Not pizza again

In Naples, you eat pizza. Anyone who doesn’t eat a Margherita in this capital of the southern Italian region of Campania might as well not go there at all. But pizza is far from the only edible thing in the area. So you can have a true Napoletana every day, but you don’t have to. Five typical Campanian alternatives.

1. Parmigiana melanzana

Crispy and soft at the same time, these layers of grilled or fried thin slices of aubergine, alternated in a baking dish with tomato sauce, mozzarella, Parmesan, basil and optionally slices of hard-boiled egg. The dish may only come out of the oven once it has a crispy crust.
Make it yourself like this.

Never sprinkle cheese over seafood. Italians get very angry.

2. Spaghetti con le vongole

A plate full of al dente pasta with a pile of clams and a sauce made from the cooking liquid and garlic. Sounds simple, tastes divine. And no, no cheese with this. Never cheese over seafood. Italians get very angry. Parsley, though.
Roberto Payer of Roberto’s restaurant in Amsterdam will tell you exactly how.

3. Pesce all’aqua pazza

Aqua pazza means ‘crazy water’. And that strange water contains garlic, tomatoes and parsley, in which the freshly caught fish is gently simmered until done. Not so crazy after all.

4. Polpette

Meatballs in tomato sauce. But not served American-style on top of spaghetti. Instead, they arrive as the secondo after the pasta, which may itself be served first as the primo with some of the meatballs’ tomato sauce (sugo) on the table.

5. Insalata Caprese

The classic in every old-fashioned Dutch-Italian restaurant. But when it’s freshly made with good ingredients, it’s fantastic: juicy slices of buffalo mozzarella, alternated with juicy slices of tomato and fresh, fragrant basil leaves. Topped with plenty of olive oil.

Image: Marjan Ippel et al.