A Book of Mediterranean Food Read online

LOBSTER ROMESCO

  Prepare the following sauce: grill or roast in the oven 2 tomatoes, a fresh red chilli, several unpeeled cloves of garlic, up to as much as a whole head. Skin the tomatoes and garlic which should be fairly soft by the time it has been roasted a few minutes but must not be charred, and also discard the skin and seeds of the chilli. Pound all ingredients together in a mortar. Add salt and 1 level dessertspoon of paprika (this is a Spanish recipe, and in Spain they use pimentón, which is the Spanish version of paprika). The sauce should be quite thick. Now add 4 or 5 tablespoons olive oil and a little vinegar. Press the sauce through a fine sieve. It should be bright red and quite smooth.

  Serve it in a bowl with hot or cold boiled lobster, or with any other fish you please.

  ROAST LOBSTERS

  This recipe was given in a book of family cookery called Spons Household Manual, published in the eighties. It is not intended to be taken seriously, but is given merely as an illustration of the methods, both lavish and somewhat barbaric, of those days.

  ‘Tie a large uncooked lobster to a long skewer, using plenty of pack-thread and attaching it firmly for a reason presently to be stated. Tie the skewer to a spit and put the lobster down to a sharp fire. Baste with champagne, butter, pepper, and salt. After a while the shell of the animal will become tender and will crumble between the fingers. When it comes away from the body the operation of roasting is complete. Take down the lobster, skim the fat from the gravy in the dripping pan, add the juice of a Seville orange, pepper, salt, and spice and serve in a lordly dish.’

  RAGOÛT OF SHELL FISH

  12 cooked scampi or Dublin Bay prawns, 2 quarts mussels, 6 scallops, ¼ lb mushrooms, ½ pint white wine, 1 tablespoon concentrated tomato purée, 1 tablespoon flour, 1 onion, 4 cloves of garlic, seasoning, herbs, 1 dessertspoon sugar, 1 oz butter, parsley.

  First of all split the scampi tails in half, retaining 6 halves in their shells for the garnish. From the remaining shells remove the flesh and cut it into fairly large pieces.

  In a fairly deep pan sauté a sliced onion in butter, when golden add the tomato purée, the chopped garlic, salt, pepper, and the sugar and herbs. Simmer 5 minutes. Stir in the flour. When thick pour over the heated wine, and cook this sauce for 15 to 20 minutes. Add the flesh of the scampi, the sliced mushrooms, the scallops cut into two rounds each, and the mussels, which should have been very carefully cleaned. Turn up the flame and cook until the mussels have opened. At the last minute add the reserved scampi in their shells. Turn into a tureen or deep dish, squeeze over a little lemon, sprinkle with parsley, and serve very hot, in soup plates.

  The black shells of the mussels and the pink of the prawns make a very decorative dish. The tails of large crawfish (langouste) can be used instead of the Dublin Bay prawns or scampi, but of course fewer will be needed, and they can be cut into four or six pieces each.

  Enough for 4 to 6 people as a first course.

  Sea and Freshwater Fish

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  The Fish of the Côte Niçoise

