October 2000 – I quickly flew over from New York to Sicily for our olive harvest to find my father, Gianfranco, busy gearing up for the visit of a Japanese tv crew.  I had a job which I enjoyed at a philanthropic foundation in the City called Lampadia at the time and ripping myself away from work hadn’t been easy. Little did I know I would in fact move to Sicily exactly three years later, leaving behind career and friends, but that’s altogether a different story. Back to the Japanese… After the shoot, we received a video tape from the production company with what appeared to be a full-length documentary on Sicily broadcast on national tv in Japan in late December that year. The piece about us is lovely, and it took me all of 10 years to catch what I believe must be flirting towards the end directed at the very nipponic actress hosting the show, from my swift father, ever the Sicilian galantuomo. Or maybe what I misinterpreted was but the natural response of my father’s to the young woman’s swooning upon tasting the freshpressed olive oil as it was coming out of the mill… Well, flirting transcontinentally would come easy to anyone in such a setting with or without a language barrier, or a genetic predisposition: warm sun, amazing ancient ruins everywhere, loud street markets full of fresh smells and enticing sights, juicy food, gorgeous olives being crushed into lush olive oil – all senses out!

Wait, I meant to post something about sushi and olive oil.  Sashimi I should rather say… So, what my father served our Japanese tv host was a plate of uncooked red shrimp from Mazara del Vallo (the best, the sweetest, the richest, most delicious gambero rosso di Mazara del Vallo which are well-known in Italy) fished the same night by a close source, cleaned and butterflied by my father Gianfranco, laid out like sunrays on a large dish, and drizzled just before eating with copious amounts of freshly pressed, less than a day-old Olio Verde. I guess our Becchina palato perfectly encountered our guest’s Japanese palate. Allow me to linger on the conjured up moment and virtually savor the memory.

Most of you are probably aware of the fact that Sicilian cuisine these days, both on the island and abroad, finally offers all degrees of rawness when it comes to seafood. Something that wasn’t true until a few years ago. Only a handful of enlightened chefs dared to put raw fish on the menu, and locals to this day still snob what they view as a novelty or unsafe practice. Travellers used to international fare could only wonder why such top quality fish wasn’t instantly turned into sushi or other delicacies… When asking for raw or marinated seafood you were offered smoked imported tuna, swordfish, or, helllooo, salmon.

When lucky, you found freshly house-marinated anchovies but they were drenched in vinegar and cheap, unnaturally extracted vegetable oil – that’s my way of saying sunflower oil to name just one – in other words acciughe marinate. At worst you’d be staring at a sort of tough, unwound rollmops, basically, instead of the lightly lemon-infused sweetness they can be when at their best. Why erase any possible traces of the great taste that would have come from a particularly good sea pasture such as with fish from the coast off Selinunte (while you’d probably have welcomed this erasure if in anchovies or sardines from the “lesser” waters of Sciacca or even Mazara del Vallo, which, in turn, respectively yield the best sardine and the best shrimp in the world, go figure)?

If feeling like proper sea-tasting seafood, in those days I could either rely on our own cooking skills and great fishmongers or, even better and more exclusive, direct off-the-boat fishermen connections (I myself only seem able to catch very boring “vopi” in Sicilian, or boghe in Italian… “Boops boops” in the funny scientific jargon that identifies that very common blue fish). Or I could stop at seaside foodstands and order a quickly boiled octopus or a serving of sauteed mussles. That way, one was actually able to get perfectly rare or barely-cooked shellfish and molluscs, fragrant like the deep sea and unseasoned, for no other reason than for speedy delivery, and I’d often resort to that when eating out since restaurants still held up the belief that seppie, calamari or polipi, not to speak of orate, cernie or red mullets, needed parching.

