Mediterranean Summer (21 page)

There are conflicting stories as to how Monte Argentario—Silver Mountain—got its name: one held that it was named for the silver trade practiced by a Roman banking family that owned the land centuries ago; another claimed that it had been named for the many silver mines in the area. I leaned toward believing the former until Pina, Salvatore’s mother, who ran the
caffè
in the morning, told me the mountain was named for the glistening, silvery sea in front of it and the argent color of the olive trees that covered its sides. Pina’s matriarchal attitude and wise manner won the day.

Rome is only an hour and a half away, which explained why there were so many cars tagged with “Roma” license plates parked along the streets. Salvatore mentioned that near Porto Ercole was the ultra-chic and exclusive hotel Pellicano. Then he warned me about running into any redheads on the island of Giglio, just west of Monte Argentario, by reciting the proverb “
Attenzione, la rosa e pericolosa!”
—Watch out, the redhead can be dangerous! He told me that among the locals, the accepted view was that all redheads on the island were direct descendants of Barbarossa—Red Beard—the pirate. I assured him that when on Giglio, I would not forget his warning

It is said that
a cook’s job is the hardest on a boat. I was beginning to think that it wasn’t so easy onshore, either. It was odd to me that across the street from a fishing harbor, the fish market wasn’t laden with fresh catch all along the ice tables. Instead, the fishmongers were aggressively trying to hook me into buying what they knew and I could see was of inferior quality. The eyes of the sea breams were gray and cloudy, not clear; the snappers looked limp instead of firm and shiny; and when I took a peek at the gills on most of them, their color was graying instead of bright reddish pink—all of these tell-tale visual signs of waning freshness.

Fish going south have that smell we call fishy. And when the fish really go downhill, they start to have a faint aroma that resembles ammonia. Conversely, truly fresh fish smell like the sea. The plump and firm anchovies I bought that day probably landed the prior evening since they smelled as if they had just jumped out of the Mediterranean, and their freshness would make them easier to debone.

My mind went to work as I walked the stalls, looking and searching, determined to find something else I could cook that weekend. I started to think that just because
Serenity
’s money flowed as freely as Rick’s
premier cru
Chablis, being spendthrift in the market and buying only the most expensive ingredients might miss the point of true Italian cooking. Then I thought back to the
cacciucco
—the fish stew I made earlier in the month—and how I had chosen to use prime fillets instead of the recommended bellies and jowls, argued by “fishionados” to be the best parts. Maybe I should look beyond the familiar, I thought, because some of the most-sought-after dishes are made from the humblest of beginnings, and “specialties” are often composed of uncommon finds.

Out of necessity, the Italian food culture adapted to using flavor and technique in order to make just about anything delicious from what is available. And this weekend, I decided, so would I. The weekend’s menu was built around what looked best: large calamari and tiny ones—
calamaretti
—slightly different from those found in Viareggio, huge
seppie
—cuttlefish—very small octopus called
moscardini,
and my fresh anchovies. In some circles, these are all considered bait; in others, they are delicacies. On
Serenity,
they would become the latter.

The owners came down that first weekend in Monte Argentario with just one other couple at what was becoming their regular arrival time, Friday evening cocktail hour. After quickly settling into their accommodations, they were ready for welcome drinks and canapés on deck, then right onto dinner in the salon.

Over the course of the previous weekends, I noticed
la Signora
had displayed a bias toward crispy food—marmalade and crackers with her caffe latte in the morning, crusty breads and
grissini,
and fried fish. Pattern recognition helped me choose my first course for the weekend. I decided to make the little calamari
fritti
—fried. I had the right oil on board with a high smoking point that was perfect for frying.
La Signora
had sent sunflower seed oil to the boat the week before Monte Carlo, so I kept a few extra cans in the stores. I gathered from my time abroad that this was Europe’s oil of choice for high-heat cooking. Since it imparts very little flavor when something is fried in it, the flavor of the main ingredient comes through. For small, delicate items like
calamaretti,
shrimp, or anything that is going to be cooked only a few minutes in hot oil, this is critical so that with the end result you taste the food, not the oil it was cooked in.

