The Sicilians don’t have the corner on cooking with swordfish (pesce spada) – the Calabrians, who share the same sea with Sicily, have their own swordfish culture. And while grilling fish (in this case, swordfish) scares people to death – it’s really easy here because of the salmorigilo sauce. Salmoriglio sauce, which IS from Sicily, derives from the Sicilian word salmurigghiu, which means a light brine, and there is, indeed, some salt in it, though the primary ingredient is lemon juice.

Continue reading Swordfish involtini on the grill (Involtini di pesce spade alla griglia) at Our Italian Table.

Our friend Rory Harrington (@captainwine) put on another of his wonderful wine tasting events at Sotto (the one Italian restaurant in Los Angeles that Joe always wants to go back to) last Wednesday, this time focusing on the wines of Calabria! Perfect as we wrap up our time with the food and wine of this wonderful region of Italy, the “toe of the boot.”

Rory featured a lovely rosato and six wonderful reds, topped off by a Ripe del Falco Cirò Riserva from 1997.

Continue reading Calabria at Sotto at Our Italian Table.

There’s a joke running around the Los Angeles restaurant scene that if your menu doesn’t include a kale salad, a fancy octopus salad, and PBR, you might as well not even open your doors. The herd mentality of those on Yelp and other Los Angeles hipsters is driving chefs to a restaurant culture that is not found elsewhere in nature. Don’t even get me started on “small plates”!!

This recipe is not fancy, it simply celebrates octopus—straight up.

Continue reading Just octopus! – Spaghetti con polpo at Our Italian Table.

Join me for a tale about Calabria that needs to be told :-).  Our trip in 2007 was indeed a memorable affair for so many reasons – quality time spent with family; new found friends, breathtaking beauty of land and sea and one very memorable boat ride.

The spectacular Aeolian Islands lay quietly off the coast of Calabria in the Tyrrhenian Sea. The seven volcanic peaks jut through the crystal blue waters beckoning to those on shore.

Continue reading The Beautiful Aeolian Islands and the Boat Ride from Hell at Our Italian Table.

As we continue our Calabrian adventures, I’ve been cooking with the aid of the excellent cookbook, My Calabria. This is a great source for all things Calabrian and has some wonderful stories beyond the recipes.

With it being summer, eggplants are everywhere. A lot of people are afraid to cook eggplant because of the amount of oil they can soak up. This is one of many many ways to make eggplant: fry it in hot olive oil to a crispy texture and then combine it with other ingredients to soften it up.

Continue reading Pollo con melanzane (Chicken with eggplant, tomatoes and pancetta) at Our Italian Table.

This is an awfully fancy bowl on a fancy place mat for such a simple salad. My sister is the photographer in the family, so you’ll have to forgive me for the food styling!

As I wrote awhile back in this post, Southern Italy is home to cold seafood salads. This recipe was also published in the L’Italo-Americano newspaper.

These salads vary by region, and depend on what seafood is available, but in Calabria they tend to be simple–in fact, super simple–using just octopus, squid or cuttlefish.

Continue reading Insalata di calamari (Squid salad) at Our Italian Table.

Our introduction to the wines of Calabria is epitomized by our welcome at La Puzelle, a wonderful agriturismo near the small hill town of Santa Severino in central Calabria. We arrived at lunchtime on a hot day, after a drive of several hours. Leaving our luggage in the car, we wandered through the gate looking for an office where we could register and orient ourselves. Instead, we encountered proprietor Salvatore Vona, who waved us immediately into the dining room, where lunch was being served.

Continue reading Calabria: Le Puzelle Pitcher at Our Italian Table.

The Tyrrhenian Sea off the Calabrian coast is chock full of the majestic swordfish (pesce spada) that migrate through this region in late spring and early summer on their way south to the Strait of Messina. The town of Bagnara hosts an annual swordfish festival to celebrate the year’s catch as swordfish is served in traditional Calabrian preparations from simply grilled to mixed with pasta to steamed as in the preparation below which is common in this seaside town.

Continue reading Garlicky Swordfish Calabrian Style at Our Italian Table.

In Calabria, vegetables are king—especially in summertime. Every meal headlines the fresh vegetables that are in season, while meat or fish play a supporting role. And just as in Calabria, here in California eggplant overflows throughout the summer in our local farmers’ markets. Unfortunately, many people don’t know how to use eggplant, so here’s a simple dish, starring eggplant, that starts our tour of Calabria.

‘Ncasciata means compressed. In this dish, the idea is the pasta forms the bottom layer and is compressed by the layer of eggplant.

Continue reading Pasta ‘Ncasciata (Baked Pasta with Eggplant) at Our Italian Table.

We were in Ojai, California last weekend and I went to a small yet very diverse farmers’ market on Sunday morning. I came across some interesting onions that I knew I’d seen before, but I couldn’t place them. The farmer called them “torpedo onions” and described them as very spicy. I bought a bagful, determined to figure out where I had seen them before.

Upon getting home and with the help of Google search, I remembered these as Tropea onions or Cipolla rossa di Tropea — sort of.

Continue reading Zuppa di cipolla rossa di Tropea (Tropea red onion soup) – kind of at Our Italian Table.