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Tuna in olive oil

PAT · Fish and seafood · Calabria

Apulica editorial team · Sources checked:

In brief

History and origin

In the province of Reggio Calabria, putting fish under oil is an old habit, the same one used for many vegetables: it preserves the fish so it can be eaten at any time of year. This is how the Calabria Region's record explains the origin of tuna in oil, which by tradition is above all a family production. The recipe, the record notes, appears in Ottavio Cavalcanti's Libro d'oro della cucina e dei vini di Calabria e Basilicata, published in 1979.

The second name, pesantono, recalls the pisantuni that another regional record, devoted to the cooking of the Costa Viola, lists among the fish of the tuna family.

Behind this preserve lies the long history of the Tyrrhenian tuna traps. The Soprintendenza for Reggio Calabria and Vibo Valentia points to tuna-fishing installations as early as the eleventh century, and along the coast between Tropea and Pizzo whole communities lived on waiting for the tuna, catching them, processing them and selling them.

Sources: Regione Calabria — Schede PAT: preparazioni di pesci, molluschi e crostacei (schede Tonno sott'olio e Tortiera di alici) · Soprintendenza ABAP per Reggio Calabria e Vibo Valentia (Ministero della Cultura) — Le tonnare

Area and method of production

The regional record gives the production and sales area as provincial, with reference to the province of Reggio Calabria. There are three ingredients: small tuna or bonito, locally called palamitu, oil and salt. By tradition the work is done in September and October.

The method is simple and domestic. The fish is left for a few hours under running water, then boiled in salted water. Once cooked, skin and bones are removed and the flesh is cut into fillets. The fillets are spread on a cloth to dry and cool, and finally packed into glass jars covered with oil.

The record lists no special premises or machinery: it is a preparation born in home kitchens, with the same gestures used to preserve garden vegetables under oil.

Sources: Regione Calabria — Schede PAT: preparazioni di pesci, molluschi e crostacei (schede Tonno sott'olio e Tortiera di alici)

How to recognise it

Tuna in oil in the Reggio tradition comes as fillets, each weighing 30-40 grams on average, packed in glass jars under oil. The regional record describes its taste as savoury and its texture as firm, while the smell is robust, that of cooked and preserved fish.

What sets it apart from an industrial product is its scale: it comes from family production, with small fish such as little tuna or bonito, cooked in salted water and worked by hand one by one, without machinery.

The preserve also reflects the season in which it is made, between late summer and autumn, and the purpose it was created for: to keep a cooked, tasty fish in the larder, ready to eat at any time of year.

Sources: Regione Calabria — Schede PAT: preparazioni di pesci, molluschi e crostacei (schede Tonno sott'olio e Tortiera di alici)

Where to taste it

Tuna in oil is a home preserve with no single address: the best way to approach it is to travel the Tyrrhenian coast of the tuna traps, from the province of Vibo Valentia to the Costa Viola near Reggio.

In Pizzo, on the beach, the logge of the old tonnara still stand, masonry buildings where tuna was weighed, cut and salted. At Vibo Marina the Bivona tuna-trap complex keeps its 1881 loggia and the chapel of Saint Anthony of Padua; here the regional tourism portal points to restaurants serving tuna dishes and to a canning plant open by appointment as a company museum.

Further down the Tyrrhenian coast, in the province of Reggio Calabria, the Tonnara beach at Palmi takes its name from the old trap where tuna and swordfish were caught and processed: today it is a free Bandiera Verde beach, framed by the Ulivarella rock and Monte Sant'Elia.

Sources: Calabria Straordinaria (Regione Calabria) — Tonnare in Calabria, sulle tracce dell'antica pesca del tonno · Soprintendenza ABAP per Reggio Calabria e Vibo Valentia (Ministero della Cultura) — Le tonnare

Protection

When

Where

Calabria