The last time I visited Sicily just about every restaurant I went to had a variation of these typically Sicilian stuffed swordfish rolls on the menu. This is one version of the dish, it can also be found with a stuffing that contains currants and pine nuts. I’m a big olive and caper fan so this is the way I usually prepare them.

Salmoriglio, is a traditional Sicilian Marinade and it is very common for it to be served on the side with grilled fish to be drizzled on afterwards. It is optional with this dish, but I really love the flavor it adds, especially when you cut the rolls open and the juices soak into the stuffing.

Involtini di Pesce Spada Recipe

Serves 4

1/2 cup fresh bread crumbs
2 tablespoons capers, chopped
12 pitted gaeta olives, chopped
1 large garlic clove, finely chopped
1 tablespoon fresh flat leaf parsley, chopped
Salt & pepper to taste
4 tablespoons olive oil
4 skinless swordfish steaks about 1/2 inch thick
Salmoriglio (see below) or lemon wedges

1. Start a fire in a charcoal grill, or pre-heat a gas grill. Soak 4 wooden skewers in cold water.

2. Combine bread crumbs, capers, olives, garlic, parsley, salt and pepper in a bowl. Add 2 tablespoons of the olive oil and mix well.

3. Place each swordfish steak between two pieces of wax paper and pound gently with the flat end of a meat pounder to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut each steak in half.

4. Place one-eighth of the bread-crumb mixture near one end of each piece of fish and roll it up as neatly as possible, tucking in the ends. Thread the fish onto a pair of wooden skewers held parallel to each other, 4 rolls per pair of skewers.

5. Brush the fish with the remaining olive oil and grill over high heat until
   firm to the touch, 8-10 minutes, turning once.

6. Remove rolls from skewers and serve with the salmoriglio on the side for drizzling or lemon wedges.

Salmoriglio Recipe

3 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 teaspoon oregano
1/2 cup olive oil
Juice of 4 lemons
Salt & pepper to taste

Combine garlic, oregano, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper in a medium bowl and mix well.

My wife made a trip to Arthur Avenue this weekend and picked up, among other things, some fresh ricotta cheese from Calandra Cheese Market and tagliatelle from Borgatti’s Pasta. While trying to figure out what sauce we should serve with the tagliatelle, she suggested that I make a Tomato Sauce with fresh ricotta on top like she has seen my father do from time to time.

Normally I would think of doing this with a short dried pasta like penne or rigatoni, rather than fresh noodles, but decided to give it a shot anyway and it worked out quite well. You could toss the ricotta with the pasta and sauce before serving, but I like the presentation of spooning it on top.

Tagliatelle with Tomato Sauce and Ricotta Recipe

Serves 4

1 35oz can of imported Italian tomatoes
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 medium yellow onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
salt & freshly ground pepper to taste
2 fresh basil leaves
1 pound taggliatelle
fresh ricotta cheese

1. Place tomatoes in a large bowl and crush them by hand.
2. Heat olive oil in a medium sauce pan over medium-high heat. Add onion and sautè, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon until softened and translucent, about 5 minutes.
3. Add the garlic and cook briefly until garlic is lightly browned, less than 1 minute.
4. Add The crushed tomatoes with their juices to the pan. Add 1/2 cup of water season with salt & pepper, and bring to a simmer. Turn heat to low and let simmer until thickened, about 20 minutes. At the very end of cooking, tear the basil leaves into pieces with your hands and stir into the sauce.
5. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and add the Tagliatelle. Cook uncovered over high heat until al dente.
6. Drain the pasta and toss with half of the sauce. Dish pasta out into individual serving plates and top with a little more sauce. Spoon 2 tablespoons of the fresh ricotta on top of each dish of pasta and serve.

Veal Milanese is one of those recipes that you should be able to find on a site called The Italian Chef, but inexplicably it has been absent here up until now. I decided to rectify this, but have been struggling with a write-up to go along with the recipe. Everything I came up with about cutlets being a staple of Italian cooking and the most well known preparation being this classic from Milan just seemed dry and boring. So I thought I would just share a cutlet story from one of my Italy trips.

Years ago I took a trip to Sicily with my cousins Sal and Francesca. We have family in a town called Francavilla di Sicilia which is between Catania and Messina. Sal and Frances have family on their mother’s side just outside Catania, and since that is where we flew into we spent the first few days of the trip there before continuing on to Francavilla.

On our first day, Sal’s aunt made pasta with a cream sauce. They gave me a bowl the size of a family style serving dish, which had to have one pound of pasta with cream sauce in it. I tried my best to eat it all but could only get three quarters of the way through. After much interrogation about whether I liked it or not I was finally able to convince them that I was just full.

However, from that point on all I heard was how I did not eat much. I would be introduced to people, “Questa e Filipo, non mangia troppo (This is Phillip, he doesn’t eat much).” When we got to Francavilla, the first words out of my aunt Gaetana’s mouth were, “What’s the matter, why don’t you eat much?” When I called back to America and talked to my Mother she said, “I hear you’re not eating much.” I was branded!

Knowing that we would be spending another day in Catania at the end of the trip, I was determined to rid myself of this stigma. The big day came, and the main course was veal cutlets. They put cutlets in front of me, I ate them all. They asked me if I wanted more, I said yes. The only problem was I was so focused on redeeming myself that I was not paying attention to what was going on at the table. I finished the ones in front of me and they asked me if I wanted more again. I said yes again.

All of a sudden to my horror I saw Sal’s aunt get up from the table, put a pan on the stove and start breading more cutlets! I looked down on the table to see the serving platter empty. I looked back up and started to object, but they wouldn’t hear it. Everybody sat there and waited while she cooked more cutlets for me. I had gone from an American who does not eat to a cafone in the span of two weeks.

Luckily, this incident didn’t leave me emotionally scarred me so bad that I can no longer enjoy delicious cutlets like these.

Veal Cutlets Milanese Recipe

Serves 4

1 pound veal cutlets, pounded thin
2 eggs
1 teaspoon of salt
1/2 cup flour
2 cups bread crumbs
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons olive oil

Lightly beat the eggs with the salt in a deep dish and spread the flour and the breadcrumbs out on separate plates. Dredge veal slices in flour shaking off any excess. Then dip in the egg and the bread crumbs making sure both sides are well coated with bread crumbs.

Heat olive oil and butter in large saute pan over medium heat. Add the breaded cutlets to the pan without crowding (if you have to you can work in batches). Cook, turning once for about 6 minutes until golden brown and crispy. Transfer to warm plates and serve.

The Italian Chef is proud to announce that we are collaborating with Chef Silvia Bianco on a new multimedia food blog, Taste Frame. The goal of Taste Frame is to be very visual as well as educational, with the posts featuring video instruction and/or step by step pictures. Our latest post features a video of Chef Silvia demonstrating her signature Hand-Rolled Lasagna.

On a personal note, I am also excited about the opportunity this will give me to branch out and blog on other types of cooking besides Italian. So please check out Taste Frame and let us know what you think.

With Christmas less than two weeks away this is a good time to encourage anybody who is interested in having a traditional Southern Italian all fish Christmas Eve Dinner to check out our Feast of the Seven Fishes menu. We first published this menu, with dishes like the Fried Calamari pictured above, on The Italian Chef in 2007, and will try and update it every year with at least one new recipe. It is not a hard set menu, just some suggestions with the goal of giving you a lot of options so you can mix it up to your own taste. This year we have a nice addition to the antipasti choices, Insalata Frutta di Mare.

Italian Christmas Eve Dinner