Calabria

For Easter weekend my roommate, Domenico, invited me down to his house in Calabria in Southern Italy, the toe to be exact. He is from a town of about 100,000 called Lamezia Terme (photo with the Aeolian Islands in the distance) that covers a plain that spreads from the foothills of the mountains to the Tyrehennian Sea. The town itself, like every Italian village/town/city has a historic center located at one of the higher, more defensible, points in the area. After that is unlike most other towns I have seen. There is distinct boundary between the old and the new, the city and the country. This is thanks to the fact that Lamezia has been settled, on and off, for over 10,000 years, as I learned at the small, but very well put together, archeological museum. There is such a plethora of Iron Age, Greek, and Medieval sites that some have been uncovered, partially excavated and then returned to nature, a sad showcase of how local government is entirely controlled by politicians in Rome who won't allocated enough funding to keep all the projects running.

We arrived via intercity train on Friday night and were picked up at the station by his brother, Roberto, and cousin Dina and went straight home where dinner was being put on the table as we walked in the door. Domenico's parents, Marisa and 'Pino' (from Giuseppe which became Giuseppino when he was a kid, but now is too old to be called Giuseppino so goes by Pino) greeted us at the door with big smiles and open arms welcoming me into their home. Also joining us for dinner was Domenico's aunt who lives next door and had a stroke last year so spends a lot of time at her sister's.

As it was Easter we could not eat any meat for dinner and so had a variety of fish and other things. We started with risotto con funghi (mushroom risotto) that came off the stove virtually the moment we entered the kitchen. After that can two different types of fish, fritteli di alici (fried anchoives, much larger and not as salty those found in cans in the States) and pesce azzure panato (breaded blue fish, not what we would think of as blue fish, but small fingerling type fish that happen to be blue, not sure what we would call them). The later were prepared by taking the head and spine off, leaving the just the fillets, but still attached, then flattened, dipped in egg and then very light bread crumbs and cooked with a little bit of white wine. As a side we had a Calabrian version of Russian potatoes that used much less mayo and added pickled carrots and onions. To drink we started with a nice bottle of Ferrari prosecco and then had vino rosato Scavigna (a light rose). After dinner we had a homemade after dinner drink (disgestivo) called Nespolino, made from fruit from the nespolo (medlar tree, which I have never heard in English) growing in the garden behind the house.

The next day we got up reasonably early, as it was supposed to be in the only day with decent weather, and Domenico wanted to show me as much as he could while the weather held.