Seafood Fra Diavolo Recipe

This dish is perfect for showcasing the heat of Fra Diavolo and complimenting it with delicious seafood.

[vilkoskorlich]

Correction Appended LOBSTER or Shrimps FRA DIAVOLO, lobster in a spicy tomato sauce with linguine, "brother devil" style, sounds Italian, tastes Italian and is a staple in Italian restaurants. But is it Italian? "Oh, dear, " sighed Anna Teresa Callen, the Italian-born cookbook author and cooking teacher, when asked about it. "It's not an Italian dish. It's really another Italian-American invention. I have never seen it in Italy, and I suspect that it came from Long Island." Like Mrs. Callen, many authorities on Italian cooking are not on the side of the devil. Tony May, the owner of San Domenico, who is from Naples, said lobster fra diavolo was not from his hometown. "It's like the lemon peel with the coffee, he continued. "I first heard of it when I came to New York in 1963. I think there was a restaurant in midtown called Fra Diavolo that started it. Or maybe the restaurant was Vesuvio." Giuliano Bugialli, another cookbook author and cooking teacher, said it was invented in New York. "We don't even have American lobsters in Italy, " he added. "And a heavy tomato sauce with hot peppers, seafood and pasta all in one dish is not Italian cooking. I think it came from a restaurant that was Others trace its origins to Little Italy. Victor Hazan, the wine expert, said he remembered first eating lobster fra diavolo at the Grotta Azzurra restaurant in Little Italy in 1940. His wife, Marcella, the cookbook author and teacher, added: "You brought me to that restaurant. I remember the dish clearly because it was so heavy and typical of Italian cooking in America. We don't eat like that in Italy."

Fra Diavolo (lit. Brother Devil; 7 April 1771–11 November 1806), is the popular name given to Michele Pezza, a famous Neapolitan guerrilla leader who resisted the French occupation of Naples, proving an “inspirational practitioner of popular insurrection”.Pezza figures prominently in folk lore and fiction. He appears in several works of Alexandre Dumas, including The Last Cavalier: Being the Adventures of Count Sainte-hermine in the Age of Napoleon, not published until 2007 and in Washington Irving's short story "The Inn at Terracina".