Rosa Mitchell is the face and name behind one of Melbourne’s most beloved, authentic Italian restaurants, Rosa’s Canteen. She showcases and celebrates the food from her regional homeland of Sicily, and champions using local and seasonal produce. Rosa also runs food tours in Sicily, as well as Sardinia. In this Foodie Profile she tells us about her cooking philosophy, the ways we can embrace elements of Sicilian cooking at home, tips on helping children develop a meaningful connection to food, restaurant recommendations in Sicily and she also shares her mother’s recipe for sarde al beccafico (Sicilian stuffed sardines).
1. Before moving to Australia at the age of seven, you spent your early childhood in Sicily. What are some of your food memories from that time?
The memories I have most about Sicily, even though I was very young, was to visit the wonderful market in Catania where I would always have an arancino. I can still remember the delicious flavour and the sauce oozing out (I have never had one as good since).The other memories are of visiting my grandparents in the countryside and how they lived day to day with what was available as they grew or hunted, always generous and delicious.
My father worked in an orange orchard…but once a week my mum and I and dad (would) go on my father’s bike to the orchard, and my mum and my aunty would bake bread, which would last us all week. While they were making bread, my cousins would take me down to the beach, and we’d pick cellini, they’re little tiny vongole (clams), and when I go to restaurants (in Sicily), I always ask if they’ve got them on the menu. They’re delicious, and we just purge them, get the sand out, and then we just fry them in olive oil and nothing else, and you dip your bread in that water and seafoody oil and that’s an amazing memory that I have.
2. Rosa’s Canteen is one of Melbourne’s most beloved Italian restaurants. How would you describe your cooking philosophy, and which dishes best capture the spirit of the restaurant for first-time diners?
My cooking philosophy at Rosa’s is to keep it simple, seasonal and traditional. I truly believe that you must use food in season to get the best possible flavour, that’s why we change the menu 4 times a year. First time diners are usually impressed with the freshness of the food and that it is traditional Italian/Sicilian food.
The cannoli is the only thing that’s a staple, but we often bring dishes back. In the summer we did Mum’s eggplant Parmigiana, which we’ve done in years gone by, but this time we decided to do it straight how it should be, in a baking dish, cut it into squares, and then heat it, and that’s been a really big seller, so that will definitely come back next summer, because people are already asking for it. Then we do have a few dishes that come back, like my mum’s meatballs…we usually do them about three ways, so we do the traditional in the tomato sauce, we do agro dolce (sweet and sour), and sometimes we do lemon, where you bake them in the oven with a lemon and stock and lots of bay leaves, and then reduce it a bit, and they’re really nice as well. The sweet and sour (meatballs), is usually sugar and red wine, vinegar, and onion, and then you put pine nuts and currants in it, but I substitute honey with a lot of my sugar, even in my cannoli, I don’t use sugar, I use honey. I think it’s a much gentler, softer taste.
3. Seasonality sits at the heart of your cooking. Could you share some of the ways you source ingredients throughout the year?
Seasonal food is very important and we only use products that are in season and most of the time sourced from small growers. We used to grow some vegetables for the restaurant, but it has become too difficult for us, so farmers markets, small producers and neighbours in the country support us. I also forage for wild greens, fennel seeds and anything else that comes my way.
Well I love rapa (brassica rapa), it’s a mustard plant. You just pick the tips off that, and it’s quite bitter. That’s my favourite. I love that, but occasionally here in Victoria, you can go out and get wild rocket but my favourite are cardoons (wild artichoke thistles) – you pick them when they’re very, very young, before the artichoke comes up, and I use the stems.
4. For readers wanting to cook more authentic Italian food at home, where do you recommend sourcing quality ingredients?
For home cooks, they need to source quality ingredients purchased from farmers markets and to establish a relationship with local green grocers, butchers, fishmongers, where the person selling the produce is passionate about what they do. Then you get a lovely rapport with them, and they know what you want, and they’ll look after you if you keep going to the same place.
Stay away from the supermarkets, because you don’t get variety for a start, but the thing is that if you go to your local green grocer, you want something in particular, well, they’ll say, “okay, I’ll try and get it for you”.
5. What do you see as the defining principles of Sicilian cooking, and which of these can home cooks embrace regardless of where they live?
I think Sicilian cooking is fresh, traditional, local and that they themselves love and are passionate about what they cook and eat. Home cooks should embrace the passion and love of what home cooking can deliver.