It took a while to clean those thumb-sized
frutti di mare
of their eyes, beaks, and innards. I was glad they were for only four people. Two passes for a full boat of eight guests would have been a lot of fish to clean. I could have asked my friends at the fish stalls to clean them for me and now wondered why I didn’t. Certain fish vendors will offer the service outright, but I learned it should never be a problem to ask for fish to be scaled, gutted, and filleted; or shrimp peeled and deveined; or cephalopods like calamari, octopus, and cuttlefish “cleaned.”

I dredged the
calamaretti
in flour seasoned with salt and pepper, making sure they were completely coated and dry—dryness being an important part of frying throughout the process—and then fried them in small batches in the hot oil. Too many at once would have cooled the oil down, leaving the
calamaretti
soggy. When they were golden brown and crisp after swimming in the hot oil, I skimmed them out onto what I like to call a landing pad—a tray or dish with absorbent towels to catch residual oil. After a little seasoning of salt and pepper, I quickly arranged them in a nice pile, not too high, on a platter garnished with lemon wedges and parsley sprigs, then served them
subito
while still hot and crispy. If they were piled too high, steam from the pieces inside would be trapped and make them soggy.

For the
moscardini,
instead of stewing them in a tomato-based sauce, I simmered them in an aromatic broth—a little onion, celery, parsley sprigs, a bay leaf, a pinch of hot red pepper flakes—that had tomatoes in it. And since it was high season for peas, they would become the accompaniment to the small octopus. In Liguria, a classic method for making
pasta col pesto
is to put a small peeled potato—the size of an egg—in the pasta water, letting it cook until it falls apart, which in turn puts more starch in the water to eventually help the finished sauce adhere to the pasta. I applied this same trick for cooking the peas, letting a few small potatoes break up in just enough water so the peas floated just over the base of the pot. Since they would only need minutes to cook, the liquid had thickened enough to be a perfect base for the octopus. Just before sending the platter to the table, I added a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and a
gremolata
—a fresh accompaniment of parsley chopped with a little fresh garlic and some lemon zest.
Basta.
We had a nice entrée from humble beginnings, light enough for summer, and another method by which to preserve the delicate flavor of the main ingredients.

On Saturday, I brought out my journals to see which version of the marinated
alici
—anchovies—I should make. Flipping through the pages, I was grateful for having taken extensive notes at my various
stages.
At the time, it seemed as if I would never get enough down on paper. But for everything I wrote, there were undoubtedly countless things I missed. That day, my journals provided a treasure trove of information to inspire me for that evening’s dinner. Those years abroad as a
viaggiatore dei cucine
—a kitchen traveler—exposed me to such an amazing variety of food and preparations that I wondered how much I missed during those first two years when I lived silently, not able to speak Italian.

I grew up shy of tough, oily anchovies in little tins that were impossible to open. Their strong, salty, and unsatisfying fishy flavor obliterated everything they touched. But living abroad changed all that. I discovered that a good-quality cured anchovy is completely different—plump, meaty, tender, not overpowering, and, when used sparingly, a great addition to many dishes. And I hadn’t tasted anything made from fresh anchovies until arriving in Italy.

I found three recipes in my journals for anchovies. They were called
alici
when fresh and
acciughe
when packed in salt or oil. I was already using them as a seasoning by adding small amounts in the beginning stages of cookery to boost the flavor of a sauce. One recipe I found was a pantry staple at La Contea, the restaurant in Piedmont where I worked. Tonino, the owner and himself a very passionate cook, would clean salt-packed anchovy fillets under cold water, dry them well, and then repack them in an abundant amount of olive oil with various seasonings. Pepino, the appetizer chef at Peck who was Calabrese, liked to chop oil-cured fillets and blend them with chile peppers to create a loose paste to use in dressings and sauces. Then there was my Tuscan friend Massimo. He took the fresh fillets, used two methods of marinating—first in vinegar to “cook” them, then in olive oil with other seasonings to flavor them—and later served them as an antipasto with grilled pieces of bread. I went with Massimo’s recipe since it was the preparation that used fresh anchovies,
alici,
that I was after.

