Naples is on the sea, and I asked Antonio if they had good seafood. Apparently it could be found, but it was hard to do and often expensive. But being Antonio he offered to cook some for me, and nothing I could do after that point would change his mind.

So on Friday we got up and walked to the harbor. He knew a special stall that sold only the best food, and that’s where we went. We loaded up on shrimp, calms, mussels, sardines and a red sea bream called pezzonga.

Everything went into the refrigerator but the clams. The mussels were wrapped in a really damp towel, and the clams were put into a bowl with heavily salted water.

Then we went to work.

We managed to finish our agenda by 3:30, so Antonio took me on a walking tour of an older section of Naples. It was dominated by churches surrounded by a warren of narrow streets. I’ll put up some pictures in the gallery when I can.

I was constantly amazed by the juxtaposition of the old and the new. We ended up at a bus stop right next to Castel Nuovo.

On the way home we stopped by the workshop of Roberta’s brother Mario. He creates large pictures on hand-painted tile. It was amazing stuff. I bought to tiles of Puccinello, the masked clown that symbolizes Napoli.

When we got home it was time to cook. The mussels we opened and discarded one half of the shell. They were topped with garlic and seasoned bread crumbs to make a gratin. The pezzonga was placed on a bed of salt, filled with garlic and then covered in salt until you could see nothing left of the fish. Both of these dishes would end up in the oven.

The clams were stir fried with garlic until they opened, and then they were served over spaghetti with olive oil. The shrimp were also fried and the sardines were lightly breaded then fried.

It was an amazing meal. Antonio didn’t think the clams were the best, but I thought they were great. The pezzonga was moist and tasty, with just a little lemon. As the fish baked the salt crust hardened and it could be removed in a few pieces. Then the skin was easy to remove and the meat just lifted off of the bone.

I even liked the sardines, but while you can eat the bones I tended to open up the fish (they were tiny) and simply remove the bones in one movement.

It was too much food, but it was wonderful and probably one of the more memorable meals I’ve had.