The only real raw seafood you could find back then were just fished sea urchins and variations on the clam theme, either from collecting at rocky beach spots, or from buying off trusted vendors. They were too hard to find at common restaurants. In fact, it must be noted that most Mediterranean restaurants, even decently rated ones, from Tunisia to Greece, and further up, shared one trait until recently, which was to tendentially overcook fish, whereas the same wasn’t true in the south of France, the Atlantic coast of Portugal or northwestern Spain, where the tapas concept and some measure of know-how and refinement thankfully reigned. Come to think of it, the culture of (or lack thereof) misusing, underexploiting and destroying their best resources, common to some southern countries, has always found its ultimate expression just in Sicily…

In terms of raw or rare seafood, today there is as much raw tuna or swordfish carpaccio being served in restaurants across Sicily, as there are marinated, grilled, seared prawn and shrimp, flash-broiled octopus or scampi, and shellfish in bianco or in a tomatoey broth. Blessedly, nobody here has yet adopted the let’s-not-name-that-country custom of wasting these dishes with heavy, buttery, eggy sauces or dips – excluding the old timer classic, pink arrangement, commonly known as shrimp cocktail, so that they are naturally served, like all things in Sicily, with plain extra virgin olive oil, at most infused with mandarin peel like chef Nino Graziano’s olive oil foam at Il Mulinazzo, once a delicious destination outside of Palermo lost to the Russians (click here to read the Italian news; click here for news in English; for more info on Graziano’s international restaurant ventures, see partner links). To touch it up, a final squeeze of lemon is still considered mandatory although it no longer fulfils the necessity of disguising spoilage, having become a mere habit, just like oversalting.

In our family, in fact, we do not appreciate the latter, nor do we like the acidic and watery impact of actual lemon juice on fish. Exceptions apply only when dealing with giant  oven-cooked dentice whose thick, white flesh simply calls for anything liquid, a dressing, a sauce, or the somewhat denser meat of pesce san pietro or of monkfish, who are all best enjoyed with an emulsion we call olio-e-limone (beaten or blended lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil, and sea salt). Thus, on the remaining seafood universe, we prefer a simple, zesty drizzle of our Olio Verde al Limone, of which some of us even carry a sample-sized bottle in their purse (that would be me, yes, anywhere I go, even drenching airplane food in it, patting it on my chapped lips or under my eyes since I am always rushing and too undisciplined to bring along any proper moisturizer). The only time I won’t pull out my own olive oil is when another producer is seated at the same table whose oil is already circulating. But I might get over that one too, someday.

The combination of excellent and fresh, natural- or citrus-flavored olive oil, and raw or rare seafood has always been a winning one, and it certainly beats olive oil on caprese tricolore (mozzarella, tomato and basil, if you really needed to know). Over the years Olio Verde has become the favorite of a few chefs in Asia (Hong Kong, Tokyo) and the coupling seems to have turned into more than a geographically localized trend. For instance I just stumbled across a post from Portland (Oregon, USA) reporting that a restaurant called Fin, granted a Japanese one, put Barracuda carpaccio with Olio Verde on its menu. Olive oil of good quality, amongst other subtle enhancers is all that raw fish, or sushi, pardon, sashimi, needs. To read the original post, click on this link:

www.portlandfoodanddrink.com/2010/10/19/review-fin/

A similar staple in our family is tonno marinato which is closer to ceviche minus the onion and cilantro than carpaccio, come to think of it. Herewith, the very simple recipe: get a hold of red Mediterranean tuna (no less and be warned that this simple cuisine only works if you are using prime ingredients) thinly sliced yet not paperthin, and place in a lemon juice bath for a few minutes, until it begins to veer pale, not allowing it to get altered and cooked through by the acid. Quickly remove from juice, plate, and, any better word for it?, pour Olio Verde to coat. Parsley, pepper, even flaky sea salt would already be superfluous. Maybe a dusting of an original unprocessed, call it almost dirty, fleur de sel… If skipping the lemon-bath, drizzle Olio Verde al Limone. I should probably suggest not to do both, unless you are into double-lemon kicks like me. The same can be done with any bluefish or fattier white fish…just try. And make sure to let us know.   – GaB