One of the busiest markets of Messina is the “Vascone” (literally “deep basin”), which is located in an area adjacent to the Grand Cemetery, where a contrast between life and death mixes the cries of the vendors and the silence of the tombs. Inside you can find everything: from the sellers of fruits and vegetables, to those of meats and cheeses, to the sellers of fish and meat. Among the chaos at the stalls, all can be found, according to the periods, the colourful fruits typical of the area, such as white figs and “winter” figs, the mulberry, the meline (small apples) and blood oranges from Etna, peaches Mojo, Interdonato lemons, watermelon, prickly pears, or any vegetables, such as Pachino tomatoes and cherry tomatoes, “minestra selvaggia” (wild vegetables), the scarola (curly lattuce), broccoli, long pumpkins, purple cabbage, borage, the “mulincianedde” (small aubergines) to fill and bake in the oven. In the stalls of egg vendors you can also see live chickens, used as a message of freshness of their eggs.
In the most upstream area, and at the “right” time, you can find the fish coming from the Strait and the Aeolian Islands, albacore , swordfish, Mediterranean spearfish, kingfish, squid, belt fist, horse mackerel, whitebait, etc.., Although now a day most of the fish seems coming farer from our Mediterranean sea, being lucky you may find, at the specialized stalls, the mussels and clams grown in the small lakes of Ganzirri, however only during the months with the “r”. All these products are at the base of main dishes in the Messina’s cuisine, such as involtini di spatola or pesce spada (roulades of belt fish or swordfish), cozze scoppiate (open and baked mussels filled with spiced breadcrumb), calamari ripieni (filled squids). However, my memories go to the market of “San Paolino”, which occupied, until a few years ago, the most upstream via Santa Cecilia. Blocked to traffic in the morning, the market was organized with giant red umbrellas that stood out, with a good glance, on the lava stone paving, made shiny and slippery by chilled water thrown by the fishmongers on the wooden boxes to refresh the fish inside. My father took me there as a child to help him do the shopping and there I learned to recognize fresh produce and sellers’ little tricks.
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