Beautiful Calabria and its bounty Blue Fin Tuna

Calabria is at the southern tip of Italy.  It is surrounded by seas.  There are 3 seas in this area of Italy.  About 200 meters off the coast the sea drops to an abyss of 3000 meters.  Just north, in the Bay of Taranto, Blue Fin Tuna Spawn.  Down by Calabria the young swim by and here there is a proliferation of small tuna.  As they round the tip of Italy and enter the Mer Tyrrhenian and are in the the area of Sicily they grow larger and are readily available there and across to Sardinia. Italy map This is the only area that has Tuna.

Conserves Week

This week we are making conserves in class.  We are conserving Tuna as well as other fishes , vegetables and fruits.

Blue Fin Tuna

 Guts of Blue Fin Tuna

Cooking The Tuna 

Tuna has been cooked

Separating the sections to prepare for conserving or jarring.

This is as far as we got on this particular project today.  We do multiple things at a time throughout the day and keep quite busy.  much of what we are learning is artisan or old world.  We are learning what has worked for centuries and why and then making wonderful traditional dishes with the ingredients as we go along.  Some of the curing times for what we produce are days others months and over a year for others.  Guess I'll have to come back next year to taste what we made.  We are now tasting what the class of last year made.  So far they did a great job.  The process may not look glamourous but the results we are getting are so entirely worth the effort we put in.