  ‘Nice is not without variety of fish; though they are not counted so good in their kinds as those of the ocean. Soals, and flat-fish in general, are scarce. Here are some mullets, both grey and red. We sometimes see the dory, which is called Saint-Pierre; with rock-fish, bonita, and mackerel. The gurnard appears pretty often; and there is plenty of a kind of large whiting, which eats pretty well, but has not the delicacy of that which is caught on our coast. One of the best fish of this country is called Le Loup, about two or three pounds in weight; white, firm, and well-flavoured. Another, no-way inferior to it, is the Moustel, about the same size; of a dark-grey in colour, and short blunt snout; growing thinner and flatter from the shoulders downwards, so as to resemble an eel at the tail. This cannot be the mustela of the antients, which is supposed to be the sea lamprey. Here too are found the vyvre, or, as we call it, weaver; remarkable for its long, sharp spines, so dangerous to the fingers of the fisherman. We have abundance of the saepia, or cuttle-fish, of which the people in this country make a delicate ragoût; as also of the polype de mer, which is an ugly animal, with long feelers, like tails, which they often wind about the legs of the fishermen. They are stewed with onions, and eat something like cow-heel. The market sometimes affords the écrevisse de mer, which is a lobster without claws, of a sweetish taste; and there are a few rock oysters, very small and very rank. Sometimes the fishermen find under water, pieces of a very hard cement, like plaister of Paris, which contain a kind of muscle, called la datte, from its resemblance to a date. These petrifications are commonly of a triangular form, and may weigh about twelve or fifteen pounds each; and one of them may contain a dozen of these muscles, which have nothing extraordinary in the taste or flavour, though extremely curious, as found alive and juicy in the heart of a rock, almost as hard as marble, without any visible communication with the air or water. I take it for granted, however, that the inclosing cement is porous, and admits the finer parts of the surrounding fluid. In order to reach the muscles, this cement must be broke with large hammers, and it may be truly said, the kernal is not worth the trouble of cracking the shell.* Among the fish of this country there is a very ugly animal of the eel species, which might pass for a serpent; it is of a dusky, black colour, marked with spots of yellow, about eighteen inches, or two feet long. The Italians call it murena; but whether it is the fish which had the same name among the antient Romans, I cannot pretend to determine. The antient murena was counted a great delicacy, and was kept in ponds for extraordinary occasions. Julius Caesar borrowed six thousand for one entertainment; but I imagined this was the river lamprey. The murena of this country is in no esteem, and only eaten by the poor people. Crawfish and trout are rarely found in the rivers among the mountains. The sword-fish is much esteemed in Nice, and called l’empereur, about six or seven feet long; but I have never seen it.† They are very scarce; and when taken, are generally concealed, because the head belongs to the commandant, who has likewise the privilege of buying the best fish at a very low price. For which reason, the choice pieces are concealed by the fishermen and sent privately to Piedmont or Genoa. But, the chief fisheries on this coast are of the sardines, anchovies, and tunny. These are taken in small quantities all the year; but spring and summer is the season when they mostly abound. In June and July a fleet of about fifty fishing-boats puts to sea every evening about eight o’clock, and catches anchovies in immense quantities. One small boat sometimes takes in one night twenty-five rup, amounting to six hundred weight; but it must be observed, that the pound here, as well as in other parts of Italy, consists but of twelve ounces. Anchovies, besides their making a considerable article in the commerce of Nice, are a great resource in all families. The noblesse and burgeois sup on sallad and anchovies, which are eaten on all their meagre days. The fishermen and mariners all along this coast have scarce any other food but dry bread, with a few pickled anchovies; and when the fish is eaten, they rub their crusts with the brine. Nothing can be more delicious than fresh anchovies fried in oil; I prefer them to the smelts of the Thames. I need not mention that the sardines and anchovies are caught in nets; salted, barrelled and exported into all the different kingdoms and states of Europe. The sardines, however, are largest and fittest in the month of September. A company of adventurers have farmed the tunny-fishery of the king, for six years; a monopoly, for which they pay about three thousand pounds sterling. They are at a very considerable expense for nets, boats, and attendance. Their nets are disposed in a very curious manner across the small bay of St Hospice, in this neighbourhood, where the fish chiefly resort. They are never removed, except in the winter, and when they want repair; but there are avenues for the fish to enter, and pass, from one inclosure to another. There is a man in a boat, who constantly keeps watch. When he perceives they are fairly entered, he has a method of shutting all the passes, and confining the fish to one apartment of the net, which is lifted up into the boat until the prisoners are taken and secured.
The tunny-fish generally runs from fifty to one hundred weight; but some of them are much larger. They are immediately gutted, boiled, and cut in slices. The guts and head afford oil; the slices are partly dried, to be eaten occasionally with oil and vinegar, or barrelled up in oil, to be exported. It is counted a delicacy in Italy and Piedmont, and tastes not unlike sturgeon. The famous pickle of the antients, called garum, was made of the gills and blood of the tunny or thynnus. There is a much more considerable fishery of it in Sardinia, where it is said to employ four hundred persons; but this belongs to the duc de St Pierre. In the neighbourhood of Villa Franca, there are people always employed in fishing for coral and sponge, which grow adhering to the rocks under water. Their methods do not savour much of ingenuity. For the coral, they lower down a swab, composed of what is called spunyarn on board our ships of war, hanging in distinct threads, and sunk by means of a great weight, which, striking against the coral in its descent, disengages it from the rocks; and some of the pieces being intangled among the threads of the swab, are brought up with it above water. The sponge is got by means of a cross-stick, fitted with hooks, which being lowered down, fastens upon it, and tears it from the rocks. In some parts of the Adriatic and Archipelago, these substances are gathered by divers, who can remain five minutes below water. But I will not detain you one minute longer; though I must observe, that there is plenty of fine samphire growing along all these rocks, neglected and unknown.’

