Mediterranean Summer

by David Shalleck

  Rick was in a funk. But it wasn’t only about the owners. The old Rick would have breezed his way through that problem. Beneath that devil-may-care exterior was a devoted father terrified of losing contact with his beloved son. The farther south we sailed, the more difficulty he was having getting his ex-wife on the phone, and she of course controlled his access to their child. He began to express the idea that his ex-wife was deliberately keeping his son from speaking to him.

  With Ischia as our base, the early itinerary included calls at the volcano-crest island of Ponza and then on to beautiful Capri. We were to continue around the Sorrento Peninsula to the Amalfi coast for a stop at Positano, then we would go on to Sardinia. I hoped that once in the Amalfi area, I would have time to visit my friends at the Michelin two-star Ristorante Don Alfonso, where I had done one of my favorite stages. So much had happened since I walked through their doors I wanted to brag a little bit, to show everyone how far I had come.

  I replayed in my mind that first bus ride from the train station to Don Alfonso as the bus climbed and swung around countless hairpin curves in a channel-like road cut out of the steep terrain behind Sorrento. Clusters of wildflowers poured over the stone walls that flanked the roadsides and looked as if they had been laid block by stone-cut block by the strong arms of determined Romans. I later learned that this was exactly how they were built.

  As the bus got closer to the summit, I looked down to the shimmering ripples of the Mediterranean, the island of Capri in the distance. My first breathtaking views of the Provençal countryside were magnificent. But the sea is different. I found its open horizon liberating. My eyes were seduced by the deep blue of the water—the Bay of Naples to the north and the Gulf of Salerno to the south. On the other side of the road the blur of lush green and yellow washed across acre upon acre of trellised lemon trees. That is where I told myself I wanted to have the Mediterranean sun bronze my arms into those of an Italian chef.

  Ristorante Don Alfonso rested majestically at the top of the peninsula in a town named after its place between the two gulfs, Sant’Agata sui Due Golfi, a plaster-lathed building painted rose, like the potted flowers that adorn it. After I met Alfonso and his wife, Livia, I was escorted upstairs to an apartment on the top floor—very clean, very white, and sparsely decorated but well appointed. The final reward came in the form of a spiral staircase up to a rooftop deck with its own sweeping view of the sea.

  The island of Ischia is only an hour by ferry from Naples and the largest in the gulf, but it had a different feel from Serenity’s previous stops—a little funky and raucous, especially after the tranquillity of the Argentario coast. As we approached Porto d’Ischia, I was surprised to see so crowded a harbor, filled with small speedboats darting back and forth while dodging the ferries’ wakes. Even from a distance, I could see that the entire quay teemed with people. I later learned why. Porto d’Ischia not only is one of the most popular ports in Italy used by small-craft sailors but also served as the terminus for ferries and hydrofoils packed with holidaymakers from Naples.

  Once we docked and went ashore, disco music blasted from quayside caffés, cars honked along the narrow streets in town, sidewalks were mobbed, and the subtle smell of diesel fuel belied the area’s reputation as a spot for skin cleansing and rejuvenation in its legendary hot-water mineral springs. The place was packed.

  I should not have been surprised. After all, it was August, and like many European countries, Italy shuts down for the August ferie, and now it appeared to me that anyone who could afford to made his or her way to the southern Italian coast. It also explained why no crew members were Italian. What greater display of class insensitivity could there be than to deny a workingman his holiday month so that an elite family could have theirs? In relying on non-Italians, the owners had a win-win situation: they didn’t have to feel they were depriving a fellow countryman of his traditional vacation month, and by hiring someone like me, they could keep to the dictates of regional Italian cuisine as opposed to having one man’s homebred regional food bias.

