San Marino is landlocked, but from the top of Monte Titano you can see the Adriatic, and the beaches of Rimini are a twenty minute drive down the hill. Along that coast, the paper cone of mixed fried fish is the essential snack of summer evenings, harbor festivals and seaside stalls: calamari, shrimp and little whole fish such as anchovies or sardines, lightly floured and fried until crackling, salted, and handed over with a wedge of lemon. Sammarinese families drive down for it the way inland families everywhere drive to the sea, which is to say often and without needing an excuse.

This is not a Sammarinese invention, and we will not pretend it is; it belongs to the whole Romagna coast that surrounds the republic. But it is what the region eats with its hands in the sunshine, which is what a race weekend in May calls for. The key is a light coating and very hot oil, fried in small batches.

The seafood

Ingredients

• 12 oz (340 g) cleaned squid
• 12 oz (340 g) medium raw shrimp
• 8 oz (225 g) fresh anchovies or smelt
• 1 cup (125 g) all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup (85 g) fine semolina
• 2 quarts (2 liters) sunflower or peanut oil
• 1 1/2 teaspoons fine sea salt
• 2 lemons

More from San Marino