A Lesson in Food Origins from an Italian Prawn
Text by Lara Gilmour
Photos by Giulia Verdinelli
The red prawn is enriched by the highly salted waters of the Med and a vast buffet of plankton raked up by the cross currents, both of which contribute to the distinctly sweet flavor for which it is known.
In Gola, Mattia Torre’s portrait of Italy through its relationship with eating, the writer pokes fun at Italians’ “fixation with the origins of food, as if it changed something.” Indeed, it is a truth widely acknowledged that the provenance of Italian ingredients is the secret to their power.
Sicily, whose shorelines are caressed by three different seas and land is ruffled by winds originating everywhere from the Alps to Morocco, is blessed with a rich and diverse terroir that produces such delights as Bronte pistachios, Pantelleria capers and Pachino tomatoes. What these ingredients have in common is that they are always referred to along with the place from which they come.
The red prawn of Mazara is no exception.
As I trace its origins through the Sicilian port town of Mazara del Vallo, I learn that the prized crustacean is irrevocably intertwined with the history of the town and remains an integral part of its cultural identity. Despite environmental, economic and political obstacles, the red prawn of Mazara is moving into the future.
The presence of the red prawn subtly permeates every corner of the town. There are no signs outside fishmongers or restaurants proclaiming its presence nor is it by any means a tourist attraction, yet where there’s a meal to be eaten in this town, the gambero rosso di Mazara is always, in some way, present.
The prawn is actually fished rather far from the port of Mazara del Vallo. In fact, its fishing area stretches 100 miles south to Malta and, to the east, almost 1,000 miles towards Turkey. In the past, fishermen would even go beyond the Strait of Gibraltar to the Atlantic seabed to find it.
So why is it named after the town? Because in Mazara del Vallo, fishing and red prawn fishing in particular, is an activity that has long played an integral role in the daily life of its inhabitants.
“There are so many reasons that make someone go and do this kind of work,” says Giacomo Ingargiola, a 70-something-year-old former red prawn fisherman who became my accidental but very willing guide. “Each one of us has his own motivation. It depends on the origins. My grandfather, fisherman. My father, fisherman. So, it’s a family tradition.”
The fishing fleet in Mazara del Vallo is dedicated to deep-sea fishing and is the only one that specializes in catching the red prawn. During the fishing boom of the late 1970s and ’80s, a fleet of about 1,300 boats decked out with the most advanced technology of the time would go and trawl for this crimson crustacean.
Now, due to the effects of globalization and stricter EU fishing regulations, the fleet comprises closer to 50 boats. Nevertheless, the skills and knowledge of the fishermen remain untouched, preserved as they have been through the generations. The prawn is a delicacy as a result of their absolute dedication to maintaining its high quality. It’s the fishermen of Mazara, therefore, after which the prawn is named. Just as food is enhanced by the wind, the earth and the sea, so it is by the people who cultivate it.
Nestled at depths of up to 700 meters, the red prawn is enriched by the highly salted waters of the Med and a vast buffet of plankton raked up by the cross currents, both of which contribute to the distinctly sweet flavor for which it is known. It is fished in a fairly non-invasive way, using nets fitted with steel rods; in fact, the most modern technology present onboard the trawlers are the deep freezers.
A prawn begins to de-oxidise immediately after being caught, causing it to lose both color and flavour. Flash freezing at temperatures of -50 degrees Celsius halts this process and means the prawns can be later stored for up to four months in a regular freezer without losing any of their delicate taste and unique organoleptic properties. (The official word on this is 18 months but I have it on good authority from Ingargiola that four is the maximum.)
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At Funduq, a Tunisian restaurant in Mazara del Vallo, the house specialty is red prawns over couscous.
By tracing the origins of the red prawn through the town of Mazara del Vallo, I cannot help but trace the history of the town itself. My first exposure to the delicacy is at a restaurant called Funduq, where the specialty is couscous with red prawns, a dish stemming from the town’s long-standing Tunisian influence.
Mazara, I learn, owes much to Tunisia. It was the Tunisians who, coming to the town in the ’70s and ’80s, made up the workforce that was lacking on fishing boats and allowed the town to build up its fleet, resulting in the renowned fishing boom. Today, a large North African community still thrives in Mazara.
In another restaurant, set up by a Christian organisation that finds diversion and work for young people, Tunisian girls serve the red prawns on a bed of hummus.
