q: What draws you back to Sicily so often?

Sicilians will tell you that Sicily isn’t an island, it’s a continent. Well, I thought a continent was simply a large island, but a continent is a place with a wide variety of geographic distinctiveness, and Sicily has that. It has high mountains, deep valleys, deeply indented seacoasts, internal plains and areas that are almost tropical. So there’s a tremendous range of climates, and that of course influences the food.

The Sicilian materia prima—the basic ingredients—are some of the best I’ve ever seen. There’s fabulous citrus, great wine being made, fantastic olive oil that Americans should be more aware of. Name the vegetable and you’ll probably find it growing in Sicily. Almost everywhere you go in Europe, they’ll say, “This place was the granary of the Roman Empire.” Well, Sicily really was, and those vast interior plains of wheat just roll on and on. It’s all hard durum wheat, used for magnificent pasta and bread.

Sicily: A Food Lover’s Paradise

Q: What are some of Sicily’s signature flavors?

One of the most characteristic combinations is sweet and sour. People like to say that’s Arab, but I’m not sure it doesn’t go right back to the Byzantine Greeks. It’s certainly not characteristic of Northern Italy or Provence or France in general, but it’s very typical of Sicily. Caponata, for instance, a classic Sicilian dish, is a mixture of eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, garlic, onions, sugar and vinegar, all cooked together like ratatouille and usually served as a first course.

Listen to Jenkins describe a remarkable caponata she encountered in Sicily.

Q: Sicilians are said to have quite a sweet tooth. Do you have any favorite Sicilian sweets?

Sicily has a grand tradition of elaborate pastries. Cassata is probably the best known, a really sweet, dense cake with a creamy ricotta filling and a coating of almond paste, fondant and candied fruits in elaborate patterns. A little goes a long way, but it’s absolutely characteristic.

Another well-known pastry is cannolo, or cannoli in the plural, a tube-like shell that is traditionally deep fried and stuffed with ice cream or ricotta studded with candied fruit and chocolate. The combination of crisp, crunchy outside and sweet, creamy inside is very interesting.

I think both of these pastries come directly out of the Arab tradition. The Arabs were, after all, the people who brought sugar to Sicily. These are the kind of sweets you can’t create with honey. And whenever you find something specific to Sicily, you can be pretty sure it was connected to Arabs because all the other people who invaded Sicily invaded Southern Italy as well.

The purity of Sicilian ice cream is just extraordinary. The fruit flavors, like mulberry, are magnificent. The almond ice cream is a revelation. In Sicily, pistachio ice cream really tastes like fresh roasted pistachios. And there’s a whole repertoire of frozen desserts, like sorbetto, which is basically ice cream with no cream or eggs, and granita, a syrupy mixture that’s mostly water so it freezes into hard crystals. It melts rapidly as you eat it, so by the end you actually drink it. And this is what you have for breakfast in the summertime. You have brioche with a glass of coffee granita, or brioche with granita inside, and believe me, on those steamy mornings, there is nothing more refreshing.

If you go to Sicily, says Jenkins, don’t miss these spots.

“I really think that Sicilian cuisine has great potential for American restaurateurs. It’s very underrepresented. In Sicily, there are some great chefs taking traditional flavors and ingredients to new levels. One of them is Ciccio Sultano at Il Duomo in Ragusa.”