Choice Cuts

by Mark Kurlansky

  Now the bacalao is ready for the final stage of preparation. We will review the method called a la vizcaina first, given its excellence and popularity. This sauce essentially consists of a purée of onions and choricero peppers, using lard and bacon grease as fat. In general, all red sauces are referred to as a la vizcaina, but this is a gross error. After consulting various books and recipes I remain convinced—despite the objections of others—that in the sauce properly called a la vizcaina, the only red element should be that of the choricero pepper, not tomatoes or sweet peppers. The recipe of the old Bilbao restaurant El Amparo, in my opinion, is not only the most genuine and authentic but also the best.

  The El Amparo preparation begins with onions (not sweet) that are chopped and slowly cooked in a casserole with lard. The addition of olive oil is not obligatory. A little parsley, ham, and black pepper may be added. The procedure must be gradual so that any small amount of sugar in the onion does not become caramelized.

  After about three hours the mass is considerably reduced, boiling water is added, and it continues to boil for two more hours. It is then strained through a fine colander, and the pulp of choriceros—one pepper per slice of fish—is added. (Prior to their addition, the choriceros are soaked in water for about twelve hours.) Two hard-cooked egg yolks are mixed with water and a little bacon grease and then added to the mixture. The fish slices are placed in a clay casserole skin side up, without stacking; the purée is added, and the dish is set to simmer slowly until the ingredients become well integrated.

  The dish improves upon this slow reheating. It seems as if, in the time lapse between preparation and reheating, the flavors of the sauce and the fish are intensified. With fresh fish the interchange of flavors is quick, but it seems as if the cells of the cured cod are a bit inert due to the tempering process.

  There are at least three other great recipes in which tempered cod is used. These authentic Basque preparations are briefly described below.

  Cod al pil-pil is boiled down by putting slices of fish in the finest olive oil and giving them a treatment similar to that used on young eels. The oil should remain transparent. Because of the simplicity of this method, the fish must be of the highest quality. There exists no sauce which can cover up any inherent defects.

  Bacalao ligado, frequently confused with bacalao al pil-pil, is made with a sauce that is similar to that of salsa verde, which we mention in the section on hake. In the case of cod, some of the water in which the fish has been soaked is added to the dish because the slices of cod do not contain enough water to produce an emulsion despite prolonged soaking.

  The third and, for me, the finest method for preparing cod is bacalao al Club Ranero. This recipe is very well described in the Enciclopedia culinaria. It is a bacalao ligado to which is added a fried mixture of green peppers, onions, and tomatoes. The mixture is fried well, but care is taken that the elements do not fall apart. The recipe is a creation of the French chef Caveriviere and, although it is not well known and of foreign origin, I have included it in the recipe section, considering it to be the finest way of preparing cod in the Basque manner.

  —from Alimentos y guisos en la Cocina Vasca, 1983,

  translated from the Spanish by Gretchen Holbert

  TABITHA TICKLETOOTH ON THE DREAD FRIED SOLE

  In 1860, when Tabitha Tickletooth’s The Dinner Question was published, the title page featured a photograph of Tabitha, looking a bit grumpy in lace and frilly bonnet. Tabitha’s real name was Charles Selby, a popular London comic actor and the first known cross-dressing cookbook author.

  —M.K.

  This is the fatal dish that has driven hundreds of “well-to-do” husbands to dine at their clubs, and is looked upon by the working man as analogous in its want of toothsomeness with the cold shoulder and sickly hash of washing days. Let me endeavour to show the wives of both conditions of housekeepers, who have hitherto by their want of knowledge in the preparation, and skill in the panipulation, of this too-often spoiled homely dish, scared their liege lords from the domestic board, how, as Juliet says of her truant Romeo, to “Lure the tassel-gentles back again.”

