Sea specialities and delicatessens

A typical seafood dish of Gaeta is the delicious Tiella, a rustic pie that wraps the intense taste of seafood, and the sharp taste of the famous black olives in two layers of flour pastry forming a sort of folded pizza. The taste of the Tiella is intense and inimitable, a real concentration of taste but is also a good example of the healthy Mediterranean diet which soon will fill you up without being difficult to digest, even for those who are forced to follow low calorie diets.

According to traditional cuisine, it must be cooked in the oven in special and typical round pans. Besides several types of seafood, like mussels, sardines and octopuses, small squids, cuttle fish and sea snails, the range of stuffing includes also eggs, minced courgettes, fresh cheese and peperoni, spinach, raisins, pine-kernels, Mediterranean pine-kernels and capers.

                Fish Soup

The Tiella is then seasoned with oil, salt, together with small chunks of Gaeta olives. As if this was not enough yet of the various tastes of this typical dish, can be enriched by the flavour of other local delicacies such as anchovies, tomatoes, garlic, parsley, pepper and bitter green and red chilli.

The Tiella taste nicer eaten cut in half or quarters, with one's hands and letting the oil flowing onto your hands; this is the way many locals enjoy this delicacy to get pleasure from its smooth and dense flavor it is and, according to ancient cooking traditions described by the noble Caetani family. So, tuck up your sleeves up and good appetite! But the list of local specialties and delicatessens can go on forever. When writing about Italian gastronomy, even if only the local one, I feel almost frustrated by the fact that is basically impossible to describe and let somebody have an exact idea of the amazing variety and diversity of the recipes!

This is due the Italians creativity in the kitchen. So let’s try. Local Octopus is highly recommended to the keenest on seafood. Either cold as starter in a tasty seafood salad after being boiled or stewed with tomato sauce is absolutely divine. Fried calamari should always be fresh and not cooked from frozen. The difference is essential in as the fresh ones will always be crunchy outside and with a consistent with a firm texture rather than too soft and floppy. One of my favourite dishes is the Risotto or Linguine al nero di seppia (linguine or rice with cuttlefish’s black ink). Aside from being absolutely delectable this dish will leave everyone amazed for its appearance. If you have never tried this dish, it may look a little scary at the beginning, but if you enjoy seafood and once you try it you will taste the sea in all its flavour. Just remember never eat this yummy dish with spaghetti when you are wearing a white shirt….

One should also not forget the local impepata di cozze (peppered mussels soup), one of the legacy of the local cuisine from the nearby traditional Neapolitan cuisine. There are hundreds versions of mussel soups across Italy, but perhaps the impepata di cozze is one of the most popular and certainly one of my favorite, which is essentially black peppered mussels with their own water (the soup), olive oil and abundant garlic. Scialatielli is local type pasta similar to larger, thicker and shorter linguine. This a handmade rustic pasta hails, quite chewy. The traditional recipe calls for a semolina flour dough with hints of parsley and grated Grana Padano cheese; milk and eggs are often added to lend a golden color and richer taste.

This hearty pasta is divine paired with a seafood sauce made by small, sweet, plump cherry tomatoes usually tossed whole or cut in half into a pan along with clams, resulting in a simple yet intensely flavorsome sauce for scialatielli. It is a battle of flavours which never ends. I don’t hide to you that at the end of each article I am basically starving almost to death, missing all the special, genuine ingredients and fresh, healthy products which can be easily found in the local markets and supermarkets.