Calabria is the rugged, sparsely-populated and partly mountainous region that begins south of Naples and extends down into the “toe” of Italy’s “boot”, towards Sicily. As well, as the notorious ‘Ndrangheta criminal syndicate, Calabria is famous for the spicy spreadable salami ‘Nduja, the Calabrese soppressata dry sausage, peperoncino (red chilli peppers – Calabrian cuisine is notably hotter than in the rest of Italy) and the distinctive Tropea red onions. They grow between April and October and the most famous and revered variety cipolla da serbo are in season in May and June.
They resemble giant spring onions but with a bright red bulb and they are renowned for their sweet and more delicate taste. In fact, Calabrians claim that when a Tropea onion is ripe, it should be able to be “eaten just like an apple”. Having bought some of these prized onions for the first time earlier this week, I can concur that they certainly are sweeter than their brown and white cousins and were equally at home being finely chopped raw into a salad and also, cooked and softened over a heat to form the base of a casserole. This versatility means that Tropea onions are frequently served in Italy as part of antipasti cold cut spreads, as a panini filling, as pizza toppings, in pasta dishes and even grilled or barbequed whole (in Catania in Sicily I saw a variation of this where the whole onions had bacon or in some cases, intestines wrapped around them and they were then cooked outside over charcoal).
Red Tropea onions hanging alongside peperoncino di Calabria (photo: Caterina Policaro).
Tropea onions have been awarded PGI status (Protected Geographical Indication) and are known locally as the “red gold”. That said, I’ve noticed that Italians do seem to have a particular penchant for referring to edible items as “gold” – peperoni crusci (dried sweet peppers) is known as “the red gold of Basilicata” and the residents of Bronte in Sicily, a town renowned all over Italy for its high-quality pistachios talk about the humble nut as its “green gold”.
The origins of these Tropea onions have been disputed but it’s now widely agreed that they were most likely introduced to Calabria by the Greeks and Phoenicians from present-day Lebanon around 3,000 years ago. Tropea’s sandy soil, proximity to the coast and more moderate climate meant that the conditions were ideal for these unusual onions to flourish and eventually become one of the region’s best-known culinary exports. The reason for their sweetness is due to a lower level of pyruvic acid than normal brown onions and this makes them less pungent and harsh – also less likely to induce tears as you slice them.
Red Onions “Cipolle di Tropea” (photo: Martin Mboesch), my own purchases and a wholewheat lampascioni and wholewheat pasta I made with them.
The cipolla da serbo also reputedly has numerous health benefits and the Roman author, naturalist and philosopher Pliny the Elder (his first solo album went massively under-the-radar) detailed the 30 ailments which can be treated by these particular onions in his then-groundbreaking encyclopaedia “Naturalis Historia”. Pliny also pointed out that any dishes containing onions are curative as well as more nourishing. Good to know…
Just a few examples of the different landscapes Calabria has to offer; Tropea, Belvedere Marittimo, Condofuri and Scalea.
I have been to Calabria twice; a week before the first Covid lockdown when I stayed in the coastal villages of Belvedere Marittimo, Diamante and Scalea and then last September, when I spent several hours winding my way through its mountainous landscapes on my way to Villa San Giovanni, to then take the short ferry hop over to Messina, Sicily (and then all the way back again). The ‘vibe’ is noticeably different to that in Puglia; the scenery is more varied (craggy mountains, hilltops towns, scenic coasts and then fertile plains), the people slightly less open and welcoming and overall, it seems more wild and remote. Puglia is by no means a developed region – apart from the bigger towns and cities, a lot of its rural areas appear to be just row upon row of olive trees and vines. However, parts of Calabria feel a long way from civilisation. Having said that; I was still pleasantly surprised by the fare available in the various Calabrian service stations I stopped at; ‘Ndjuja and mozzarella panini were the order of the day (historically, the region’s hot and humid climate led to food preservation techniques being key and cured meat and salsiccia are popular staples here).