  Travels Through France and Italy

  by Tobias Smollet

  BOUILLABAISSE

  The recipe for Bouillabaisse is already widely known, but as this is a book of Mediterranean cookery it must be included here, and I give the one from M. Reboul’s La Cuisinière Provençale:

  ‘The serving of Bouillabaisse as it is done at Marseille, under perfect conditions, requires at least seven or eight guests. The reason is this: as the preparation requires a large variety of so-called rock fish, it is as well to make it as lavishly as possible in order to use as many different kinds as are available. Several of these fish have a characteristic taste, a unique perfume. It is upon the combination of all these different tastes that the success of the operation depends. One can, it is true, make a passable Bouillabaisse with three or four kinds of fish, but the truth of the foregoing observation will be generally agreed upon.

  ‘To return to the operation. Having obtained the required fish such as crawfish, rascasse (this is a red spiny fish found only in the Mediterranean, it has no English equivalent), gurnet, weever, roucaou, John Dory, monk or angler fish, conger eel, whiting, bass, crab, etc., clean and scale them. Cut them in thick slices and put them on two different dishes; one for the firm fish – crawfish, rascasse, weever, gurnet, angler fish, crab; the other for the soft fish – bass, roucaou, John Dory, whiting.

  ‘Into a saucepan put three sliced onions, four crushed cloves of garlic, two peeled tomatoes, a branch of thyme, of fennel, and of parsley, a bay leaf and a piece of orange peel; arrange on the top the firm fish, pour over them half a glass of oil and well cover it all with boiling water. Season with salt, pepper, and saffron, and put on to a very rapid fire. The saucepan should be half in the fire – that is to say it should be half surrounded by the flames. When it has been boiling five minutes add the soft fish. Continue boiling rapidly for another five minutes, making ten minutes from the time it first came to the boil. Remove from the fire, pour the liquid on slices of bread half an inch thick arranged on a deep dish. On another platter arrange the fish. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve both together.

  ‘It should be noted that the cooking is done very quickly, it is one of the essential factors; in this way the oil amalgamates with the bouillon and produces a sauce which is perfectly amalgamated, otherwise it would separate from the liquid and swim on the surface which is not very appetizing.

  ‘We have rather prolonged this article but this demonstration was necessary; out often cookery books nine will give it incorrectly; when for example you are told to put all the fish into the pan together and cook rapidly for 15 minutes, it is impossible that a piece of John Dory or a slice of whiting which have been boiling rapidly for a quarter of an hour will still be presentable. Inevitably, they will be reduced to pulp, this fish being very delicate.

  ‘To make a rich Bouillabaisse one can first prepare a fish bouillon with the heads of the fish which are to go into the Bouillabaisse, a few small rock fish, two tomatoes, two leeks, and two cloves of garlic. Strain the bouillon and use it for the Bouillabaisse in place of the water.

  ‘Quite a passable Bouillabaisse can be made with freshwater fish, such as eels, large perch, medium-sized pike, grayling or trout, and eel-pout; a dozen prawns can take the place of crawfish. This will not of course be comparable with the authentic Bouillabaisse of the Mediterranean, but at least it will conjure up memories….’

  FISH PLAKÍ

  This is a typical Greek way of cooking fish and appears over and over again in different forms.

  Wash a large fish, such as bream, chicken turbot, or John Dory. Sprinkle with pepper and salt and lemon juice, and put in a baking dish. Fry some onions, garlic and plenty of parsley in olive oil; when the onions are soft add some peeled tomatoes. Fry gently for a few minutes, add a little water, simmer for a few minutes longer, cover the fish with this mixture, add a glass of white wine, some more sliced tomatoes and thinly sliced lemon. Put in a moderate oven and cook about 45 minutes or longer if the fish is large.

  RED MULLET, GRILLED

  Grill the cleaned mullets (do not remove the liver) with a little olive oil and serve them with butter into which you have mixed some chopped fennel and a drop of lemon juice.

  COLD RED MULLET NIÇOISE

  Brown the fish in olive oil; season with salt and pepper and put them in a fireproof dish. Arrange round them some roughly chopped tomatoes, a little minced onion, half a dozen stoned black olives, and a chopped clove of garlic. Pour over half a glass of white wine. Cover the dish and cook in a moderate oven. When they are cold, sprinkle over some parsley and arrange a few slices of oranges along the fish.

