We all murmured in the way that gastronomes do as we assessed the dish for the first category on our checklist: appearance and presentation. The thing was art itself, exquisitely composed and conceived to gladden the heart and quicken the taste buds. I was instantly ravenous. ‘Shame about the platter,’ said Nicolás. ‘Tuna should never be served on anything but white plates. The blue makes it look grey and unappetising.’
He did not offer this as a suggestion – it was a fact.
Everybody agreed enthusiastically, though I kept my own counsel. I still liked the blue plate … but of course I could see that white might have enhanced the look of the dish a little better. There were five categories: presentation, taste and texture, ingredients, technical skill and authenticity, and five points was the maximum for each. I took up my scorecard and pen and gave it four. Actually, I figured the presentation was worth a five, but I didn’t want to look too much of a fool. Weak and vacillating of me, I know … but if I can muster an excuse it’s that I was a little unsure as to my qualifications for inclusion on this jury. I cook a little, and enjoy good food, but I’m not the sort of chap who over the years has eaten scores of, say, Parpatana de atún rojo al 10rf con cous-cous de frutos secos y torrija salada, and assessed the merits of each. And, as for its authenticity … well, I gave it five; the cook knew a lot more than I did about authenticity. Quality of ingredients, too: I figured you’d be a fool to enter a dish in a cookery contest and use a week-old fish, second-rate ingredients, so I gave all the ingredients a five. Then at last came the moment we were all waiting for. The tasting.
The fabulous-looking parpatana sat on its inappropriate blue platter in the centre of the large round table. We, the jurors, stood around the table, bobbing and jostling to and fro as we considered the dish from different angles. Some were taking photos of the dish with their mobile phones. Finally, we had seen enough and it was time to demolish the exquisitely crafted composition … and eat it.
With our forks we lunged for the centre of the table and speared first a piece of parpatana – oh, Jeezus, it was the most heavenly thing that had ever passed my lips – then a pinch of the nutty couscous – the word ‘divine’ came to mind – and finally we cut up the savoury torrija toast and each conveyed a little piece to our mouths. Words started to fail me. I was ecstatic; the dish was a masterpiece. I reached for my card and gave it the maximum five points for flavour and texture. As for technical skill, well, obviously another five. It was looking good for dish #1: a four and four fives. I looked at it and felt a bit bad about the four, so I put in a little plus sign by the five for taste and texture. Perhaps I could reassess when we reached the end. To remind me, I added a little arrow going up.
The end, though, was a long way off. We had just eaten the first dish and all my superlatives were exhausted. There remained twenty-two offerings to follow. Lord knows where things were going to go.
After Nicolás and me and the food critic and the bouncy journalist had had our fill, there was not much left on the plate. The scrapings were cleaned up by Michael’s jury, who left the plate absolutely bare. ‘Just getting into the swing of the thing,’ they said.
Then the first dish of cocina innovadora arrived. The very sight of it made us gasp as one: Raviolis de ventresca de atún y puerros con esferificación natural de salicornia y aire de limón. We all gravitated to the innovators’ table, our forks twitching apprehensively, waiting for the jury to finish their appraisal of the presentation, and after the innovative jurors had done their stuff we all fell upon those ravioli as one, licking our lips and groaning with delight. Not a stitch, nor a stain, remained on the plate. I had never eaten such food.
We all took congratulatory sips of water.
Next up, dish #3, was another conventional: Filetitos de atún a la menier con escalibada de la huerta de Conil. We all looked at it for a bit; it looked good. A five, I thought.
‘Hurry up,’ said Danny the Chef. ‘Our next plate is about to come.’
Once again we conventional jurors attacked the composition, followed eagerly and definitively by the innovators. It was incomparably delicious. Five … with a little plus sign by it. I furtively added another plus sign to the parpatana. As for the technique, well it was flawless: there was just enough moistness, just enough crunch – another five. Five for ingredients: it was a fresh fish and the vegetables were excellent … And five for authenticity, obviously. Hmm … that made five fives. It was certainly good, but it was no better than the parpatana; and what if there were better concoctions to come? Surreptitiously I added a squiggly arrow pointing down, and then, as an aide-mémoire an R and an L, meaning ‘Reappraise Later’.