To find out more about Tropea’s unique red onions, you can watch the video below (it’s in Italian but English subtitles are provided):
Noun: “A dish of meat, vegetables, etc., cooked in an Indian-style sauce of hot-tasting spices and typically served with rice.”
Verb: “To prepare or flavour (food) with a sauce of hot-tasting spices.”
(definition from Oxford Languages)
Origins: “Curry is an anglicised form of the Tamil word ‘kari’ meaning ‘sauce’ or ‘relish for rice’ that uses the leaves of the curry tree (Murraya koenigii). The word kari is also used in other Dravidian languages, namely in Malayalam, Kannada and Kodava with the meaning of ‘vegetables (or meat) of any kind (raw or boiled), curry’”.
(A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary)
Chicken patiala at the Dakshin Bar & Grill, Mumbai. Contender for the perfect curry? I think so…
As with so many other things in modern popular culture, the word ‘curry’ is a bastardised English umbrella term. One that was created to describe all manner of distinctly different types of cuisine from the Indian subcontinent. Or to quote food historian Lizzie Collingham and the author of the definitive tome ‘Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors’; “most likely an English bastardisation of a Portuguese bastardisation of the Tamil world ‘kari’ – which was used to describe spices or seasoning.” So, there you go.
In Britain, ‘curry’ grew vastly in popularity during the Victorian era and Queen Victoria was said to be a great lover of spiced dishes. In fact, she even employed two Indian chefs to prepare her curried lunches especially. The ‘classic’ British buffet dish and sandwich-filler; Coronation Chicken stems from this royal association after it was created for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation banquet in 1953. It is thought that it was directly inspired by the Jubilee Chicken dish which was created for George V’s silver jubilee in 1935 and also contained cold cuts of chicken, curry powder and mayonnaise. Creative cookery at its most innovative.
The number of ‘curry houses’ or more upmarket ‘Indian restaurants‘ started to increase in the 1950s and 1960s before reaching a peak in the 1970s. Part of the success of these new curry houses was down to the fact that they still served alcohol well into the early hours of the morning at a time when most pubs would stop serving at 11pm. In 1983, there were over 3,500 Indian restaurants open in the UK and today Bangladeshis still run approximately 85-90 percent of these eateries.
The famous ‘Curry Mile’ of Indian restaurants. Rusholme, Manchester.
However, the food in the majority of Indian restaurants has been anglicised and tailored for British palates and you would struggle to find a lot of the dishes on the menu in India. For example, Chicken Tikka Masala is thought to have been invented in Britain and directly derived from the Northern Indian dish Butter Chicken, whilst the British Indian variation of Vindaloo is much spicier than the original which was a key component of Goan cuisine and was created especially for curry houses, with the addition of potatoes and chilli peppers. The Balti on the other hand makes no secret of its humble origins, being introduced to menus in Birmingham in the early 1970s (although it may have been inspired by Northern Pakistani cuisine).
I’m going to contradict myself now and will talk about ‘curry’ or ‘curries’ for the rest of this article. I personally find that there is nothing more satisfying to cook than a curry. From softening the onions and garlic and then adding the spices to form the base, to browning the meat or adding vegetarian substitutes such as chickpeas or lentils, to adding tomatoes or stock and gently simmering the stew, the whole process is incredibly therapeutic.
The food we eat is intrinsically tied up with memories too. Whenever we would visit my paternal grandmother who was half-Indian and raised in Meghalaya, a curry or dhal would inevitably be on the stove and the fragrant smell would hit you as soon as you walked into the house. My dad was delighted when I started cooking and bringing home curries in Food Technology classes at school and we discovered that cardamom pods were a fine addition to a Chicken Madras – although there is some dispute about whether the dish actually originated in Madras (now Chennai) or once again, in the British curry houses of the 1960s. My dad had rarely eaten cardamom pods as a youngster because it turned out that Grandma didn’t like them! Although initially wary of hot food, my mum also became partial to milder curries after meeting my dad and she would often make tasty meals for us like the sweet and sour Hawaiian Chicken on a Friday or Saturday night – learning many of the recipes from her Indian mother-in-law.
