Editor’s Note: Our correspondent Ellynne Brice-Davis is spending the next month in Italy. As the author of the recently published “Ellynne’s Top Tomato Cookbook” it is only natural that she is eating her away through Italy, or as we are calling it A Tavola Con Ellynne In Italia (At the Table in Italy with Ellynne). The following is the first installment of a month-long series:

Ciao from beautiful, downtown Naples, Italy at the base of Mt. Vesuvius. I have a panoramic view of the volcano across the Bay of Naples; the Isle of Capri is off to the right and I can see cruise ships arriving and departing from the port of Santa Lucia. But as this is a food column, I will write about my favorite fruit – pomodoro – the tomato, of course. And they are everywhere here!

The airline food on the flight over was, of course, not memorable. But our first dinner in Naples on our first night, September 19, at a little restaurant near the Mergellina along the Port of Naples waterfront consisted of these three main dishes:  linguini with clams, gnocchi, and for myself a Margherita pizza (an individual pizza, bigger than a large dinner plate) plus a shared antipasto Caprese salad of tomato slices, mozzarella cheese rounds, and fresh basil leaves. Oh, yes, and a bottle of Prosecco. Upon close examination of our bill, we discovered that we had been charged for an extra main dish that we did not order. And we figured out too late that our $25. of Prosecco probably should have cost about half that had we thought to order a carafe for the table instead. Lesson learned.

Lunch the next day at Antonio’s Pizzeria right outside of the Castel d’Ovu (the “Egg Castle”) along the waterfront was simple but delizioso:  a huge salad of cherry tomato halves, olives, parmesan cheese and mixed lettuce, a fruit cup with chunks of apple, watermelon and pineapple, and for myself, a half of a pineapple with the chunks already cut. And the bill was accurate.

For dinner that night, our hostess cooked whole wheat pasta (spaghetti). To a cast-iron frying pan, she added olive oil and then sliced onions, red peppers, garlic, Roma tomatoes, chunks of eggplant and cooked it all just til tender, then added this to the pasta. We also had Insalata (salad) with fresh mushrooms.

And the next day, we were off to visit the ruins of Pompeii and to find more culinary adventures!

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