Neapolitan Cuisine - Fish and Seafood Dishes

Fish and Seafood Dishes

One of the most famous main courses is a seafood dish recipe coming from the quarter 'Santa Lucia': polpi alla luciana, octopus cooked with chili pepper and tomato. Octopus is also simply steamed, and prepared as salad with lemon juice, parsley and green olives. A richer seafood salad can be prepared also mixing squid, cuttlefish and prawns.

Medium size fishes are cooked all'acqua pazza, with tomato, garlic and parsley; the larger ones are simply grilled, accompanied, in the most important meals, with king size prawns.

Mussels are prepared in different ways: rapidly steamed with black pepper (all'impepata), and dressed with a few drops of lemon juice each; also cooked al gratin. Clams and other shellfishes are also cooked sauté, rapidly passed in a large pan with olive oil, garlic, and served on crust breads.

Cheap fish can also produce very tasty recipes. The most popular one is anchovy. The best recipes are:

• Alici dorate e fritte, boneless anchovies, passed in flour, egg and deep-fried
• Alici marinate, raw anchovies marinated in lemon juice or vinegar, then dressed with olive oil, garlic and parsley
• Alici arreganate, boneless anchovies, rapidly cooked in a large pan with olive oil, lemon juice and origanum

Cicenielli, the tiny baby fishes, are either steamed and dressed with oil and lemon, or deep-fried in a light dough, which is also used to deep-fry little pieces of some sea algae.

The frittura di paranza (deep-fried fishes) is usually done with small-sized local fishes, like cod, goatfish, anchovies and others. It should be eaten very hot, right after being fried (frijenno magnanno). Baby shrimps, sold alive, are fried with no flour, unlike the paranza.