  Choose your fish (if possible) yourself; you will easily know if it be fresh (which it must be, or the best of cookery will be thrown away) by the edges of the mouth being “pinky” (they are white when stale), and the fibre, in kitchen parlance the flesh, being elastic. Take care, by the way, that you have the identical fish you choose, for fishmongers have been known occasionally to practise sleight of hand in the skinning; beware also, if you buy a “pair,” of having one fresh and the other stale—a trick too often played on the unwary.

  Preparation.

  After skinning, cutting off the tails and fins, and “gutting,” which somewhat unpleasant operations are generally performed by the fishmonger, but I would advise you to effect them yourself about an hour before you begin your cooking, which will have the double advantage of keeping the “flesh” crisp and preventing the aforesaid sleight of hand, wash, and wipe your fish quite dry, with a dry clean cloth; then fold them in another cloth, equally clean and dry, dividing each with a fold, and place them aside until the time arrives for putting them in the pan.

  Now cut out the crumb of a stale loaf (a penny one will be sufficient for “a pair” of moderate size),* put it in the centre of a fine clean towel, gather the corners in one hand (as you would when tying up a pudding), then with the other hand break up the bread and rub the pieces together (in the bag formed by the towel) until they are nearly reduced to powder. This you will find to be a cleaner and more expeditious method than grating, for the grater is seldom in working order, and does not do its work so evenly.

  Put the crumbs into a shallow dish, and proceed to the next manœuvre, which is to beat up an egg (in the same way I have described for the veal cutlet), and the accessories are ready.

  Your fire and pan being in working order (see cutlet directions), unroll the cloth from your fish, give them a slight sprinkle of flour from the dredging box, to absorb any remaining moisture and form a foundation for the egg and bread crumbing, as painters size their canvas before they commence their colouring, then draw them (you may, if you prefer it, use a paste brush) first through the beaten-up egg,** and then through the crumbs, taking care that every part be thoroughly covered with both. Then half fill your pan with the best Lucca oil, lard, or sweet beef dripping, and pray attend to the next most important piece of information.

  The great secret of frying soles well is to use plenty of fat, for if you do not have a full half inch of it above them when they are in the pan, they will either burn, be fried too brown, or be too greasy.***

  Now take them by the heads and tails, and drop them carefully into the pan (you have been already told how to know if the fat is at the proper temperature), which shake to prevent sticking and burning. The first side will take about five minutes, and the second from three and a half to four; but to make sure that all is going on well, you may now and then (after giving the pan a shake) lift the fish a little with your slice, to see if it be getting brown. When it is so (mind it must be light brown), it is time to turn, which you must do cleverly with your slice. Proceed in the same way with the second side, and then take up; but before dishing, drain for a few minutes on a strainer, or a sheet of white blotting paper, then serve on a hot dish (with a strainer at the bottom). Garnish with a sprig or two of crisped parsley,* and then you have your soles dry, crisp, well coloured, delicately flavoured, and pleasing alike to the eye and the palate.

  Plain melted butter is the best sauce (for which see my receipt further on); but many prefer a more expensive one, like the tea at the cockney refreshment establishments at Gravesend, made with shrimps (for which also see my receipt).

  Anchovy, Hervey, Worcester, or Reading sauces should be on the table to suit all tastes; but I would recommend, if you wish to have the sweet flavour of the fish, nothing but plain melted butter.

  When you have dished up your fish, strain the fat
you have fried it in, and put it aside in a jar, as it will serve several times (of course for nothing else but fish); but if you can afford it, have fresh material every time.

  Very large soles should be cut into three or four pieces (before the egg and bread crumbing), or “filleted,” which is effected by passing a sharp knife down the centre and the inner edge of the fins, and tearing the “flesh” from the bones. This is a French method, pursued in clubs and large establishments; but for homely kitchens it will be found extravagant.

  —from The Dinner Question, 1860

  ALEXANDRE DUMAS PÈRE

  ON CRABS

  When trying to understand the peculiar race stereotyping of this entry it is important to remember that Alexandre Dumas was the Haitian-born son of a mulatto general. The father was the offspring of a French aristocrat and a slave girl, and the Dumas family for a time was based in the southwestern Haitian town of Jeremie. No doubt Dumas, in his old age, remembered the popularity of land crabs in the Caribbean.

