cheese on seafood pasta?

[david kaplan]

I thought the Italian custom was never to add cheese to seafood pastas. However, at a friend's Christmas Eve Feast of the Seven Fishes that I was lucky enough to be invited to, the hosts of Sicilian descent eagerly added grated cheese to capellini with calamari in a tomato sauce.

So: is no-cheese-with-seafood-pasta not as strict a rule as I thought? Or is cheese sometimes served with certain seafoods, or in certain regions of Italy, or in certain contexts?

I appreciate that a totally valid response is to do what you think tastes best, but I'm asking the question in order to understand what people's traditions are.

[eLizard]

we never add cheese to seafood. there are people in my family who think tuna melts shouldn't even have cheese! lol

[AlexandriaSteelheart]

It's not a Tuna Melt with out the cheese! The cheese is what makes a Tuna Melt a Tuna *Melt* because you melt the cheese on the tuna... A Tuna Melt without the cheese is just a warmed tuna fish sandwich! lol.

[eLizard]

correction....there are people in my family who think tuna melts should not exist! and the idea of warm mayonaise sends them over the edge.

[HaagenDazs]

I'm not Italian for starters, but here's my thought. Hard cheese tends to be strongly flavored, of course. The thought is (as you know) seafood in it's delicate-ness is sometimes over-powered by this. As much as I love squid and octopus, etc. (it is one of my favorite seafood items), it can be rather... well, bland. Especially in a pasta dish with other flavors, I think it can benefit from a flavoring of some sort, whether that be a marinade, or just some smoky grilled flavor and salt. The cheese on the calamari dish is probably warranted and did not do too much in the way of over-powering the food. After all, we're not talking about lobster ;-)

[OHkono]

I am of Italian descent. and this Christmas Eve, a lobster w linguini dish was served. and I noticed the new-schoolers,such as myself and my parents, added Parmegian, and the Old schoolers, like my grandparents passed on the cheese.. It is an older rule not to add cheese to any seafood dish,albiet a good one..But i cant help it!

[fara]

My family is form Naples and Bari. Usually with a fish-tomato sauce we pass on the cheese, but we tend to like it on linguine w/clam sauce. A friend of mine from Sicily said it's not considered correct but that people use it if they like it at home.

[hotoynoodle]

my family was very strict about the no cheese policy, and i still get a little squirmy when i see things like seafood lasagna or shrimp alfredo. any kind of cream or cheese just blows the fish out of the water, shall we say. overkill.

[david kaplan]

Thanks for the responses so far. Myself, the only time I want to add cheese to a seafood pasta dish is when I toss pasta with some slowly sauteed anchovies, garlic, and hot pepper flakes in olive oil. The salty, spicy oil is plenty strong to stand up to cheese, and the saltiness of the anchovies makes me want even more saltiness in the cheese.

Would you no-cheese-with-seafood traditionalists combine cheese with anchovies that way? Would you eat anchovies on a pizza? Or do anchovies not count as seafood since the injunction is, as others have pointed out, more about delicate shellfish like shrimp and lobster?

[midtown diner]

No

[pikawicca]

What would coquilles st. jacques be without gruyere? Italians may not care for cheese with seafood, but the rest of the world obviously doesn't agree.

[Steve]

The further south in France you go, the more likely coquilles st jacques is made with olive oil. The more north you go, with creme fraiche. But cheese? I think that would be an oddity.

Cheese with any kind of seafood is very rare in Italy, France, and Spain. I can't speak for Portugal.

[pikawicca]

I've eaten CSt.J five times in France. All versions, while quite different from each other, had cheese.

[Will Owen]

One of my favorite sandwiches was the open-face crab and melted cheese that was a regular Friday offering at the Anchorage airport coffee shop 40-some years ago; it had king crab with just enough mayonnaise to hold it together set on a toasted sourdough roll, with sharp cheddar melted over the top. I still like to do a similar thing with tuna or salmon salad.

Though I wouldn't put a strong hard cheese on linguini with white clam sauce, I might put some on red. And I'd certainly use ricotta and mozzarella with a seafood lasagna, just as I top a tuna casserole with whatever cheese strikes my fancy. But Hey! I'm from the Midwest, not Napoli...

[Tom Servo]

I come from an Italian-american family, I understand Italian food (as well as Italian-American and the differences there in), I've cooked it all my life and I get that in Italy cheese and seafood don't mix. But it seems really ridiculous to me to stand of ceremony. If you don't like it, then that's fine. But food is meant to be enjoyed. And to not have cheese on your seafood pasta or, even worse, to tell others they can't have cheese on theirs (as I've actually heard of chefs doing) based on traditions from another country is snobbish. When I make cockles and linguini with white wine and shallots? I'll grate some Asiago on top and it's fabulous. If you like it, eat it.

[Will Owen]

On the other hand we have a friend who hates both seafood and cheese! So I know enough not to make my tuna-noodle casserole when he' coming to dinner...

