The Hemingway Cookbook (21 page)

The proprietor of the bar had asked him, “Do you want some shrimps?” and brought a big plate piled with fresh cooked prawns and put it on the bar while he sliced a yellow lime and spread the slices on a saucer. The prawns were huge and pink and their antennae hung down over the edge of the bar for more than a foot and he had picked one up and spread the long whiskers to their full width and remarked that they were longer than those of a Japanese admiral.

Thomas Hudson broke the head off the Japanese admiral prawn and then split open the belly of the shell with his thumbs and shucked the prawn out and it was so fresh and silky feeling under his teeth, and had such a flavor, cooked in sea water with fresh lime juice and whole black peppercorns, that he thought he had never eaten a better one; not even in Málaga nor in Tarragona nor in Valencia. It was then that the kitten came over to him, scampering down the bar, to rub against his hand and beg a prawn.
⁸

Prawns in Sea Water

4
SERVINGS

8 cups sea water (fresh water with sea salt will suffice)

4 tablespoons fresh lime juice

6 whole black peppercorns

2 pounds prawns (with the heads still attached) or jumbo shrimp

2 limes, quartered

Combine the water (and salt, if necessary), lime juice, and peppercorns in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Add the prawns or shrimp and boil for 5 minutes, or until the prawns turn bright pink. Drain the prawns and plunge immediately into a bowl of ice water. Drain again and serve, piled on a plate with lime quarters.

ROYAL ORDER OF SHRIMP EATERS

Hemingway had a penchant for turning the mundane into the regal and renowned (if not infamous). We encountered a fictional example of this with Colonel Cantwell’s
El Ordine Militar, Nobile y Espirituoso de los Caballeros de Brusadelli
(see page
30
). In real life, Hemingway once formed a legal partnership with friend, biographer, and traveling companion, A. E. Hotchner, known as Hemhotch, Ltd. The partnership was originally formed as a racing syndicate to cover their bets on the steeplechase at Auteuil. Eventually, they had greeting cards made (as was the European custom at the time) announcing the partnership’s diversification beyond the races and into such endeavors as duck hunting, the bullfights and other masculine pursuits.
⁹

In Havana, Hemingway introduced Hotchner to yet another quasi-formal order he had founded. As the two sat before a heaping plate of un-peeled shrimp, Hemingway informed Hotchner that should he wish to join The Royal Order of Shrimp Eaters, there is but one membership requirement: that he eat the shrimp complete with the heads and tails. Hemingway happily crunched one of the large shrimp. Hotchner followed, with markedly less enthusiasm.
¹⁰

If you so choose, you may take this opportunity to induct yourself into this prestigious order. I won’t recommend repeating the initiation often enough for it to grow on you, though. That’s for inductees to decide on their own.

In the novel, the proprietor of La Terraza gives Thomas Hudson the prawn-begging Angora Tiger cat as a Christmas gift. It was Gregorio Fuentes who gave Hemingway the real-life cat, named Boise, who maintained the same high gastronomic standards as her owners. Mary Hemingway thought Boise “one of the world’s most sophisticated cats in his food preferences,”
¹¹
who, even after eating melons and sauerkraut and chili and pie, “still jumps like a feather in the breeze.”
¹²
Soon after Thomas Hudson takes Boise home from La Terraza, he learns of the cat’s rather precocious eating habits:

Then when the alligator pear trees, the big, dark green
aguacates
with their fruit only a little darker and shinier than the foliage, had come into bearing this time when he had been ashore in September for overhaul, preparing to go down to Haiti, he had offered Boise a spoonful out of the shell, the hollow where the seed had been, filled with oil and vinegar dressing, and the cat had eaten it and then afterwards at each meal, he had eaten half an
aguacate
.
¹³

Boise’s Avocado

Note
: A ripe avocado should be firm but forgiving. Be careful to buy neither too hard nor too soft a fruit. To seed the avocado, cut along the fruit laterally, down to the round central pit, then twist the two halves apart. To remove the pit, strike the pit with a large, sharp knife, firmly enough that the blade will stick. Twist the knife and remove the pit.

3
HUMANS AND
1
CAT

2 avocados

Lime juice

6 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons white vinegar (or a combination of white and wine vinegars)

Pinch of salt

Cut the avocados in half, remove the pits and sprinkle with lime juice to prevent browning. Whisk together the olive oil, vinegar, and salt. Fill the hollow of each half with dressing.

Islands in the Stream
is a mosaic of Hemingway’s reminiscences, including his memories of his three sons, his third wife, his early days in Michigan, his life in Paris, and his later adventures in the 1930s and 1940s. Sitting on his hillside Cuban perch, Ernest had endless opportunities to remember—looking back through time and across the ocean—to his former lives. From Paris
to Marseilles to Hong Kong, these memories are invariably infused with the tastes and smells of the foods therein. Hemingway would not begin to write his full memoirs of Paris until 1957, when he began
A Moveable Feast
. In
Islands in the Stream
, we get a taste of things to come:

“Papa, tell us some more about when you and Tommy and Tommy’s mother were poor. How poor did you ever get?”

“They were pretty poor,” Roger said. “I can remember when your father used to make up all young Tom’s bottles in the morning and go to the market to buy the best and the cheapest vegetables. I’d meet him coming back from the market when I would be going out for breakfast.”