  —M.K.

  There are several species of crab. However, only the large crab of Brittany and the crapelet of the Channel are worthy to appear on our tables, despite their being difficult to digest; their eggs are better and negroes feed on them. The people of the Antilles live almost exclusively on crabs.

  Crabs are cooked in salted water, like lobsters and prawns, with unsalted butter, parsley and a bunch of leeks. Let them cool in their cooking liquid. Then remove carefully the white meat. Take out with a spoon the creamy soft roe and mix it with the cleaned meat, adding watercress, coarse pepper, a little virgin olive oil and a little verjuice. Garnish your platter with the two big claws and serve it as a very elegant rôt, especially during Lent.

  —from Le Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine, 1873,

  translated from the French by Alan and Jane Davidson

  PETER LUND SIMMONDS ON LAND CRABS

  The flesh of all crustaceous animals, although in great request, is rather difficult of digestion; and much of it cannot be eaten with impunity. There are classes of persons who are as averse to use shell-fish for food, as a Mahommedan or Mussulman are to partake of pork. It is therefore curious to reflect how, and where, the thousands of tons of crustacea and shell-fish taken to Billingsgate and Hungerford markets are disposed of. Lobsters, cray-fish, prawns, shrimps, oysters, mussels, periwinkles, and whelks, are there every morning in great abundance, and the high retail prices they fetch, show that this description of food must be well relished by the Londoners.

  The land crabs of the West Indies are an esteemed delicacy, and the ravenous pigs feed on them with equal avidity to the great danger of their health.

  I need not here advert to the migratory habits of the crabs, to their uniting at certain periods in vast numbers, and moving in the most direct course to the sea, marching in squadrons and lines, and halting twice a-day for feeding and repose. These movements may often be seen in Jamaica, and other West Indian islands, where millions on millions string themselves along the coast on progresses from the hills to the sea, and from the sea to the hills.

  The reader of Bishop Heber’s Indian Journal will remember his account of the land crabs at Poonah. ‘All the grass land generally through the Deckan swarms with a small land crab, which burrows in the ground, and runs with considerable swiftness, even when encumbered with a bundle of food almost as big as itself. This food is grass or the green stalks of rice; and it is amusing to see them sitting as it were upright, to cut their hay with their sharp pincers, then waddling off with the sheaf to their holes as quietly as their side-long pace will carry them.’

  This is not the same land crab of which we are speaking, but it is a graphic picture of the Gecarcina ruricola, in its habit of feeding.

  They cut up roots and leaves, and feed on the fallen fruit of trees; but we have little more than conjecture for the cause of their occasional deleterious qualities. Impressed with the notion that the crabs owe their hurtful qualities to the fruit of the manchineel tree, Sloane imagined that he had explained the fatal accidents which have occurred to some persons after eating them, from neglect, or inattentiveness to precaution in cleaning their interior and removing the half digested particles of the fruit. It has been ascertained that they feed on such dangerous vegetables of the morass as the Anona palustris, a fruit exceedingly narcotic. It is well enough known that the morass crab is always to be suspected. The land crabs, however, collect leaves less for food than to envelop themselves in, when they moult. After concealment for a time within their burrows, they come forth in those thin teguments forming a red tense pellicle, similar to wet parchment, and are more delicate in that condition, and more prized for the table. The white crabs are the most bulky of the tribe, and are the least esteemed, and the most mistrusted.

  Land-crabs, says a Jamaica paper, of March last, are to be seen on the highways between this, Montego Bay, and Gum Island, just like bands of soldiers, marching to a battle-point of concentration. This bids fair to supply the epicure, at an easy rate, with this class of crustacea. It is one of the most remarkable, for it is composed of animals breathing by means of branchiæ or gills, and yet essentially terrestrial; so much so, indeed, that they would perish from asphyxia if submerged for any length of time.