I remember experiencing a proper high-end Indian restaurant for the first time whilst studying in Cardiff too. My sister Rachel and brother-in-law Stuart had visited me for the weekend in March 2006 and after a day of sinking pints and watching the Six Nations rugby in various pubs on the side roads off St Mary’s Street, they treated me to a slap-up meal at the city’s Spice Quarter, located on the site of the former Brain’s Brewery. The uber-attentive service and having the table tended to by three or four waiters at any one time gave me an idea of what to expect when I eventually visited India some 13 years later.
Talking of university, there was also the much-loved but at times slightly questionable Kismet. Located on the rough and ready Cardiff thoroughfare City Road, Kismet became the venue of choice for various friends’ birthday celebrations each year. Unbelievably cheap even for a student’s budget, a main course would set you back in the region of £3.50, plus a pound for a naan or rice. Once my friend Emily and I ordered a bottle of red wine to share and two arrived on our table. We apologised and sent one back, only to be told that it was buy one, get one free on bottles of wine that evening. Of course. At £5 per bottle, we were not complaining. Kismet also specialised in takeaway ‘doggy bags’ as their portions were rather on the large side. I can still visualise my old housemate Rhys running into the restaurant’s kitchen after a poor waiter, convinced that he was about to throw his leftover food away and not into the prerequisite doggy bag. How the bars or clubs we went to afterwards felt about having to contend with a cloakroom full of takeaway curry bags remains uncertain. Kismet has since closed and is no longer a fixture of student life in Cardiff.
The much-missed Kismet restaurant. City Road, Cardiff.
During the London years, going ‘for a curry’ became a regular part of post-work socialising. I was once chuffed to find myself dining next to former Yardbirds guitarist and ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’ singer Jeff Beck at the famous Gaylord Restaurant on Mortimer Street. The restaurant opened its doors in 1966, was a one-time favourite of The Beatles and even in 2015 it was old-school in every detail – the food and service was excellent though. Sadly Gaylord shut its doors in 2019 after 53 years of serving “upscale Mughlai cuisine” originating from North India.
The former Gaylord Restaurant, Fitzrovia, London. A one-time favourite of The Beatles (and Jeff Beck).
Other notable London curry houses included the huge, raucous and noisy Pakistani eatery Tayyabs in Whitechapel; a place that was as much renowned for its beer as its food (you could order it by the crate if you were celebrating) and the quaint, charming Agra Restauranton Whitfield Street in Fitzrovia. Opened in 1954, the place is like stepping back in time and is still run by members of the same family today. The Indian Veg (or Indian Veg Bhelpoori House in full) on Chapel Market in Islington specialised in no-frills, yet tasty all-you-can-eat vegetarian fare for £6.50 – its walls covered with pro-vegetarianism slogans and propaganda posters. Its proximity to The Lexington venue made it an ideal pre-gig fuelling station of choice.
Clockwise (from top left); 1.) The queue for Tayyabs in Whitechapel. 2.) The Agra Restaurant on Whitfield Street, London. 3.) The one-in-a-kind Indian Veg, Islington, London. 4.) The Indian Veg’s propaganda-laden interior.
Then there were the two restaurants that also offered rooms for the night as well; the Indian YMCA on Fitzroy Square (I worked around the corner from here for a couple of years so it became a favourite spot for lunch) and The India Club on The Strand. Both are long-standing London institutions serving hearty and wallet-friendly Indian food. Situated up an unassuming staircase at 143 Strand, the latter was launched in 1951 by The Indo League with the aim of “furthering Indo-British friendship in the post-independence era” and as with the Agra Restaurant, it is like stepping into a time capsule. Given its history, I have often found myself wondering if my grandparents would have visited The India Club in the 1950s. Let’s hope that all of these well-loved London institutions can survive the current hospitality industry crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Clockwise (from top left); 1.) The bar at The India Club, 143 Strand, London. 2.) The India Club’s dining room – practically unchanged since 1951. 3.) The canteen at The Indian YMCA, Fitzroy Square, Central London.
