Coastal Italy… the sea, the sun, the food all coming together in an atmosphere of sensual pleasure, creating memories you can't forget. In honor of Southern California's coastal summer, we're exploring this other coast with Amber Guinness, whose book Italian Coastal: Recipes and Stories From Where the Land Meets the Sea has brought so many memories flooding back.
Evan Kleiman: I think any younger person who first encounters this sort of a dolce vita life that exists around the coasts in Italy is immediately besotted. Could you introduce yourself to us a bit? You were born in London but raised in Italy. Tell us about the place you grew up.
"Italian Coastal" explores the country's west coast, rich in tomatoes, capers, and lemons. Photo courtesy of Thames & Hudson.
Amber Guinness: My parents moved to Italy long before I was born. They were both working and studying in Florence, and they met and fell in love there then got married in 1985. They bought a little farmhouse in southern Tuscany. For anyone who's sort of familiar with wine, we're very near a town called Montalcino, which is very famous for a wine called Brunello. It was a derelict farmhouse but with incredible views. I think when they were looking for their dream dolce vita Tuscan house, they were thinking of something that had running water and electricity. They found something that didn't have running water and electricity but that had these incredible views across the southern Tuscan hills.
They packed me up at six months old from Florence, and we lived in a building site for a few years, and now it's our family home, which is called Ariano. I went to school in the local village. I was 13 when my parents realized I couldn't read or write in English so they sent me to school in England. We all moved back to London. I suppose Tuscany is my home. Italian was my first written language and first reading language, and it's still a huge part of my life.
I moved back here about eight years ago with my husband, and haven't looked back. I've spent a lot of my spare time exploring the Italian coast, and in particular the West Coast, which is on the Tyrrhenian Sea, which starts in southern Tuscany and goes all the way down the west coast of Italy to Northern Sicily, past all those lovely blockbuster spots like the Amalfi Coast, Positano, Capri. I think it encapsulates so much of that gorgeous dolce vita life that you were talking about.
Amber Guinness spent her early years in Tuscany before moving back to England. She's been back in Italy for the last eight years, exploring its west coast. Photo by Saghar Setareh.
With so much coastline, what is actually considered inland from a culinary point of view? Because I know Italians can be extremely parochial about their food.
I'll give a little bit of context to this. I grew up a 90-minute drive from the coast yet I did not start eating fish until I was an adult because it was considered too far away. The fish van comes once a week but if you can't get it fresh that day, there's no point having it. I think that makes a big difference. If you're near here, in Siena for instance, which is near us, people just don't really serve fish in restaurants. And if they do, you should really avoid it, because it won't be the best.
Another thing that's really interesting about that area is that there's so much volcanic activity. Many of the islands that dot the Tyrrhenian Sea have volcanic origins. Has that geology had an influence on food production in the region?
I think hugely so. The Tyrrhenian has at least three active volcanoes. You have Vesuvius, next to Naples. You have the island of Stromboli in the Aeolians, which is this cluster of seven volcanic islands just north of Sicily. Stromboli is sort of an active volcano. If you had a child do a drawing of a volcano, that's what Stromboli looks like, but coming straight out of the sea. Then you have Etna. The thing about volcanic activity is that it means the soil is super rich with all these amazing minerals, which obviously feed into the produce. It's no coincidence that this part of the world is blessed with some of the most amazing produce in the world.
The tomatoes from Naples are super famous, or bufala mozzarella, for instance, the real bufala mozzarella, it has this kind of amazing tang to it, because the buffalo graze on the grass [at] the foothills of Vesuvius. It has that kind of sulfuric, kind of amazing, mineral-rich taste.
On the Aeolian Islands, which is a group of volcanic islands, they're very famous for capers. We see a caper in a supermarket, and you think, "Oh, the humble caper." But there, it's their lifeline. They farm them, they export them, they do so many different amazing things with them.
I met a really wonderful woman called Maritza who has a caper farm on the island of Salina, opposite Stromboli. If you're sitting in Salina, you see the island of Stromboli gently erupting every evening. On Maritza's caper farm, her family have been farming capers for over 100 years, and they do all sorts of different things. She'll pickle them. She'll do them agrodolce, sort of sweet and sour, to have on crostini. She'll toss them with fish. She'll do them with pasta. She even candies them and puts them on ice cream. They're kind of like fresh capers, that lovely floral flavor in this treacly caramel, which you have on ice cream. It's amazing and you wouldn't get that anywhere else.
Barrels of capers in various sizes are preserved in salt after the summer harvest at Sapori Eoliani, a caper farm on the island of Salina. Photo by Amber Guinness.
Speaking of capers, my mind goes to caponata, that Sicilian dish. One of the things that I find really interesting when I travel is that often in places like Sicily, caponata will have an addition that we here in the US don't think of, which is almonds, and it changes the dish completely. Can you tell me about yours, which is served alongside bufala?
Mine is an Aeolian recipe — going back to the island of Salina that I was just talking about, which is so famous for its capers — so there's more capers in [my caponata] than in other places. And there's the addition of these roasted almonds, which give it a really lovely additional texture.
A Sicilian woman I spoke to said the really important thing about caponata is that every element, every vegetable, has to be prepared separately in order for it not to become mush but to retain its identity. I think that does make a big difference. I actually roast my eggplant rather than fry it because I think it makes it a bit less rich, and means you can eat more of it, which I like. I blend it and pair it with bufala mozzarella, because, again, I think it's quite nice to have that tang. It balances out the flavors quite well.