[Tom Servo]

Hahaha! Exactly! You don't like it? Fine! But this idea that "It's just not done!!!" is really counter-intuitive to how I view food. It's there to be enjoyed and if it breaks tradition, so be it.

[Steve]

There are plenty of foods I like that are not traditional. But it doesn't stop me from liking and appreciating the traditional, either. I think, in the USA, many people are developing a crutch with cheese and mayo. People who ooh and aah over a shrimp and pasta dish covered in cheese (I just saw another one on a Red Lobster commercial) are probably not doing us any favors as a whole, as we will be given more of the same, in ever-increasing amounts. All the while we allow restaurants to cheap out on the other ingredients you won't be able to taste anymore.

There's no doubt in my mind that restaurants are using the cheese grater as a kind of ersatz can opener.

But, sure, go ahead and grate away.

[John Manzo]

Be sure to tell this to the bacon crowd.

[John Manzo]

Where this gets my goat is with sushi. I like trad nigiri as much as anybody, but whenever I hear from some Nihonophile, flush with the year-teaching-English stint, that I can't eat maki with avocado because "they don't do it in Japan" I want to stab him with my chopstick... which I don't use, since i've learned that it's okay to eat sushi with my fingers as a matter of Japanese etiquette I follow because it makes SENSE. Refusing to eat something delicious based on arbitrary cultural standards doesn't make sense and I refuse to kowtow to anybody's myths of cultural superiority, Italy's or otherwise.

[EWSflash]

I guess the fact that I LOVE cheese with some seafoods makes me a pariah, but i can live with it. I also don't give a shite if it isn't the Italian version of kosher.

[John Manzo]

AMEN, amico. Some Italian rules are so arbitrary and stupid... I actually adhered to the one about not having a cappuccino after 10am until I realized that it's archaic nonsense.

[mbfant]

There is no rule about not drinking cappuccino after 10 AM. You are not supposed to drink it after a meal because it is considered deleterious to digestion (digestion being a national obsession) while black espresso is considered conducive to digestion. The cheese/seafood thing is a matter of taste and tradition, not science (or even pseudoscience).

[smokeandapancake]

grated cheese does not exist in our house on xmas eve. the only time we add cheese to fish is when it's a parm...shrimp parm, calmari parm...so basically anything fried.

[mbfant]

It is customary not to put parmigiano on fish sauces. And when I say customary, I mean only eccentrics would do it. There are two main reasons. One is that certain fish sauces contain a great deal of garlic (e.g., clam sauce), which is considered even worse with parmigiano than fish is. The other is that the subtle flavor of the fish can be concealed by the parmigiano.

Pecorino romano is often used with anchovies, both preserved and fresh, and creative Italian cooks will sometimes use it on other kinds of seafood, but sparingly, but not even the wildest innovators seems to use parmigiano.

[AlexandriaSteelheart]

I live in the Pacific Northwest, USA and I *love* cheese with my seafood... granted you have to be mindful of the flavors of the seafood and the flavors of the cheese... if it's a strong seafood (like crab/lobster) or a more mellow seafood (like tuna fish/shrimp/scallops) and knowing how to pair it with a cheese that *doesn't* overpower it... one of my favorite dishes at The Olive Garden is their Seafood Fettuccine Alfredo, and when they pull out their little cheese grater thingy (I think it's parmesan) I let them pile it on...

does anybody remember that commercial for the Olive Garden where the waiter is spinning the handle, grating the cheese, waiting for the person to say 'when' but they pass out, and then the next waiter takes over, and they pass out, and then the camera pans back and there's a *huge* exaggerated pile of cheese on the soup bowl and there's about 10 waiters passed out around the table? I'm like that... only much less exaggerated... lol

To the OP's curiosity of people's traditions... growing up, my mom was very much a 'meat and potatoes' sort of American style cooking (she grew up in Idaho) and my dad cooked with a more Italian-American style cooking (he was born in Chicago and grew up in California, but his father grew up in Chicago in an Italian neighborhood)...

Personally, I'm certainly not a 'traditionalist' or a 'foodie'... I'm more of a 'comfort food' eater... I like things that taste like 'home'... things like raw, undercooked beef/steak makes me queasy... I like my meat to be *well done* without *any* hint of pink, let alone red... to me that just means you didn't cook it long enough and it's still bloody and raw and nasty. As for Sushi? Forget About It! I won't touch it... any kind of raw meat is just asking for food poisoning, IMHO. My parents style of cooking has certainly shaped the flavors I like or don't like... my mom cooks with simple, mild flavors so I hate spicy foods, but with my dad's Italian-American style cooking, I love garlic and onion powder (not so much actual onions) and marinara and alfredo sauces, and all those great italian flavors... just as long as it's not *spicy* lol.

[Steve]

Brilliant!!!