The tide of jurors, convencionales and innovativos, sloshed back to the other table to check out the next innovative offering. Each man – for we were all men – brandished his cutlery, his glass of water and his mobile telephone. This time it was that old favourite, Tarantelo de atún braseado sobre lecho de cocochas napado con salsa suave de atún … where tarantelo is the side of the tuna beneath the lomo and the solomillo, while a lecho de cocochas is a bed of cheeks, probably tuna cheeks in this case, all topped off with a suave sauce of tuna. Most of these terms don’t appear in the dictionary, though, so if the truth be told it was anybody’s guess.
The dish was certainly a looker, an opinion shared by most of us, judging from the gasps of amazement and admiration. The pens scribbled on the scorecards, then the forks massacred the delicate balance of the presentation and we were wreathed for a bit in critical murmurings of approbation or disdain. The edge of our ravenous appetites was slightly dulled by this time and it was more a matter of poking about and nibbling, rather than the voracious devouring that had gone before. It still tasted pretty good – straight fives in my opinion – but then so had everything.
I looked over at the Doctor, giving him a grin of collusion. He had a glass of fino – dry sherry – in his hand. He grinned back. And then I saw that all the innovators were drinking fino. Danny the Chef, it appeared, had called for wine to sharpen the innovators’ dwindling senses, and his call had been heeded and wine produced. We, the conventionals, were racked with indignation, until within a minute or so there were a couple of bottles of sherry on our table, too. Things were looking up again. The slight decline in our enthusiasms, engendered by the inordinate piggery with which we had treated the first four dishes, returned instantly to a gastronomic euphoria. Now, instead of sousing ourselves with water, we could hone our senses to the sharpest pitch by steeping them in the pale gold nectar of a Manzanilla. We jurors slapped one another manfully on the back and bent our shoulders to the wheel; only thirty-six more dishes to go …
Dishes #5 and #6, which followed the introduction of the sherry, were greeted with howls of unanimous acclaim. More straight fives on my scorecard. There were a lot of straight fives on my scorecard, I reflected, albeit fives mitigated and modulated by a lot of unfathomable arrows, pluses and minuses, random letters, and other less familiar mathematical symbols. The scorecard was starting already to look a bit like the theory of relativity.
The food was just so good; I had never eaten anything quite like it, and as a consequence my critical faculties were reduced to ecstatic exclamations. Straight five continued to follow straight five. Later an unfortunate oversight, where some bleach had tainted one of the dishes, caused me to drop it down to a three for taste. Bleach tastes detestable, but even there the glorious taste of the tuna shone through. But then I felt sorry for the cook whose hopes had been dashed by somebody’s failure to rinse the plate properly, so I added a couple of pluses, an ascending arrow and a < sign, and then a few annotations. ‘JABOB’ it said, which I could only assume when I looked at it later meant ‘Just A Bit Of Bleach’.
The dishes kept on coming, and as each jury passed the ten mark, more bottles of fino were called for to rouse our flagging spirits. No longer were we wolfing down the leftovers of the innovators, nor were they besieging our table for the scraps of conventio
nality. Indeed, the wolfing had turned to pecking. The immaculate tablecloths and napkins were thickly caked in the droppings from our unsteady forks and it was getting hard to find a place for the food for the heaps of bottles arrayed upon the tables. My back and hip were aching from all that bobbing about and bending half over, and there was a feeling of slight biliousness creeping upon me. The cooking was still world-class, but I was beginning to wish I wasn’t here.
Our eleventh dish was the inevitable Atún con chocolate. I was not sure I could face it. I had to say it looked a lot better than you would expect of such unpromising bedfellows, though I gave it four for presentation because there was a small smear of chocolate where I didn’t think there ought to be one. On the other hand, taste and texture were unquestionably excellent … so, five and some never-to-be-deciphered squiggles. Authenticity … hmm, I decided to award it four, but qualified by a question mark and a symbol that may have been a reference to the Incas.