Dishes vary from one side of Sicily to the other. So, you’ve got the west coast of Sicily, there’s couscous and saffron and agro dolce (sweet and sour), and that’s the influence from the Africans and the Arabic cuisine, and even the Spanish came down. If you go to places like Trapani, they also give you separate dishes – a bowl of couscous, a bowl of broth, and then you put it all together yourself, and I don’t think a lot of people realise that there’s that influence from Africa, and from the Arabic countries, and then in the east coast you could almost be in Greece. You’re eating your sardines, your oregano, the lemon, and the samoriglio…so there’s that influence there. It’s quite different from one coast to the other. Then there’s certain dishes, a bit like Sardinia, where they only cook that dish in that region and nowhere else. For example: busiate Trapanese (basil pesto with fresh tomatoes and almonds), sfincione and panelle from Palermo, pasta alla norma and pasta con le sarde (both from Catania), and also in Catania: pistachio ice cream and Minne di Sant’Agata (or cassatelle di Sant’Agata) – cakes that look like breasts. Santa Agata is the patron saint of Catania. She had her breasts cut off (she was 15) because she didn’t want to marry a Roman prefect!
6. Through your restaurant, cookbooks, television appearances and culinary tours, you’ve introduced countless people to Sicilian food. What ingredient, dish or food tradition most often challenges people’s assumptions about Sicilian cooking (especially on your tours)?
I don’t think people realise the difference in the food between all the regions in Italy, in Sicily especially the influence that has come from the Arabs, the Greeks, the Spanish and the Romans. We have couscous, agro dolce (sweet and sour) saffron and many more (ingredients and dishes). We do a lot of agro dolce in the restaurant and the patrons love it not only because it’s delicious but also unusual.
We started doing the tours before Covid, I think two years before Covid, and then of course Covid came along and we stopped, and then I think it took us another year or two after Covid before people were going to start traveling again.
One of the most interesting things we do (on the Sicily tour), is we go to this little town on the slopes of Mount Etna, and we visit a family – a husband and wife, and their son Alfio, and their son milks 130 sheep twice a day, and they make ricotta cheese three times a week. I don’t think people understand how cheese and then ricotta is made. We eat cheese when it’s just made while it’s still hot, and then when we make the ricotta and eat it hot with the whey, people are knocked out by it. They’ve never had anything like that, and that’s a surprise.
The other thing I think is the difference in seafood, that there’s fish that isn’t available in Australia, and people get to try different things. We go to a restaurant in Catania, where we have an amazing seafood antipasto, and they have these tiny, tiny little calamari called mosce (flies), and they’re as small as your fingernail, they just deep fry them. It’s like eating fried capers, like they’re that small and that crunchy, they’re amazing.
7. You actively cook with your grandchildren and pass on family food traditions. What is one simple food ritual or kitchen habit that parents and grandparents can introduce at home to help children develop a meaningful connection to food?
Cooking with grandchildren is so important from an early age as it gives them a sense of ‘hey I cooked that’. Keep the dish simple so that they can do as much as possible. I love making meatballs, cotolette (Italian schnitzel) and pasta with my grandchildren – simple but something that they will eat. It is so important for children to know where their food comes from and to appreciate it.
We grow capers, and I pickle capers, and my granddaughter just loves them, and she recently had to write a story at school, and she wrote about them…Nonnina’s capers and how beautiful they are. It’s a gorgeous little poem. What other eight year old kid would eat capers?
8. Having led food tours throughout Sicily and Sardinia, what are some of the most memorable food discoveries you’ve encountered?
On our travels to Sicily and now Sardinia we have discovered so many amazing dishes and passionate people who just love what they do, from ricotta and cheese making, the amazing pane carasau from Sardinia, as well as their pork. In Sicily the seafood, fish not seen outside of Sicily cooked simply, then you have fine dining restaurants that cook modern food but still with the traditional flavours.
Here are the Sicilian restaurants we recommend (there are so many but these are a few):
ANTICA MARINA, Catania
ANGIO MACELLERIA DI MARE, Catania
OSTERIA DEI SAPORI PERDUTI, Modica
CROCCIFISSO, Noto
OSTERIA SAN BARTOLO, Lipari
DON CAMILLO, Siracusa
QUATTRO MANI, Palermo
9. Finally, is there a recipe from the restaurant you would be open to sharing with readers?
After much consideration, it has to be my mum’s stuffed sardines, sarde al beccafico. Find Rosa’s recipe, here.
Follow Rosa Mitchell
IG: https://www.instagram.com/rosascanteen/
Website: https://www.rosascanteen.com.au/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RosasCanteen/
Sicily tours: https://www.rosascanteen.com.au/sicily-with-rosa-tour