  The four couples boarded Serenity, and it took the better part of the morning for everyone to get settled. I could hear la Signora’s onslaught of requests and directives to Rick while he ran around trying to keep everyone happy. The owners also brought their black Labrador, Alessandro, who would be joining us for the month. He was a well-behaved and perfectly groomed large dog, but an unexpected addition to the guest list. Who was going to take care of him? Of course, la Signora had “Alex’s” feeding schedule worked out. There was dry food, “but he likes just about everything,” she said over her shoulder when she came in the galley to say hello, a not-so-subtle hint that she expected me to rustle up “people food” on a regular basis. I also noticed she didn’t have a bowl for him. Should I use the everyday porcelain or something from the crew set? One of my mixing bowls would have to suffice.

  We spent the first week cruising and anchoring along the island’s coast in the general vicinity of Porto d’Ischia because of what I assumed were practical reasons. Since we were going to be in remote locations and at anchor a lot during the ensuing weeks, this may have been a last chance for any repairs and major provisioning.

  The food shopping was pretty good in town, and the menus immediately reflected the spirited cuisine of Naples—tomatoes everywhere, especially the little sun-ripened pomodorini packed with flavor that I used with reckless abandon, zucchini, eggplants, bell peppers, and southern Italian peperoncini—chile peppers. We found a great shop, maybe better described as an emporium of Neapolitan pastries and gelato, called Calise that got regular business from us. It was a very popular destination for nightlife, or so I heard after Ian and Nigel’s late-night forays into town.

  As a gesture to his hosts, one of the guests got into the habit of always bringing back a large treccia—soft, milk white, handmade braids of fresh mozzarella from his excursions onshore. There was always more than enough for everyone. As delicious as it was—with a little coarse sea salt and extra virgin olive oil; under marinated pomodorini; with hot red pepper flakes, anchovies, olives; in griddled Parmesan-cheese-and-egg-coated sandwiches called mozzarella in carrozza—there was only so much one could take, and after a couple of days, even Kevin wasn’t shy about voicing a preference for change. Regardless, I was having fun with the food since this region’s cuisine is the one most recognized in the States as Italian American.

  The guests on board began to relax as I tried to condition myself to the fact that no longer was it only two or three days of full service then a break. Service was daily, the end already feeling a millennium away. With a total of fifteen people plus a dog on board, it didn’t take long for all of us in the crew to feel cramped up forward. Our long lunch hours lounging around our collapsible deck table became a thing of the past. Rick’s “flat stick” description of August didn’t even begin to describe the pace, heat, and building fatigue. Plus, the residual tension between Patrick and Kevin continually wore on everyone.

  One of the guests eventually struck Rick as a problem. “This guy will be no good,” he said to me one evening.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. He just looks like trouble.” His instincts proved right when a couple days later the guest, whom we tagged Dennis—as in the Menace—ordered an American-style breakfast. His desire for a truck-stop menu, with farm-fresh eggs, strips of crispy bacon, and golden hash browns, wreaked havoc on my schedule while Rick had to break his housekeeping routine to play waiter. Day to day, we never knew when Dennis would forgo the standard continental offering and summon us to provide his road-stop fare. Worse, it started giving Scott, Ian, and Nigel ideas about what to have for their breakfast. “Maybe I’ll get my proper breakfast now,” Scott would say in my direction—just loud enough to be heard.

  More and more, the galley became the hub of all kinds of activities. Now that the crew had gone native at the table, and begun to respect my mantra that a Mediterranean diet is both ‘good and good f
or you,’ I had to be flexible about other things they cared about. For example, music. Seven different guys with seven different tastes kept our stereo in constant rotation. It would never fail that when I yearned for some peace and quiet, someone put a CD in the player. At least Rick’s up-tempo disco dance choices kept our energy flowing through the day.

  At night, there was the issue of Scott’s snoring. Patrick and I never heard it, but according to Kevin and Ian it was a regular occurrence. Their method of silencing it was to bombard him with pillows. Nigel was on the ready for backup if needed. With Kevin, Ian, and Nigel’s bunks above Scott’s, hitting the target was easy.