Looking over the waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea while walking down the craggy path to Punta Scario, a rocky swimming spot on the north coast of Salina. Photo by Amber Guinness.
Every time I'm in Italy in the summer, I am blown away by the heat, which shouldn't surprise me. It seems to be getting hotter and hotter but in the cities, in particular, it's always been so hot in the summer. I started looking through your aperitivo section, because I often settle on a drink for the summer and that becomes the theme. I'm drawn to your lemon granita shandy. Tell us about it.
It's lovely. All the recipes we're referring to, I'm going back to Salina, this island in the Aeolians. There's a tiny little bay. None of the Aeolians have that very typical sandy beach thing because they're all volcanic, steep, cliffy places. But there's a tiny little cove on the north side of Salina and it has this pebble beach and you have to climb down a cliff to get there. But once you get there, it's amazing. It's wonderful. There's this tiny beach shack, and I have no idea how they get the ingredients or any of the drinks down there, but they manage somehow.
They have this thing called the Messina Sporca, which means a dirty, Messina beer. Messina is a town on the east point of Sicily where the Messina Strait is. They make this beer. They give you a plastic glass of lemon granita and an oak bottle of Messina. You're meant to basically top up the granita with a bit of beer so it doesn't melt the whole thing. It's so refreshing on a really, really hot day. It brings that lovely acidity, a bit of citrus cooling because it's just icy, icy lemon and it feels like summer in a glass.
What snack would accompany that incredibly refreshing drink?
Probably my favorite is the panelle. It's basically a chickpea fritter. Normally, they're deep fried in olive oil, but I can never be bothered with that so I bake them, then cover them in lemon zest, and they have lots of parsley and salt. You have versions of these all over Italy and the South of France. They're these very salty, light chickpeas, delicious little morsels.
Chickpea fritters with a lemon granita shandy make for a perfect summer snack. Photo by Amber Guinness.
Chickpea Fritters With Parsley And Lemon
Panelle con prezzemolo e Limone
Makes 40 fritters
Prep Time: 20 minutes plus cooling • Cooking Time: 25 minutes
These incredibly moreish chickpea flour fritters are a stalwart of Palermitano street food. They are said to be a legacy left on Sicily by the Arabs, although variations of the dish can be found throughout the Mediterranean – Genovese farinata, Livorno’s torta di ceci and the Provencal socca are all similar. In Palermo they hold a special place in the city’s culinary tradition, and Palermitani have found ingenious ways to shape and slice the panelle mixture as thinly as possible before it is fried to yield the crunchiest, most delicious results. My favorite comes from the current Duchess of Palma, a famously proficient cook and daughter-in-law of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, author of the wonderful Sicilian novel The Leopard. She presses the chickpea mixture into an empty tin of tomatoes with the ends removed, puts it in the fridge for a few hours and then pushes the hardened mixture out, cutting slices with a piece of wire to achieve perfectly thin, round slices for frying.
On the streets of Palermo, panelle are prepared in dedicated shops or market stalls known as friggitorie (frying shops) and are often eaten in a sandwich by anyone craving a particularly stodgy meal. Personally, I like them on their own with a little lemon juice to accompany a cold beer or glass of wine. They can be eaten cold, although they are best eaten soon after cooking. I’m aware that most Palermitani would consider this sacrilege, but I prefer to bake the mixture – it’s less labor intensive than frying and yields a lighter snack. That said, if you have the patience and the appetite, do as the Sicilians do and fry away.
Ingredients
- 150 g (51/2 oz) chickpea flour (gram flour)
- 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
- handful of finely chopped
- flat-leaf parsley
- 50 ml (13/4 fl oz) olive oil
- flaky sea salt, grated lemon zest and lemon juice, to serve
Instructions
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Put the chickpea flour and salt in a medium saucepan, stirring with a whisk to remove any lumps and make sure the salt is evenly distributed. Gradually start adding 450 ml (15 fl oz) water, in small batches of about 100 ml (31/2 fl oz), whisking as you go to combine without forming lumps. When the mixture becomes more liquid, you can whisk in the rest of the water.
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Put the pan over a medium heat and continue to whisk as the flour cooks and thickens. The process is rather like making polenta; you need to whisk constantly in the same direction for 5 minutes or so until the mixture is thick and dense and starting to come away from the side. Stir in the parsley.
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Line a large chopping board with baking parchment. Pour the mixture onto it, then use a knife to spread it almost to the edges of the board, flattening it out to an even thickness of around 1 cm (1/2 inch). Cool slightly. Top with a second piece of parchment and, being careful not to squash it too much, gently smooth it out with a rolling pin. Place in the fridge and leave to cool for around 20 minutes (or longer if you are not cooking the panelle until much later).
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Preheat the oven to 450°F (conventional oven) or 425°F (c convection/fan-forced oven).
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Remove the top layer of paper and transfer to a large plate. Using a large, sharp knife, cut the mixture into 3 cm (11/4 inch) squares, making them as uniform as you can manage. (You could also use a square or rectangular cookie cutter if you have one.) Set the panelle aside on the lined plate. Gather up any leftover mixture, flatten it between sheets of baking parchment as above, and shape so that you don’t waste any.
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Take a baking tray large enough to fit all the panelle and line with baking parchment. Using either a pastry brush or your fingers, brush a little olive oil over both sides of each square and place on the lined tray. Bake for 20 minutes or until the tops are crisp and the sides begin to curl.
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Transfer the panelle to a serving plate, scatter with some flaky sea salt and lemon zest, and finish with a generous squeeze of lemon juice.