Crudità – Acqua Pazza (Bologna) Foto: Simone Tortini
(This article was originally published by What the Food!, on 10/14/2013. Click here to go to the website)
If in a cosmopolitan city like Sao Paulo or New York finding a good place to eat sushi is almost as easy as finding a grocery shop, in the most part of the Italian cities – each one with their millenary gastronomic cultures – discovering a good Japanese restaurant is a hard task…
I’m not saying that they don’t exist, but the number of places like that is inversely proportional to the quantity of people that turn their noses up at soy sauce and wasabi.
However, a raw fish lover like me had no alternative except to find a solution… and it’s called “cruditè” – the fancy French name – or simply “crudi” (“raw” in Italian.)
It’s always good to remember that Italy is a peninsula, therefore surrounded by the ocean from one side to the other. For such reason, it’s easy to taste good fish and seafood (always fresh!) pretty much anywhere – a classic example is the “spaghetti alle vongole” (spaghetti with clams), a dish that’s always on the menu.
On the other hand, raw fish and seafood are not that common (in other words, are a delicacy) but, thank God, if one knows where to search, they can be found from north to south.
The peculiarity here in Italy is the fact that if the ingredient comes from the sea and is fresh, people eat it. That is, if in Brazil we’re used to eating only raw fish, a dis of crudi here might contain not only those, but also an amazing variety of crustaceous (and you can’t imagine how many weird things they have here! Google cannochie, for instance…), mollusks (either those with the little shells or fiercer ones like the octopus) and etcetera. They are all served almost alive and with as little seasoning as possible – olive oil, salt and pepper are enough.
In order to minimize any risks, before coming to the table, the little animals are submitted to a process called “abbatimento”, which basically means being exposed to very low temperatures for a brief period of time so that eventual parasites are killed.
With that said, here is a tip to raw fish lovers: when you come to Italy, first (and of course) eat all the pasta, pizza and salame; then, if the abstinence comes up, go for the crudi – it’s worth it and you won’t even miss the soy sauce.
FloCiBO 