  MULET AU VIN BLANC

  The grey mullet (carefully cleaned) is stuffed with a mixture of fennel, parsley, chopped garlic, and breadcrumbs.

  Place it on a bed of sliced onions already melted in olive oil, add a glass of white wine, and cover with breadcrumbs.

  Cook in the oven.

  BEIGNETS DE SARDINES

  Bone some fresh sardines, flatten them out and dip them in frying batter in which you have crushed a small piece of garlic.

  Fry in hot oil.

  MAQUEREAUX AUX PETITS POIS

  3 or 4 mackerel, 1 onion, 1 tablespoon olive oil, 1 tablespoon tomato purée, 2 cloves of garlic, bay leaf, fennel, thyme, parsley, 2½ lb of fresh peas.

  Chop the onion finely and sauté it in a braising pan with the olive oil. As soon as it turns golden, add the tomato purée, give it a stir, and put in the garlic and the herbs. Pour over 2½ pints of boiling water, season with salt, pepper, and a pinch of saffron, and put in the peas.

  When they are half cooked, add 3 or 4 mackerel cut in 2 or 3 pieces, according to their size. Bring them to the boil, and when the peas and the mackerel are cooked, take out the mackerel and put them on the serving dish.

  In another dish arrange some slices of bread, pour over them the peas and the sauce, and serve them all together.

  ANGUILLA IN TIELLA AL PISELLI

  This is an Italian dish of eel cooked in a frying pan with green peas. Cut the eel into thick slices, and put it into the pan with about ¼ lb of bacon cut into squares, and cook until the eel is lightly browned; then add 1½ lb of shelled green peas, raw, just cover with a thin tomato sauce, season with salt, pepper, and sugar, and simmer until the peas are done.

  TRUITE SAUCE AUX NOIX

  Put ½ lb of peeled walnuts through a mincing machine, then pound them in the mortar with a little salt, adding gradually a cup of water and a little vinegar, stirring all the time as for a m
ayonnaise.

  Serve the sauce with a cold trout which has been simply poached in a court bouillon.

  BRANDADE DE MORUE

  Another triumph of Provençal cooking, designed to abate the rigours of the Friday fast.

  Take some good salt cod, about 2 lb for 6 people, which has been soaked in cold water for 12 hours. Clean it well and put it into a pan of cold water; cover, and as soon as it comes to the boil remove from the fire. Carefully remove all the bones and put the pieces into a pan in which you have already crushed up a clove of garlic and placed over a very low flame. In two other small saucepans have some milk and some olive oil, both keeping warm, but not hot. You now add the oil and the milk alternately to the fish, spoon by spoon, stirring hard the whole time, with a wooden spoon, and crushing the cod against the sides of the pan. (Hence the name brandade – branler: to crush or break.) When the whole mixture has attained the appearance of a thick cream the operation is finished; it should be observed however that all three ingredients must be kept merely tepid, or the oil will disintegrate and ruin the whole preparation. Also the stirring and breaking of the cod must be done with considerable energy; some people prefer to pound the cod in a mortar previous to adding the oil and the milk.

  Brandade can be served hot or cold, if hot in a vol au vent or little pâtés, garnished with a few slices of truffle or simply with triangles of fried bread.

  RAÏTO

  Raïto is one of the traditional dishes of Christmas Eve in Provence.

  It is a ragoût made of onions, tomatoes, garlic, pounded walnuts, thyme, rosemary, fennel, parsley, bay leaves, red wine, capers, and black olives, all simmered in olive oil.

  In this sauce either dried salt cod or eels are cooked.

  GRILLADE AU FENOUIL

  This famous Provençal dish is usually made with a loup de mer, a kind of sea bass, one of the best fishes of the Mediterranean. A red mullet can be cooked in the same way. The cleaned fish is scored across twice on each side, salted, and coated with olive oil or melted butter. Lay a bed of dried fennel stalks in the grilling pan, put the fish on the grid, and grill it, turning it over two or three times. When it is cooked put the fennel underneath the fish in a fireproof serving dish; warm some Armagnac or brandy in a ladle, set light to it, and pour it over the fish. The fennel will catch fire, and give off a fine aromatic scent which flavours the fish.