The Tyrrhenian Coast and Its Waters

The Tyrrhenian Sea (Mar Tirreno) is the stretch of the western Mediterranean bounded by the Ligurian coast to the north, by Corsica and Sardinia to the west, by Sicily to the south, and by the mainland shore of Tuscany, Lazio, Campania and Calabria to the east. Elizabeth David, in Italian Food, treats the cooking of this western seaboard as a cooking of the shore and its markets, in which the produce of the sea, the olive groves and the kitchen gardens meets on the same table.

Elizabeth David's account of Italian cooking proceeds by region, and the western coast appears in it as a succession of distinct tables rather than a single cuisine. Along the Ligurian shore she places the oil, the herbs and the vegetable cooking that depend on a narrow strip of land between mountain and sea. Further south, the Tuscan coast and the Roman littoral are described through their fish soups, their fried fish and their reliance on olive oil, and the Neapolitan bay through its shellfish, its pasta and its vegetables. What joins these places in her pages is the sea, and the habit of cooking what the day's catch and the nearest garden provide. The waters themselves shape what is cooked. The Tyrrhenian is a deep sea close to the shore, and its fish are those familiar from the wider Mediterranean: the red mullet (Mullus barbatus), the sea bream (Sparus aurata), the sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax), the anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus) and the cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis), together with mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis) and clams. David is consistent in preferring such fish cooked simply, grilled, fried or poached in a little oil and wine, so that the quality of the fish remains the point of the dish. Her fish soups, which vary from port to port in their choice of fish and in the place given to tomato, show the same principle applied to the less handsome catch. The climate underlies the whole of this cooking. The coast has mild winters and dry, warm summers, conditions that suit the olive tree (Olea europaea), the vine, the lemon, and the vegetables and herbs on which the coastal kitchens depend. Olive oil is therefore the common fat of the seaboard, in contrast to the butter and lard of the inland north, and it is the oil, more than any single dish, that gives the western coast its coherence at table. The coast is also a line of ports, and David reads its cooking as the product of trade and landing as much as of fishing. Ports bring salted and preserved fish, spices and new vegetables, and the great harbour cities developed dishes that unite the produce of their hinterlands with what arrived by sea. The result is a coast in which simplicity of treatment sits beside considerable variety of ingredient, and in which each town keeps its own versions of the fish soup, the fried assortment and the dish of pasta with shellfish.

The taste of the Tyrrhenian table is that of olive oil, lemon, garlic and herbs set against fish and shellfish of pronounced marine flavour. David's recipes favour restraint: the fish is cooked quickly or gently, seasoned lightly and served with little more than oil and lemon, so that the sweetness of the flesh and the salinity of the sea remain distinct.