I immersed boneless anchovy fillets in champagne vinegar for a few hours, basically the same method as making a seviche, replacing the lemon and lime juice in the classic Latin American method with the vinegar. When the fillets turned opaque and were essentially “cooked,” I took them out, washed the vinegar off under cold water, patted them dry on a landing pad, and lined them up in a baking dish. I added minced garlic, hot red pepper flakes, and chopped parsley over the entire surface, then covered them in olive oil. These could keep up to a few days in the refrigerator, but for my immediate needs a couple of hours at room temperature would be sufficient for the aromatics to perfume the oil and flavor the fish.

But which oil to use? One of the proudest food icons of
la cucina italiana
is extra virgin olive oil, an ingredient that plays as much a role in the beginning of cookery as the drizzle does at the end. Cold-pressed is the purest and most delicate. Too much light will render it rancid, so the better oils are found in dark green bottles. Its low smoking point makes it bitter when too much heat is applied, so I cook with it
leggermente
—lightly—as my friend Enzo, the olive oil producer, suggested, using low heat when simmering so as to not diminish its flavor. Gently cooking aromatics—onions, celery, carrots, garlic, citrus zest, herbs, chiles, anchovies—in an abundant amount of oil will release their flavor and permeate the oil, which in turn creates a layer of flavor that will remain throughout the cookery. A final step before a dish goes to the table is the addition of
un filo d’olio
—a line of oil—that shiny and supple enhancement to whatever it is drizzled on. As Enzo put it, a drizzle added to a dish makes your food taste better.

Like wine, extra virgin olive oil is directly related to a particular area, characteristic of a growing season, method of cultivation, and hand of the producer. So I began to consider pairing the right oil with the right dish. Lighter-style oils like those from Liguria, Sicily, or the southern region of Apulia could be teamed with vegetables or tender fish; heartier oils from Tuscany and Umbria with meats, pastas, soups, and big-game fish like tuna or swordfish. The fruitier style of olive oil from the south of France, completely different from Italian oils, lends itself better to cooking with orange zest, fennel, and saffron. For the anchovies, I chose a Tuscan oil to keep with the theme of regional cooking.

That evening, to make the presentation of the anchovies a little more interesting than just a flat arrangement of little fish on a platter, I came up with an
à la minute
creation from things I already had on board. I took inner leaves of Bibb lettuce as a base and filled each with a chopped salad made with celery hearts, diced tomato, pitted green olives, cucumber, and roughly chopped parsley—all tossed with a touch of the oil the anchovies were marinated in and finished with a splash of red wine vinegar. On the top of each pile, I placed a couple of the anchovies and added a pinch of coarse sea salt. I made enough for two per person. It was almost like a soigné Greek salad except the anchovies replaced feta cheese, and with a little attention to knife work the colors of the salad were beautiful.

“They loved it,” Rick said when he came back into the galley. “Look, the platter is empty.”

“Good to know because this weekend has been tough.”

“You seem to have figured it out,” he said with a note of understanding sincerity.

“It’s making me cook a little out of the ordinary.”

“Isn’t that what
la Signora
is looking for?” Rick asked.

“I guess. But then there’s the other side.” He knew I meant
il Dottore.

“This reminds me of seeing only snails and eels at the riverside fish stands where I grew up,” Rick said as he loaded the platter with seconds. “When it’s all you can find, you make the best of it.” He was referring to the Gironde River that fronts the famous Left Bank vineyards of Bordeaux, a place he spoke of often. “So what’s the next course?” he asked.

“Cuttlefish
al forno”
—baked—“with a sauce of the pan juices, a little marinara, and basil.”

“If we were on the Atlantic coast, I’d say to use butter and wine!” Rick was showing a little hometown culinary pride.

“Red or white?”

“It all depends,” he said as he left the pantry with the second round of the anchovies.