Tradtional food from Southern Italy for Christmas Holidays

Italy is heavily famous for its food, raw materials and everything connected to “eating”.

Still, every region and sometimes even every city has its own specific food traditions.

Reggio Calabria and Calabria in general have food traditions very connected to roasted meat and fish, pasta and vegetables.

I am fully vegetarian since October, meaning that I am not eating meat and fish anymore and I am very lucky that Mary’s parents have a wide vegetable garden so I can get plenty of vegetables and eggs!

I like "poor cuisine" , meaning, simple dishes, cooked in a light manner, avoiding too much roasted parts and eventually fried ones. Simple cuisine is the healthiest, and lightest to digest.

Here a first fishes, made with pasta, bread crumbs and dried tomatoes that was cooked by Mary’s sister boyfriend.

Here some stockfish fish, roasted in the chimney with potatoes and spices

Here were “scaloppine” both from calf, and also from aubergines (for me and Mary:D)

Source: Author. Calf scaloppine with freshly harvested mushrooms

Source: Author. Aubergines scaloppine with freshly harvested mushrooms

Here following a traditional dish from Mary’s family that’s “calamarata” that is a type of pasta, that stays quite hard not becoming squashy, with a souce of hand-made tomato sauce and sea-foods. I did not eat it but it looked delicious

Here following it was me with Mary’s younger sister creating the chocolate decoration for Ice-Cream Pandoro.

Pandoro is a typical dessert from Verona (my birth-place) that in Calabria is usually filled with ice-cream with a tasty topping on it. And this time, we made it home-made with high-quality bitter chocolate to create a contrast between the internal sweetness and the external bitterness.

And this was the table ready for Christmas, where we were in 8 celebrating: me, Mary, my mum, two sisters of Mary, the boyfriend of Mary’s twin sister and two Mary’s parents.

With all the appetizers ready. And these were just the appetizers!

As I think I have already mentioned, eating in southern Italy can be dangerous as it’s always a loooooot of eating more than healthy standards but since I am eating lighters foods and I got confident with Mary’s parents, saying “no” when I do not want to eat anymore, I have been able to perform all my Yoga practice every day in the early morning!