A well-travelled dish

My mother bought this dish in Benghazi, Libya, when we lived there when I was a child in the 1950s. She said it had probably been made in Sicily and imported for sale in Libya. It went with us when we moved to Turkey and then back to Wales. I remember she would use it to serve rice dishes when we had a big family party of 20 or more people - it's about 35cm across. Now it has moved with me to the Languedoc.

The other day I was looking through Patience Gray's Honey froma Weed, one of the best books written about Mediterranean food, and there it was - a drawing of a dish just like this, decorated with a cockerel! Patience Gray says that they were made in Grottiglie in southern Italy and were used to serve the whole family's pasta, mixed with tomato sauce. So it seems appropriate that we often use it to keep tomatoes in.

I've blipped it before - here - but it was full of artichokes then.


I've back-blipped yesterday - Fishing port