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St Lucy's Day and cuccìa
On 13 December, many Sicilians eat no bread or pasta, and instead eat cuccìa, boiled wheat with sweet ricotta.
Cheeses for St Lucy's Day and cuccìa
Saint Lucy, martyr of Syracuse, is remembered in Sicily on 13 December with a custom tied to a famine of the seventeenth century, when, the story goes, ships of grain reached the island on her feast day and the hungry people boiled the wheat whole rather than wait to mill it. In memory, many families eat no bread or pasta on the day. The dish is cuccìa, wheat berries boiled soft, which in Palermo are mixed with sweetened ricotta, chocolate and candied fruit, and elsewhere served savoury with chickpeas. Arancine are the other food of the day.
The cheeses
Written by the EveryCheese desk with AI assistance. Background: "Saint Lucy's Day" on Wikipedia. Customs differ from place to place and family to family. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.