During the boom, the red prawn, along with other varieties of fish and seafood, practically sustained the entire town, economically speaking, and meant that huge numbers of the male population were almost constantly out at sea. When I visit the fish auction to speak with the town’s male retirees, for whom this afternoon event constitutes a daily social gathering, the most common refrain I hear is My children grew up without a father. This is because, due to the scope of the red prawn’s habitat, a trip out to trawl for it normally takes between three and four months. Throughout the year, this is the life of the fishermen: three months away, a week or two back home and then out again, with only a short pause in December-January to allow the prawns their reproductive period.
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Far from the thriving port of the ’80s and ’90s, the town is now quieter, sleepier and less populated, with young inhabitants leaving to find work elsewhere. Cheaper farmed shrimp from other parts of the world have contributed to fishing here being a less lucrative career and the artisan becoming increasingly uncommon.
A steady stream of EU regulations and policies since the 1970s, notably the Common Fisheries Policy, has slowed the pace of Mazara’s fishing industry. Rapidly declining fish and seafood populations, to which the Sicilian tradition of fishing neonata (just born) fish and crustaceans has indisputably contributed, and environmental damage due to both trawling and unmodernized equipment have played significant roles in the implementation of these sustainability-focused fishing policies.
The fishing area of the red prawn has also become the focus of a turf war between Italy and Libya, which resulted at one point in the kidnapping of a fleet of red prawn fishermen, and is a powerful deterrent to many fishermen considering making the long expedition out into the Med.
And yet, despite this, the town has not turned away from its beloved prawn. Instead, it is moving, slowly but surely, into the future. Today, the red prawn is the protagonist in a young but promising circular economy led by some of the town’s inhabitants who have discovered opportunities for innovation.
The undisputed hero of this new wave is Paolo Giacalone, head of the Rosso di Mazara red prawn brand. The Giacalone family comprises three generations of shipowners and fishermen who have been going after the red prawn since the 1920s. Listening to the way people in Mazara talk about Giacalone and hearing his story, I can’t help but think of the classic trope of the small-town boy who made it big.
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In a town of fishermen, the Giacalone brothers became businessmen, pulling off a total rebrand of the red prawn. Today, they ship boxes to high-end restaurants and redistributors everywhere from London’s swankiest food markets to Michelin-starred restaurants in Tokyo. Thanks to the Giacalone brothers, the red prawn of Mazara has become a symbol of the excellence of Sicilian seafood in the minds of chefs and epicureans the world over.
When I sit down to talk with Giacalone, he tells me that the biggest challenge Rosso di Mazara faced was justifying the red prawn’s high price tag, which can be up to 70 euros a kilo.
As with most delicacies, acquiring the red prawn is rather expensive. It may not be very difficult to fish, but the cost of a three-month voyage for seven fishermen on a 2-million-euro boat equipped with a deep freezer makes the final price for the consumer a good deal more than for your average pack of shrimp.
“When I first started talking about marketing,” says Giacalone, “everyone thought it was something you eat. ‘You don’t eat it,’ I told them, ‘you drink it.’”
Even a sleepy fishing town like Mazara del Vallo cannot hide from the urgent pull of the climate crisis.
The red prawn of Mazara doesn’t have a Denominazione di Origine Protetta (DOP) so it could never gain the kind of publicity that comes naturally to Parmigiano Reggiano cheese or Barolo wine. This meant that, when it came to marketing, Rosso di Mazara first had to put the red prawn on the gastronomic map before they could start cultivating its reputation as a rare and wonderful delicacy. How did they do this? By designing some seriously sexy packaging, leveraging the global community of Sicilian chefs and, finally, a quick call to the television show Masterchef Italy.
“My wife wrote directly to Carlo Cracco [the host of Italian Masterchef] explaining that we wanted to promote our prawn. A few days later I got a phone call saying ‘We’re from the television network and we want to talk about using your prawn on Masterchef.’” Giacalone says. “I thought it was a joke, so I hung up. But they kept calling and eventually they did an episode here and used our prawns.”
Despite it being a common and accepted practice, the company does not “glaze” its prawns with water, which can add up to 20% to the weight of frozen seafood, nor does it add sulfites, instead opting for a natural Scottish product: the antioxidant 4-hexylresorcinol (4-HR) (E 586), which is less toxic, nonallergenic and leaves less residue than the traditional sodium bisulphite.
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A rare delicacy such as the red prawn of Mazara is not something to be eaten every day. For Giacalone, this helps to justify the high price. But this way of thinking also offers an alternative to the narrative touted by documentaries such as Seaspiracy. Instead of total abstention from all animal products, what if we promoted more conscious consumption combined with an attitude of moderation?
