Also, I'm betting you're right about the spelling--it is probably something along the lines of -diti or -dati. The San Fratellan dialect is so far removed from every other dialect on the island that my grandparents could only understand each other if they both spoke Italian. Good thing they both learned English!
Yeah, they "coulda" had a chizstek at Geno's. Well, I'll keep it in mind when I'm delving into Sicilian recipes.
I'll remember it by "whooshdati," or very quick cucidati, lol, or "wishdati" as in "wish" it had figs and dates in it. I'm thinking it's a word with "ui" or "oui" in the first part.
One of my favorites is a recipe for "fava bean" cookies for good luck on St. Joseph's Day. You make up the dough using orange extract in it. The dough is a dark brown. You shape the cookies into "lima beans" and bake them. When you take them out of the oven, they have turned into white cookies, like the white outsides of fava beans.
They are good luck because the beans saved Sicily during a famine - and Joseph is their patron saint.