  We were anchored near Castello d’Ischia, an old fortress that encompassed the better half of the island it sat on and connected to the main island by a narrow causeway. Without much to do one afternoon, Nigel went free diving and came back with a large octopus and more sea urchins than I knew what to do with. As he unloaded his haul on deck, the octopus wrapped its legs around his forearm, refusing to let go. La Signora, ignoring Nigel’s plight, was ecstatic, “Guarda che belli!”—Look how beautiful!—she said to her guests. The octopus, when finally pried loose from Nigel, provided some entertainment and was returned to the water. Part of me wanted to make insalata di polpo—octopus salad—but since this creature was a regular in the markets, I could easily add it to the menu at any time.

  After examining the sea urchins, la Signora asked that they be served as soon as possible, as a first course that night. Then she explained how they should be cut open. I had never dealt with fresh sea urchins before, so I was eager to learn. “Carefully hold them in the palm of your hand, then with a scissors cut them from the valve to halfway up the shell in order to cut around them like the equator. Rinse the half shells under cold water to clean them, but be careful to leave the roe intact.” Since the sharp spines can make for a nasty sting, her method made sense. That night I would serve them on the half shell with lemon and crusty bread. Small pieces of torn crust would be used to scoop out the urchins’ briny roe.

  It must have been quite a sight that evening—a polished sailing yacht parked by itself in one part of the marina, two crew members in their uniforms standing on the old stone quay next to the passerelle, rinsing and cutting sea urchins in bare hands with scissors. Nigel and I were going through them, culling for the biggest ones, when a man came up to see the catch.

  “Where are they from?” he asked in raspy Italian.

  When I told him, he acknowledged that was good water for them but suggested another spot he believed to be better. Then he asked how we were serving them.

  “You should toss them with spaghetti,” he came back.

  “That sounds pretty good,” I said. Nigel had no idea what we were talking about as he carried on the task at hand. I continued our food talk. “How do you make yours?”

  “Scoop the roe from the shells and toss with spaghetti, chili flakes, and parsley over a very low flame. Add the pasta water little by little until the urchins melt and coat the pasta—almost like making a carbonara. It’s the best way to eat them.”

  The mention of carbonara, a Roman dish, surprised me, because he appeared to be the kind of guy who didn’t venture higher up the boot than Naples. But what he said made complete sense. The use of gentle heat and small additions of pasta water to work the main ingredient, in both cases eggs, into a thick and creamy sauce was the same method. Having learned the technique at a small winery estate, Colle Picchione, just outside Rome, I was inspired to try his recipe that night.

  I saved a bunch of urchins to make a small plate for Rick, Nigel, and me to try after dinner service. It turned out to be one of the most delicious primi I had ever tasted, and the satisfaction displayed by my co-workers was unanimous. I now had a new front-runner in my all-time favorite foods repertoire, a recipe provided unsolicited by a passerby on the Porto d’Ischia quay.

  Nigel, a quick eater by nature, disappeared up the ladder as Rick and I finished our plates. Now that we were sated and mellow, the subject meandered to the question of “what next?”

  “What are you doing after the season? Staying here or maybe going home?” Rick asked as he lay supine on the mess table bench.

  “I don’t know yet,” I answered. I hadn’t even thought about returning home since I arrived in France more than four years earlier.

  “Maybe it’s time.”

  He had a point. Maybe it was time for me to start thinking about returning home and trying to put together a stateside career.

  Rick planted a seed in my mind that needed no watering. Before, when I tried to picture myself back in America, I found the scene intimidating. I had grown to like the simpler lifestyle in Italy—not so many choices about things like food or even mineral water. I thought of a grocery store in the States and the overwhelming variety of products it offered. And there was always time in Italy to go into a caffè and enjoy a perfectly made coffee served in a ceramic cup and saucer.

  I found Italy easier on a human-interaction level, too. Now that I had my carta d’identità, I could work legally and reside as long as I wanted. With it I could receive medical coverage, college tuition, pension, mandatory five-weeks-a-year paid vacation, tutto. Four years ago, I had crept into Italy as a clandestine worker—now I could live in the country without the risk of being deported.