On my trip to India at the end of 2019, it would be an understatement to say that I ate well. However, I often didn’t eat at fancy places, instead preferring local recommendations or low-key, hidden-away gems. The food I ate with my relatives in Shillong was delicious and included regional specialities such as Doh khleh (a sort-of salad made with parts of the pig’s head) and Doh sniang nei iong – pork cooked with sesame. However, the food in Meghalaya was actually milder and not as spicy as in the rest of India. In Kerala in the south, a lot of the dishes were lighter and more fragrant, perhaps as a result of using coconut oil rather than ghee, whereas in Goa fish and more Portuguese-influenced fare reigned supreme. Mumbai and Pune were culinary melting pots, as with any other metropolis, whilst in Chennai there were numerous options when it came to street food, as well as fiery appetisers like the city’s signature Chicken 65 (invented by the Head Chef at the Buhari Hotel and allegedly containing 65 chillis per kilogramme of chicken).
Just a snapshot of some of the dishes I had the privilege of trying during my visit to India.
However, the distinction of being the tastiest dish I sampled was reserved for the Dakshin Bar & Kitchen;a simple Punjabi restaurant off a busy main road in the Fort district of Mumbai that had the Indian Super League playing on big screens on the wall. I ordered Chicken Patiala one evening without thinking too much about it and it was one of the best things I ate during my time in India. It was unusual too; a thin egg omelette prepared and then cooked in the highly-spiced rich, creamy chicken curry. All washed down with an ice-cold Kingfisher, of course.
The Dakshin Bar & Grill, Fort, Mumbai.
Chicken Patiala at Dakshin Bar & Grill, Mumbai.
Over these past 18 months both in India and now in Italy, some of my favourite discoveries have been places that I’ve stumbled upon by chance or that have been a word-of-mouth recommendation from a local. The delicious Chicken Patiala at Dakshin was no exception.
To find out how to make the dish, check out the short video below courtesy of Chef Smita at Get Curried. In my next post, I’ll be sharing a recipe of my own!
I’ve had a somewhat love / hate relationship with food and cookery over the years. As a kid, I was blessed with having a mother who enjoyed cooking and baking (we rarely had fast food) and a half-Khasi, half-Irish grandmother (raised in Shillong, Meghalaya, Northeastern India) who was a dab hand in the kitchen and made all manner of delicious curries and fragrant dhals. My dad was also a barbecue enthusiast during the warmer months and we’d spend hours concocting new marinades, at times using ingredients that would usually be considered unconventional in the preparation of a savoury meal.
My secondary school made it compulsory to study a technology for GCSE-level and I opted for Food Technology (eating your creations was a benefit that Woodwork, Electronics and Textiles couldn’t offer). I did pretty well across the board in the exams we had to take aged 16 but bizarrely, my highest mark came in Food, with an A*. Fortuitously I did my coursework all about Italian cuisine and even made my own ravioli and tagliatelle using a neighbour’s pasta machine.
It takes three of us to open a can of spaghetti at Reading Festival. August 2005.
At university cooking fell way down the priority list in favour of nights out, socialising and my band. During this period, my specialities included beef goulash out of a can, served with McCain microwave chips, noodles coated with pesto from a jar (to this day I can no longer enjoy the flavour of pesto) and an array of supermarket microwave ready-meals. If I had £20 left in my pocket, a night out would always win over going to a restaurant for a meal. I was also rather partial to cheesy chips with garlic sauce and even had a preferred supplier of choice; It’s Pizza Time on Crwys Road, Cardiff, run by a Greek man called Attis. In hindsight, the runny garlicky sauce was actually something special – as was the aromatic stench coming from the bin in our shared student flat the following morning.
Attempting to make pancakes whilst wearing a blazer. Cardiff, February 2006.