There is something to be said for the “Eat less, but eat better” approach to eating animal products. I come across this perspective surprisingly often among the people of Mazara and, indeed, Sicily. The general consensus is that it’s better to occasionally indulge in an excellent steak or plate of red prawns than eat cheap but poor-quality meat and fish every day. Of course, the environmental footprint of shipping red prawns all over the globe cannot be disregarded (although compared to other commodities, Giacalone’s volumes are negligible) but I can’t help but think that, as an attitude, it’s a start.
Rosso di Mazara has also developed two red prawn byproducts that are putting them in excellent stead to become a zero-waste enterprise. These efforts have not gone unnoticed: Rosso di Mazara is the only red prawn fishery certified Friend of the Sea by the World Sustainability Organization.
“We have only one product,” Giacalone says. “We want to use it as much as possible. We don’t waste anything.”
The first byproduct was developed as a solution to the fact that, when the fishermen bring the nets up, the delicate red prawns often lose their heads. Rather than throw them back into the sea, as was common practice, they decided to start gathering them up and using them to create Elixyr, an intensely flavored, oil-based infusion used for garnishing all manner of dishes. The second is a vibrant, bottarga-like powder, called Sublime, which is made from freeze-dried prawns and used, in a similar way to grated cheese, to add flavor to pasta dishes.
Elsewhere in Mazara del Vallo, following in Giacalone’s zero-waste footsteps is Colatura di Gambero, an association set up by Giuseppe Gaudioso and Maria Chiara Valdemone, two young Mazara locals motivated by a desire to reduce waste and, perhaps more importantly, re-create their favorite moment of eating the red prawn.
“When we eat the red prawn, we always suck the heads; it’s the best part,” Gaudioso says. “The colatura recreates that experience.”
Compared to Giacalone’s Elixyr, the colatura has a delicate flavor. To me, it more closely resembles the taste of fresh prawn. Gaudioso and Valdemone take a distinctly modern, accessible approach, giving their product a cheaper price tag and adding a QR code to the bottle to allow customers to trace its origins. Selling the idea to the fish markets was easy, they tell me, since fishmongers normally have to pay to dispose of prawn waste and the colatura provides them with a solution to this: deliver their prawn heads to Gaudioso and Valdemonte, who in turn give them a contribution.
As well as focusing on their product, the pair are selling the license to fishmongers and helping them get set up with the process so they can do it themselves, as well as working on acquiring a patent to reduce competition in the market.
“This is just the beginning of the project,” Gaudioso says. “We’re working on using the shells of the prawns to make fish food, food supplements, bioplastics… You can use the entire prawn without throwing anything away.”
In a town where people still routinely throw their trash out of the window and, up until recently, fish waste was dumped in the sea—causing a whole host of underlying environmental problems from reduced oxygen levels to the introduction of diseases—this is excellent progress. The pair credit their innovative flair to their travels around Italy and the world.
“Businesses that have been living for years in the same way and using the same processes can’t understand what’s going on outside, the problems that they are inadvertently causing,” Valdemone says. “When you travel and meet new people, you start to learn about these things. If not, you don’t think about them… So, our product is kind of like a revolution.”
Even a sleepy fishing town like Mazara del Vallo cannot hide from the urgent pull of the climate crisis. Still, businesses here have found a way for gentler attitudes of innovation and moderation to blossom. As I sit with Ingargiola after our daily trip to the fish auction, sipping on granita, I ask him what he thinks.
“We don’t need to stop fishing,” he says firmly. “We need a different industrial policy, we need to tax the ocean less, respect it more and protect the fish. Before, we weren’t considerate and didn’t take into account the harm we were doing. We don’t use the same nets anymore, many things have changed in the hope that this causes less destruction. We used to eat newborn fish as a delicacy and now it’s prohibited. We need to be careful not to break the biological chains.”
In a country in which ingredient provenance is inexorably linked to quality, no one wants the effects of climate change to modify the ocean to a point where it is unable to nurture seafood. Just as it was the fishermen of Mazara del Vallo whose knowledge and dedication have played such an important role in making the red prawn so exquisite, it is their children and grandchildren who, affording it the same care and attention, have the greatest hope of preserving the delicacy for future generations.
Despite Torre’s ironic protests, it seems that the origins of food do indeed “change something.” When we give such supreme respect to the provenance of what we eat, we make space for it to evolve along with us. The red prawn of Mazara teaches us that, if we want to, we can adapt our traditions to create new attitudes around food that allow us to have our prawn and eat it, too.