  Then there was the freedom issue. In Italy, much more so than at home, a good day was about balancing work with life’s other needs—family, friends, home, community. In the restaurants where I had worked, the rule was a busy but steady pace, centered on keeping the guests relaxed and happy. During meal breaks, restaurant owners wanted the staff to sit and eat. If they had a question when they saw you eating, they waited until you were finished. And you didn’t have to create a way to busy yourself at the stove or risk being criticized if you weren’t.

  While at anchor one day on the other side of the island and just outside the breakwater of a small marina and village called Sant’Angelo, Rick and I were getting the day together down below when we heard a crack of laughter, applause, and heavy footfalls on deck that began to make their way down below. Moments later, in front of me stood a dripping wet, burly middle-aged man in shorty dive gear holding a speargun in one hand and a magnificent cernia—a grouper—in the other.

  “Buon giorno!” he said with a big smile on his face. “So you are the chef americano?” He told me his name was Gianni.

  “Where did you come from?” I asked. I could see from the speargun that he either was or fancied himself to be an expert fisherman, but beyond that I had no idea how this guy had found our boat or what he was doing in the galley. He certainly could not have been a friend of the owners, at least not in my mind.

  “I’m a friend of Fabrizio’s. I live on this side of the island,” he explained. Fabrizio was Dennis the Menace’s real name. The picture was beginning to fill in.

  “Fabrizio asked me to try to catch some fish for the owners. When I caught this beauty, I brought it over, and everyone requested it to be made for lunch. What do you think? How are you going to cook it?” His tone clearly implied that he didn’t want some hack American making hamburger out of his catch.

  “I could make it in acqua pazza,” I suggested.

  “You know how to make it that way?” He looked shocked.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “How come?” he pressed.

  “I learned to make it at a restaurant above Sorrento. Sono bravi”—they know what’s going on.

  “Okay chef,” he said in English with a half smile and a look like I had better deliver on the promise.

  This fish was perfect for acqua pazza. The gentle method of cookery had gotten its name from using something as fresh as this, fortified with tomato, a hint of caper, and parsley and cooked in a miraculous, aromatic bath resembling the purest seawater. With steamed potatoes on the side, the preparation would be optimum.

  And this was exactly how I learned it at Don Alfonso.

  �
��Come here,” Beppe, the chef de cuisine at the restaurant, said one day as he was plating a lunch entrée. “You have to see this. It’s called pesce in acqua pazza.”

  “Fish in crazy water?” I asked, not sure if I had translated correctly.

  “Sì, sì, sì. You’ll understand soon,” he replied. Alfonso was in the kitchen, too, and he told me that it could be made only in late spring and through the summer, when the tomatoes were ripening on the vine and full of sun, when they were their boldest. It didn’t matter which fish you used, he told me, as long as it was flaky and very fresh.

  “We serve this with poached new potatoes from our garden,” Alfonso continued. “I will show you the garden later,” he added. I could see by the way he presented a pot of perfectly pared and poached potatoes that the garden was very special to him.

  Local olive oil, the fish, diced tomatoes, capers, chopped parsley, salt, pepper, and the potatoes. That’s it.

  “The tomatoes,” Alfonso started to explain, “must cook down while the fish releases some of its water to create a simple sauce, highlighted with parsley to give it an herbal edge. Then you season lightly with the capers. Once done, the overall flavor will resemble the sea, only better.” I thought to myself, that’s the trick to using capers—as a seasoning. Over the years I had mixed feelings about capers. Every time they had been used in a dish, their briny taste overpowered every other flavor. But how to avoid that? The villain was the brine. Alfonso showed me the capers that they used. Capperi sotto sale. Packed in sea salt, they were larger and plumper than any I had ever seen. The salt was rinsed off, and then the capers were finely chopped. In this way, they could be added like a seasoning to the desired taste. Just enough adds a subtle back flavor of a caper berry, not the brine.