Food Tourism and Nonna's Swordfish Recipe

          I love to travel (let’s be honest – who doesn’t?) - I love to visit new cities and countries, to see new things. But when I go to a new place, I don’t get excited to go to the museums. I don’t wake up in anticipation of visiting the monuments or seeing the shows or the important buildings (this being exemplified when I was in Paris and spent an hour at the Louvre - I know, I know, I’m sorry). I am the one that walks aimlessly through the city, with her eyes on everything but what’s in front of her, taking in the people, the smells, and the sounds. I walk miles, observing those around me, seeking out the markets or any place where I can find the actual inhabitants of the city and what they eat. I go on a not-always-fruitful (no pun intended) search for what everyday life in the city is, of which food plays a starring role. I eat. And I try as much as I can –because I believe that a culture manifests itself in its food and its traditions surrounding the food. For me, eating, particularly sharing the eating socially, is much more than nurturing your body. It can be a glimpse into another way of life in its purest form. In eating the typical dishes of another culture with those who are native of the culture, one sees the people doing one of most basic and human of few things. As I mentioned in my kitchen blog, the good and the bad is revealed through the act of eating and cooking. The same goes for at the table – people sharing meals together experience smiles, tears, heavy, life-changing discussions, jokes, and small talk. And they eat. In a traditional dish of a region, you are not only eating the cuisine insomuch as it is prepared, but you are eating the fruits of the earth of the place you are visiting - it’s indigenous plants and resources built the tradition cuisines that can still be found today. You sense and feel the region in every way at a traditional meal – you  smell the aromas of the food, feel the texture of the fruits of the earth and the labor, observe the culture, its people and its food, taste the flavors, and speak and listen to the sounds of cooking and your new friends.

       Eating the typical cuisine of a new city or place is a beautiful thing, but it has definitely not always come easily or without problems for me. Even if I love to try new things now, my passion for doing so began without a strong foundation or background in being exposed to new foods. I have been one of the fortunate people to have grown up and lived in the same house in the same city until I left for college. This consistency was an enormous gift from my parents, considering most of my friends at least moved houses growing up. However, my experience also meant that I also pretty much ate the same food for the first 18 years of my life. This food consisted of southern cuisine (so super grateful for the fact that I grew up with good Southern food), the occasional dish from my Italian-American heritage, and the wildly popular packaged and frozen food of the ‘80’s and ‘90s. I didn’t know what sushi was until a friend introduced me to it in high school; I had never eaten hummus until I went to college; and despite my Italian roots, I didn’t know what gnocchi were until my grandma made them out of leftover mashed potatoes when I was 14. Basically, I didn’t have a large scope of knowledge of cultural food or different kinds of cuisines.

         The first time I really traveled and ate was when I was 16. My family went on the proverbial American road trip – something that I am constantly asked about by my foreign friends and students - to explore the west. We bought a new van (more like a house on wheels, complete with two TVs, a Nintendo, and a backseat that folded into a bed), packed our bags, and then drove around the US for five weeks, from Georgia to California to Colorado and back through Tennessee. During this time I was able to taste America in the beef brisket of Texas, sopapillas at the Hillside Taco Stand in Winslow Arizona, and real Chinese food in San Francisco's China Town. While on the trip, I kept a diary with the intention of detailing the things and places we’d seen, but when I return to my writings I realize they are full of long descriptions of the food I ate. The other things I saw, like the Grand Canyon, take a back seat with one quick mention, but the food fills pages. This is the point in my life that I pinpoint as when I became a “Food Tourist.”

         I wasn't a great food tourist at first. My first experience of Food Tourism in Italy was when I was in Rome, the second being that when I was in Bolzano doing research for my senior thesis. I ate decently on these trips, but was alone trying to discover the food. By being alone, I was was unable to discover the food with the guidance of a local and missing the insider’s scoop as well as the social aspect of the typical cuisine, and my experiences were nothing to write home about (with the exception of the one time I visited my Italian family in Turin and write 7 pages about our meal – it still remains the favorite meal I’ve ever had). 