  I select Browne’s account of the habits of the black or mountain crab, because he resided many years in Jamaica, and seems to have lost no opportunity of making personal observations; and his remarks tally with my own experience, from three years’ residence in Jamaica.

  ‘These creatures are very numerous in some parts of Jamaica, as well as in the neighbouring islands, and on the coast of the main continent; they are generally of a dark purple colour, but this often varies, and you frequently find them spotted, or entirely of another hue. They live chiefly on dry land, and at a considerable distance from the sea, which, however, they visit once a year to wash off their spawn, and afterwards return to the woods and higher lands, where they continue for the remaining part of the season; nor do the young ones ever fail to follow them, as soon as they are able to crawl. The old crabs generally regain their habitations in the mountains, which are seldom within less than a mile, and not often above three from the shore, by the latter end of June, and then provide themselves with convenient burrows, in which they pass the greatest part of the day, going out only at night to feed. In December and January they begin to be in spawn, and are then very fat and delicate, but continue to grow richer until the month of May, which is the season for them to wash off their eggs. They begin to move down in February, and are very much abroad in March and April, which seems to be the time for the impregnation of their eggs, being then frequently found fixed together; but the males, about this time, begin to lose their flavour and richness of their juices. The eggs are discharged from the body through two small round holes situated at the sides, and about the middle of the under shell; these are only large enough to admit one at a time, and as they pass they are entangled in the branched capillaments, with which the under side of the apron is copiously supplied, to which they stick by the means of their proper gluten, until the creatures reach the surf, where they wash them all off, and then they begin to return back again to the mountains. It is remarkable that the bag or stomach of this creature changes its juices with the state of the body; and while poor is full of black, bitter, disagreeable fluid, which diminishes as it fattens, and at length acquires a delicate, rich flavour. About the month of July or August, the crabs fatten again and prepare for moulting, filling up their burrows with dry grass, leaves, and abundance of other materials: when the proper period comes, each retires to his hole, shuts up the passage, and remains quite inactive until he gets rid of his old shell, and is fully provided with a new one. How long they continue in this state is uncertain, but the shell is observed to burst, both at the back and sides, to give a passage to the body, and it extracts its limbs from all the other parts gradually afterwards. At this time, the fish is in the richest state, and covered only with a tender memb
raneous skin, variegated with a multitude of reddish veins; but this hardens gradually after, and becomes soon a perfect shell like the former; it is, however, remarkable, that during this change, there are some stony concretions always formed in the bag, which waste and dissolve gradually, as the creature forms and perfects its new crust. A wonderful mechanism! This crab runs very fast, and always endeavours to get into some hole or crevice on the approach of danger; nor does it wholly depend on its art and swiftness, for while it retreats it keeps both claws expanded, ready to catch the offender if he should come within its reach; and if it succeeds on these occasions, it commonly throws off the claw, which continues to squeeze with incredible force for near a minute after; while he, regardless of the loss, endeavours to make his escape, and to gain a more secure or more lonely covert, contented to renew his limb with his coat at the ensuing change; nor would it grudge to lose many of the others to preserve the trunk entire, though each comes off with more labour and reluctance, as their numbers lessen.’

  There are several varieties of land crabs, such as the large white, the mulatto, the black, and the red. The black and red crabs are most excellent eating: when in season, the females are full of a rich glutinous substance, called the eggs, which is perfectly delicious. Epicurean planters, in some of the West Indian Islands, have crab pens, (after the manner of fowl coops,) for fattening these luxuries. The best manner of dressing them is to pick out all the flesh from the shell, making it into a stew, with plenty of cayenne pepper, dishing it up in the shell; in this way they are little inferior to turtle. They are usually simply boiled, or roasted in the embers, by which they are deprived of their luscious flavour, and become not only insipid in taste but disgusting to look at.