Things came back round full circle though and I re-discovered the joys of cooking in my mid-20s. Culinary figures such as Anthony Bourdain, Marco Pierre White and Graham Garrett shared the non-conformist spirit of many of the musicians I admired and even their predecessors, the likes of Elizabeth David and Patience Gray were the rebels of their day. Food became a way of understanding more about other cultures – much in the same way as music.
During the first coronavirus lockdown in Italy (one of the most strictly-enforced in Europe), I found myself effectively stranded and isolated in a foreign country; living, working and exercising from the same small flat, only allowed outside for necessities. Cooking and coming up with new recipes in the evening became a form of salvation and a creative outlet to look forward to.
That brings us to November 2020 and browsing my local branch of the Dok supermarket in Bari, I picked up what I thought was a box of black grapes. It was only when I got home I realised I had picked up a box of ‘Olive dolce da tavola nolche’ instead of the grapes. I’m usually a great lover of olives but these were like no other olive I had ever tasted. They were extraordinarily bitter (I have no problem with the most pungent blue cheeses or 95 percent cocoa dark chocolate), they made the skin on the inside of my mouth go on edge and turned my fingertips purple. I taught a lesson an hour later and actually struggled to properly annunciate my words initially, thanks to the after-effects of this strange variety of olives.
After some research, it transpires that these kinds of nolche olives are a speciality of Puglia and in particular the region around Bari, Bisceglie and Molfetta. They are only in season from September until November and their distinctive ultra-bitter flavour comes from the presence of polyphenols and in particular the compound oleuropein. They are high in anti-oxidants and thought to reduce cholesterol and protect against cardiovascular disease. I was beginning to feel quite fortunate that I had picked these up instead of the grapes after all.
I also found out that heating the olives made them less bitter and caused them to break down in the pan. Below is a recipe I came up with for the remaining Olive dolce da tavola nolche, using what I could find in my fridge and kitchen cupboard.
Nolche olives with Datterino tomatoes, chickpeas, chilli and casarecce
2-3 servings
What you need
400g olive dolce da tavola nolche (only available between September and November – normal black olives will do)
400g canned chickpeas, drained
3 x cloves of garlic, crushed
2 x Peperone crusco (dried crusco pepper from Basilicata), deseeded and sliced horizontally
3-4 dried red chillies, sliced (no need to discard the seeds)
Half a small salumi, cut into 5 or 6 slices and then chopped into 5mm-sized small chunks.
12 x Datterino or cherry tomatoes, halved
2 teaspoons of dried Sicilian oregano
250g of dried pasta (in this instance I used casarecce, short twists, originating in Sicily)
Grated Parmesan or Pecorino to serve
Steps
1.) Heat a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil in a saucepan over a medium heat.
2.) Add all of the olives and season with sea salt and black pepper. Cook for 10-15 minutes, stirring frequently. The olives will begin to break down and disintegrate and the pan should develop a deep purple coating.
3.) Whilst the olives are cooking, bring a large pan of water to the boil and then season with sea salt.
4.) Add the crushed garlic to the pan of olives and cook for 1-2 minutes, until soft.
5.) Add the sliced peperone crusco, red chillies and salumi to the olive pan. Heat for 4-5 minutes until the salumi starts to crisp up and the peppers begin to soften. Stir frequently and add a drop of water or white wine if the salumi starts sticking to the bottom of the pan.
6.) Add the chickpeas, sliced tomatoes and oregano and continue cooking for a further 10 minutes, stir occasionally. Meanwhile, cook the pasta according to its instructions (10-12 minutes is recommended for casarecce).
7.) Once the pasta is cooked al dente, drain well in a colander but reserve approximately two tablespoons of the starchy pasta water in the pan.
8.) Combine the nolche olive mixture with the casarecce in the pan the pasta was cooked in. Mix well so that all of the ingredients are coated and incorporated.
9.) Serve in bowls, topped with grated Parmesan or Pecorino cheese, to taste.
Serving suggestion
As a side dish, I roasted some fine green beans and cicoria (a bitter green leaf that grows in abundance in southern Italy) with olive oil, sea salt and rosemary for 15 minutes in the oven. A simple green salad would also work well.
