Blessed are the first dishes
Pork, kid, and stroncatura are the main protagonists of the first dish
The typical Reggio Calabrian lunch begins with the Calabrian appetizer, where the guidelines for flavour are dictated above all by the historical mastery in the conservation of the products. When it comes to great traditional dishes, you can still swear by the “do not throw anything away” motto, and not only in reference to the pig.
Nothing is thrown away!
It starts with struncatura, a pasta born from the waste of the flourmills, simple and easy, with breadcrumbs and anchovies in oil, or preserved with the ever-present chili pepper. Next, we arrive at maccheroni with a pork sauce (or sausage, just to always talk about the preservation of meant), where the traditional recipe calls for the use of lard together with meat and tomato. Going on, there is the maccheroni with kid sauce (in the Greek area), a dish served during Easter.
DID YOU KNOW THAT …?
Milling is a specific grinding technique with stone mills that uses cereal kernels (wheat, corn, barley, oats, rice, etc.) to obtain flour.
The sea and mountains of Reggio Calabria
The mountains in this area produce many mushrooms, refining pasta with simple dishes and fresh products from the day. Everywhere we go to eat, we can ask whether there are any products of the day; we might just arrive on the day when even the cook takes a ride to the mountains to pick and a prepare a signature plate with these ingredients. The sea offers “lo stocco” (known to most as stock fish), freshly caught, conserved for use at a different time, to flavour a new pasta dish. Lastly, there is pasta with wild boar ragù sauce, another signature dish that uses what is around, drawing resources from the context around us.