The more temperate scores that now graced my scorecard were a consequence of several factors. First, a feeling that my undiluted enthusiasm, reflected in an unbroken procession of straight fives, was not going to get us far in choosing the winner – and a winner there had to be – this was, after all, a concurso and a concurso by its nature has a winner. Second, a slightly reduced enthusiasm for tuna, as a consequence of overexposure. As yet this diminishing had not gone as far as, say, never wanting to see another dish of tuna as long as I lived, but that was not unimaginable. And third, I had surreptitiously had a look at Danny the Chef’s scorecard, which he had inadvertently left face up on the table as he poured everybody another slug of sherry. Danny the Chef, who as I have said before clearly knew his stuff when it came to the preparation of tuna, had carefully filled in his card with an eloquent array of ones and twos and threes.
By this time we were round about dish #13, and from there on a study of my scorecard reveals a more sober approach than the mindless enthusiasm that guided my judgement in the earlier stages of the competition. You might suggest that this is not fair, and of course it’s not bloody fair, but such is the nature of these contests. You would have thought – as I had ventured earlier – that those who had the good fortune to present their offerings at the beginning would inevitably win, for there lies the logic … but, if you’ll bear with me, events were to prove otherwise.
Although it was only May, it was hot, and hotter still in the jurors’ enclosure, which was right beside the kitchen. The public outside, now really well oiled and reaching a pitch of anticipation, both for the results of the competition and, indeed, lunch, sounded like Armageddon. Those jurors who were wearing ties and jackets had taken them off, and a reeling sense of bonhomie, mixed with a growing nausea, prevailed.
Things calmed down noticeably with the arrival of conventional dish #14, the refreshingly unequivocal Atún a la antigua – tuna at the antique. I imagined, to my own hoots of private mirth, a large fish running amok amongst the Meissen and Ming. It was OK … I gave it a four, a couple of fives, a three and a two. This last, the lowest score on my card, was prompted by a swift look at Nicolás’s card. He had given it a one, so I, who had been about to give it the customary five, dropped to the two. Then I felt bad about it because by this time I had forgotten what that particular category was about anyway, so I mitigated my disdain with another arrow pointing up.
Christ, there were another nine dishes to go. I was feeling distinctly queasy – and even my expert co-jurors were beginning to look a little green around the gills. I hazarded a guess that most of us had more or less lost our critical faculties at this point and were coasting along in survival mode, just hoping to get to the end without besmirching ourselves.
There was a hush … the kitchen door flew open … and in came innovative dish #15. We all gathered in dumbstruck silence to consider this outrageous offering. The dish was presented on a mirror; in a corner of the mirror was a rack containing three test tubes, two of which were filled with coloured liquid, while the third was full of swirling smoke. Nearby was a fine glass retort – looking much like one of those bottles you have to pee in when you can’t get out of bed – which was full of lurid green liquid. A raised glass plate was arrayed with pieces of raw tuna and other indecipherable stuff, all disposed to resemble things that they were not, and the reflections of these in the mirror made the whole improbable composition even more bizarre. As a surreal creation it was fabulous, but how would one go about eating it? The innovators discussed this problem amongst themselves and, by judicious pouring and sniffing and sipping, found a way. And, in spite of the torpor that was overtaking all of us now, they pronounced that it was every bit as extraordinary to eat as it looked … and it looked like a winner.
Oh, how we envied the innovators, who now had only two dishes left to taste, whereas we had no fewer than nine more to go. The hot morning moved on to a hot afternoon as dish followed dish for us to eye up unenthusiastically and then peck at. The quality did not flag, and there was even a light dish – some sort of foam – that afforded us the briefest respite. And then finally, just when we knew we could take no more, the last conventional dish arrived on our table. Talk about the short straw … of course, the last entrant wouldn’t stand a chance, given the bloated, cynical, bilious state in which we the jurors now found ourselves. We stared at the thing through dull fishy eyes, clutching our stomachs, burbling quietly to ourselves, and wishing to die.
