Frittelle di Melanzane e Mentuccia Selveggia di Lampedusa

There is wild tufted mint between the megalithic stones of its befogged and silent fields. And Africa whispers up sultry winds, caressing the place, adding to the sensation of faraway. This is the island of Giovanni di Lampedusa, author of Il Gattopardo, The Leopard. It is a mystical space etched by the ancients, one after another of them who, having stayed for a while, imprinted it, abandoned it, to its own muffled secrets and to the great lumbering turtles and seals who live there still. Surely not Italy, not, perhaps, Sicilia nor even Africa, it is somewhere else, this Lampedusa. Inhabited, finally, without interruption since 1843, when the king Ferdinando II came to claim it, a family descended from this settlement was once our host. The children and their nanny showed us the best, most secret places to collect the wild mint of which we’d grown so fond, we making a salad of its leaves and other wild grasses when enough of it could be foraged. One afternoon, after a particularly good harvest, we emptied our pockets of it onto the kitchen table, thinking we’d all feast on it at dinner, and went upstairs to bathe and rest. Later, the loveliest of perfumes told us that the mint had been seized by the cook and that she’d done something magnificent with it and tomatoes. Here follows a version of her gorgeous frittelle.