Campania Ingredients

[docsconz]

Your book on the cooking of Naples is superb. My mother's family is from the region and I grew up with a lot of Campanian (and Sicilian) influences in my house and have had the pleasure to visit both areas with my sons. I was amazed at the quality of the raw ingredients as well as the artisanship involved in using them.

What three ingredients of the region are most important to you and why? What would you consider the three best ingredients? If the lists are different, why? I apologize for limiting you to three. Picking one, I know would be impossible, but I want to lend some difficulty in narrowing the choices. Just to be fair, I'll answer my own questions.

My three most important ingredients are:

pasta - the artisanal kinds from Torre Annunziata are to my experience the best dried pastas in Italy

Pomodorini del Vesuvio- a revelation when I first had them at Seliano. Regular San Marzano tomatoes, a relatedhonorable mention.

raw milk mozzarella di bufala - amazing stuff, useful in so many ways and probably the single most closely associated ingredient of the region.

The only thing I would change in my list of most important to best is I would replace the pasta with the lemons from the Sorrento peninsula. Most people consider a lemon is a lemon, but these are special - more than the pasta is special compared to that from other areas.

Your thoughts?

[Arthur Schwartz]

Your book on the cooking of Naples is superb. My mother's family is from the region and I grew up with a lot of Campanian (and Sicilian) influences in my house and have had the pleasure to visit both areas with my sons. I was amazed at the quality of the raw ingredients as well as the artisanship involved in using them.

What three ingredients of the region are most important to you and why? What would you consider the three best ingredients? If the lists are different, why? I apologize for limiting you to three. Picking one, I know would be impossible, but I want to lend some difficulty in narrowing the choices. Just to be fair, I'll answer my own questions.

My three most important ingredients are:

pasta - the artisanal kinds from Torre Annunziata are to my experience the best dried pastas in Italy

Pomodorini del Vesuvio- a revelation when I first had them at Seliano. Regular San Marzano tomatoes, a relatedhonorable mention.

raw milk mozzarella di bufala - amazing stuff, useful in so many ways and probably the single most closely associated ingredient of the region.

The only thing I would change in my list of most important to best is I would replace the pasta with the lemons from the Sorrento peninsula. Most people consider a lemon is a lemon, but these are special - more than the pasta is special compared to that from other areas.

Your thoughts?

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I have to say there are two categories of ingredients -- the fresh ones that you can only eat in Italy -- such as the mozzarella di bufala -- and those that you can buy here, too -- such as the pata. For the real Neapolitan taste, I buy either Setaro (an excellent buy when you purchase it at Buon Italia in the Chelsea Market, which imports it) and Voiello, which I buy at DiPalo's on Grand St. San Marzano tomatoes are essential to my life, and I buy the DOP guaranteed brand from Coluccio, in jars. They are sold in many stores, but I get them at the Coluccio retail store on 61st St. and 12th Ave. in Brooklyn.

I never eat buffalo mozzarella here, by the way. Once you have eaten it the day it is made -- hours after it is made -- even just after it has been made, while still warm -- you cannot enjoy the product when it gets here.

As for other ingredients that I need to make my food taste Neapolitan, there's capers packed in salt (preferably from Pantelleria, an island off Sicily), anchovies packed in salt (not oil), Gaeta olives (you get the highest quality at DiPalo's), and oregano. You have to go to Sorrento to get the sweet oregano I love, but I substitue marjoram when I run out. They are like one chromosome apart.

Of course, Capri, Sorrento, the whole coast is famous for lemons, but I think we have wonderful lemons here, too.