          In 2009, however, we visited my boyfriend’s family in Catania, Sicily. During this trip, I was finally able to truly discover an Italian city through food. I was so excited to go, and had asked my boyfriends hundreds of questions in preparation: What is that thing like gelato, but more like Italian ice? (Granita) It’s not like shaved ice, is it? Because I don’t like shaved ice. (Just try it.) Now let me get this straight. The lunches are 4-5 courses? What all do you eat during that time? Don’t you run out of different kinds of dishes? How do you eat it all? Etcetera, etcetera. One day I found that one of his grandmother’s specialties was octopus. During this time, I enjoyed a good fried calamari, but stayed away from the tentacles, which massively grossed me out. I was against the idea of eating tentacles, but my fear of being rude by not eating something I was served in an Italian house, specifically that of my boyfriend’s grandmother the first time I met her, won. I began practicing, first by ordering fried calamari and considering eating the tentacles, then by eating one or two, then by eating equal parts, then by eating grilled calamari, which became preferring the tentacles. I'm proud of my hard work in conditioning my taste buds to be open to new flavors. I can now say that not only did I eat the octopus, caught that day, boiled in seawater, and served with parsley and lemon, but it was my favorite dish and remains for me the dish in which I taste the essence of Catania. It isn’t just the fact that the octopus was delicious; the dish is the manifestation of the experience that summer - the sea that I swam in, the people I ate it with, and the memories we created together.

         Every once in a while, I long to revisit my experience in Sicily and turn to the food that I ate there. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been easy to find octopus in Ohio and even we I were to find our eight-legged friend, I’m not sure it would be completely…fresh. Therefore, we often skip the octopus and make another Nonna specialty – swordfish (pesce spada). This is actually the my boyfriend's favorite dish and was part of our first lunch in Sicily. The fish is simply cooked in a frying pan and finished with olive oil, parsley, and lemon. We make it whenever we find beautiful swordfish at the market or Whole Foods (shiny, not dried out, white/light pink in color), and I have even tweaked the recipe to depend less on oil for cooking while maintaining the moisture of the fish. In this blog, I’d like to present to you my version of Pesce Spada alla Nonna.

Pesce Spada alla Nonna (for 2-3 people depending on how hungry you are)

1 pound swordfish (in comparison to the thin cuts of the fish in Italy, the US cuts the steaks very thick, so this weight might just be one filet – cook whatever pieces you do get whole to maintain the integrity of the fish while its cooking and then cut into desired portions)

water

juice of one lemon

parsley (fresh or dried – in Sicily she used fresh, but I don’t always have it on hand)

salt, pepper,

olive oil or cooking spray

            Salt and pepper the fish on both sides. Spray a frying pan with cooking spray or put 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil in the pan and heat to medium-high. When the pan is hot, place the fish in and let cook until it begins to brown (the length of cooking depends on the thickness of the fish – if you have one piece, it might be 2-3 minutes, thinner pieces will cook faster). Once the fish is browned on one side, flip it and allow to brown on the other side.  Then put 2-3 tablespoons of water into the pan and  cover – let the fish steam for 2 minutes and then remove the cover to allow the water to evaporate (1 minute) and maintain the crust on the outside. Flip fish and repeat. Check doneness – a finished fish will be white the whole way through, and flake away easily, but still look moist. If the fish is not done, repeat with the water. As soon as the fish is cooked (be careful not to overcook!), place on a plate and dress with lemon juice and parsley. You  may also finish with oil if you’d like – I personally don’t because the fattier juices of the fish mix with the lemon juice for what I consider a perfect sauce. 

This recipe is a trial and error based on the thickness of the filet - if you have any questions or confused email or comment and I'll steer you in the right direction! 

Read the Italian version here!