Pescespada dell’amore: Swordfish of Love

The emotional dimension of this dish is infinite in my life. In the long-ago summer lull of a boat, its fragrance wafting from below deck is the only thing that could keep my siblings and me still for more than five minutes. In my teen years, it found a winter home in my newly divorced mother’s kitchen. As I enter adulthood and move to New York, I tinker with it in a tiny kitchen where, with time, the swordfish changes some and eventually gains its name as a witness to the beginning of my love for my husband. I still remember the moment. Leonard Cohen was billowing about a man tied to a kitchen chair, and I recall panicking that my too-small-for-achair kitchen wouldn’t be big enough to tie him down. I remember his hands between me and the stove, my clean hair caressing his nostrils. I remember that I never wanted that moment to end. It didn’t. Twenty-two years later in San Francisco, this brightly-hued combination of tomato, capers, and olives over swordfish is still the best-loved dish in my repertoire by both my husband and my son.

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