What the hell was this? A simple boat of coarse china sat on the table. It was stacked with hot grey charcoal, and perched above the coals on lollipop sticks were eight unadorned cubes of tuna, sizzling in the heat.
It was perfection itself, and simplicity … and it was the winner, being the only dish of the day to get straight fives from all four jurors. The winner of the innovators was the crazy concoction with the test tubes.
‘Lunch, anybody?’ suggested some wag.
It was over; we had made it. We were released to mingle with the public and look at the display of all the dishes with the name of the chef and restaurant. Fortunately, perhaps, for our reputations, Cuqui – who turned out to have been responsible for that first dish, Parpatana de atún rojo al 10rf con couscous de frutos secos y torrija salada – did not win.
As the Doctor and I waddled back through the town, heading for the hotel for a siesta, we passed a tempting-looking ice-cream parlour. It was just what we needed and we both sat down and guzzled chocolate ice creams washed down with coffee.
Then we decided to go for a swim … perhaps, being composed largely of tuna by now, we felt an urge to get into their element. There was nobody else swimming – it was, after all, early May – and the inhabitants of the beach watched, appalled, as the two bloated, old, gay ice-cream salesmen stripped to their grutts and wobbled into the sea. Childishly excited as a consequence of our relief at having come through the ordeal, we played at being tuna.
At about nine o clock that night we hit the town again. We went straight to Cuqui’s. She was expecting us at her tiny restaurant, La Mejorana. We sat in the street and drank wine and ate even more of the most exquisite tuna.
Next morning I was raring to go for the long drive back to Granada, with a break for breakfast in Medina Sidonia. But for some reason Medina Sidonia didn’t appeal and we drove on by without the much-vaunted pig fat breakfast. Perhaps we’ll stop in Medina Sidonia next time.
CHAPTER NINE
CURES FOR SERPENTS
HIGH IN THE ALPUJARRAS, a four-hour walk uphill from our farm, through the wildest of mountain scenery, lies a village which is blessed by the presence of a curandera, which is to say something between a faith healer and a barefoot doctor.
As a nation dons the cloak of modern urban existence, such people and their ancient gifts tend to vanish, but in the Spanish countryside today the tradition of healers is very much alive. If anything, there has been a resurgence in recent decades, now that they can practise without persecution. In Franco’s time, curanderos were frequently beaten a
nd jailed by the Guardia Civil at the instigation of his henchman, the Church – who, typically, felt that the monopoly on miracles should be theirs alone.
Now, our local curandera was on my mind because I had just heard a story about a London journalist who had been on holiday in her village. The poor man suffered from eczema, and, hearing about the curandera and her particular gift for curing skin diseases, was intrigued enough to pay her a visit. Within three days she had cured his eczema, simply by stroking the affected part. Fascinated and impressed, and of course enormously relieved, he wrote the episode up in his column. This came to the notice of a man who was unfortunate enough to have shingles in, of all places, his eye. The doctors had told him that there was nothing they could do and he might as well get used to the idea of losing the eye. He made some enquiries and came to the Alpujarras, where, after three sessions with the curandera, the shingles simply disappeared.
Of course, there are plenty of stories like this, but they are not necessarily about healers in your own backyard, and it was the backyard aspect of the story that got me thinking. For I myself had been suffering from a skin complaint, albeit – unlike the journalist and his follower – neither shingles nor eczema. No, my complaint was of an altogether more delicate nature – and afflicted that part of my person of which we do not speak.
To put the matter bluntly, I had a horribly inflamed dick.
Like all the best medical conditions, mine had a good and chequered history. It began back in the mists of time, almost a quarter of a century ago, when I was fortunate enough to enjoy the favours of a lady whose name conveniently escapes me. During the course of a relationship that pertained more to the nether abdomen than to the heart, she inadvertently left me with a painful little memento.
Last Days of the Bus Club Page 10
