The second half, and second dish, of the Calabria episode of Stanley Tucci’s Searching for Italy. In the previous post, I covered the sweet red onion spaghetti he waxed poetic about. In this one, we get fishy, with Spaghetti con pesce spada, or, spaghetti with swordfish. Not an easy fish to find here in Buenos Aires.

As I was making, and eating this dish, it occurred to me that it’s very much like a spaghetti alla puttanesca, with the addition of fish. This particular version doesn’t include chili, which puttanesca does, and which, if you spend any time looking at recipes for the dish from Calabria, they do as well. So I don’t know if Tucci just failed to mention and/or the chef where he was either doesn’t use chili, or it simply didn’t make the editing cut, but it really is basically the same dish. With fish. Red onion, garlic, black olives, cherry tomatoes, a little tomato puree or passata, capers, oregano, and swordfish.

Sauté the chopped red onion (I only used half the onion, since I was making a small batch) and crushed garlic clove (which, in this version, gets removed) in olive oil until lightly colored.

Add the cubed swordfish, halved cherry tomatoes (mix of yellow and red was specified), quartered black olives, and the capers. Now, my chef-ly instincts said this is the wrong time to be adding the swordfish. There’s no way it isn’t going to be overcooked. But I went with following the way the recipe was presented.

Once the tomatoes have started to fall apart, add the puree, the oregano, and some black pepper. Cook down for a couple of minutes. If you’re using fresh spaghetti, now would be the time to pop it into the boiling water. If you’re using dried, the time to do that was when you added the fish, tomatoes, etc. to the pan.

Remove the garlic clove and the oregano stem. Add some pasta water and stir to emulsify well, and continue to cook down.

Two minutes short of being done (with fresh spaghetti, it was maybe a minute after the water came back to a boil), add it to the sauce to finish cooking and absorbing the flavor. If needed, add a little more pasta water to help it finish cooking.

Adjust seasoning.

And, serve.

I can’t say I was overly fond of this dish. As predicted, the fish is way overcooked. It’s just dry and chewy. It should be added to the pan about the same time the fresh spaghetti went into the water, like two minutes before you’re going to move the pasta into the sauce. And the dish really could use a kick from some chili. By the way, both of those are the way the dish is traditionally made – with chili, and with the fish added nearly last minute. I don’t know if it was bad editing or bad cheffing, but if you’re going to make this, add a chopped fresh chili, or some chili flakes, and hold off on when you put the fish in the dish. I’d also chop the garlic, and strip the oregano leaves off the stem(s) and leave them in the dish (as, I’d guess, would most Calabrians). This plate also works with other meaty fish, like albacore tuna.

Next time on Tucci, it’s off to Sardegna, and a bit more involved dish that sounds… weird.