“I was the finest judge of poireaux in the sixth arrondissement.” Thomas Hudson told the boys.

“What’s poireaux?”

“Leeks.”

“It looks like long, green, quite big onions,” young Tom said. “Only it’s not bright shiny like onions. It’s dull shiny. The leaves are green and the ends are white. You boil it and eat it cold with olive oil and vinegar mixed with salt and pepper. You eat the whole thing, top and all. It’s delicious. I believe I’ve eaten as much of it as maybe anyone in the world.”
¹⁴

Young Tom Hudson’s Leeks

It is fitting that Tom Hudson had become such a connoisseur of leeks and that young Tom had enjoyed them so regularly during the lean years in Paris. Poireaux is known in France as
les asperges de pauvre
(“the asparagus of the poor”)
.

1
SERVING

1 leek, as small as possible

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon vinegar

Salt

Pepper

Cut only the very top green and bottom root off the leek. Carefully clean out any sand from between the layers. Bring water to a boil in a pan large enough to hold the whole leek. Plunge the leek into the boiling water and cook for 10-15 minutes, or until the white part is tender. Drain the leek, pat dry, and refrigerate until chilled. Whisk together the olive oil, vinegar, and salt and pepper to taste. Serve sliced in half lengthwise and drizzled with the vinaigrette.

Back in Cuba a strong northwester churns the sea, blowing severe and cold and forcing Thomas Hudson ashore. He is content to let the Germans rule the sea for a few days and enjoys the company of his cats and his memories. He longs to make love to a princess, wanton and feline, and remembers his one royal affair, with a “plain girl with thickish ankles and not very good legs.”
¹⁵
They were sailing from Mombasa, returning from safari, aboard a super luxury liner, and the denial of their passion became more dangerous than their possible discovery by the Prince. Hudson and the Baron, who was also on board (“Isn’t it nice to have a wicked Baron just as in olden times?”),
¹⁶
get off the ship in Marseilles. Hemingway himself shared those cold afternoons in Marseilles in November 1933. He waited to depart for East Africa aboard the
SS General Metzinger
, hardly a luxury liner, like the Gripsholm upon which he would eventually return and on which Thomas Hudson’s affair must have occurred. He held onto the memories of the city, of its sidewalk restaurants in the Vieux Port, and when he brought Thomas Hudson’s memories there in
Islands in the Stream
, he knew exactly how to welcome him:

It was blowing colder than ever outside. It reminded him of the cold day there on the steep street in Marseilles that ran down to the port, sitting at the café table with their coat collars up eating the moules out of the thin black shells you lifted from the hot, peppery milk broth with the hot melted butter floating in it, drinking the wine from Tavel that tasted the way Provence looked …

“Do you want some more moules?”

“No. I want something solid.”

“Shouldn’t we have bouillabaisse, too?”

“Two soups?”

“I’m hungry. And we won’t be here again for a long time.”

“I should think you might be hungry. Good. We’ll have a bouillabaisse and then a good Châteaubriand very rare. I’ll build you up, you bastard.”
¹⁷

THE MENU

Lunch in Marseilles
with the Baron

Moules in Peppery Milk Broth

Bouillabaisse de Marseilles

Châteaubriand

Wine

Tavel

Moules
(Mussels) in Peppery Milk Broth

2
TO
3
SERVINGS

1 pound mussels

Several tablespoons cornmeal

1½ cups dry white wine

Bouquet garni (a few sprigs of parsley, thyme, rosemary, and a few bay leaves bundled and tied together)

3 cloves garlic, crushed

¼ cup olive oil

½ onion, coarsely chopped

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

¼ cup milk

Plenty of coarsely ground fresh black pepper

Salt

Pinch of cayenne pepper

Juice of ¼ lemon

2 tablespoons heavy cream

Scrub the mussels, removing any mussels with broken shells or that don’t close up tight when placed under running cold water. Debeard the mussels (pull or cut off the fibrous growth attached to the shell). Place the mussels in a large bowl and cover with cold water. Sprinkle on the cornmeal, which will help the mussels to expel their sand and fatten up a little. Let the mussels soak for about 15 minutes then drain.

In a large skillet over high heat, combine the wine, herbs, and garlic. Add the mussels and cook, tightly covered, until the shells open, 5-7 minutes. Remove the mussels, disregarding any that have not opened. Remove the empty half of each shell and arrange the mussels in a shallow serving dish. Cover with foil to keep warm.

Strain the mussel cooking liquid through a fine mesh sieve or cheesecloth and set aside. In a large saucepan over medium heat, add the olive oil and onion and saute until the onion is soft. Stir in the flour and cook a few minutes more. Remove the pan from the heat. Beat in the cooking liquid and the milk. Return to the heat and bring to a boil. Add the pepper, salt, and cayenne to taste, and lemon juice. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Stir in the cream and pour the sauce over the mussels. Serve immediately.

Bouillabaisse de Marseilles

As Thomas Hudson and the Baron acknowledge, true bouillabaisse is, in fact, a soup rather than a stew. Marseilles is the home of bouillabaisse, and this recipe attempts to follow the strict traditional guidelines of the genuine article. The key element is the variety offish that flavor the broth. As this dish was originally prepared on the beach by local fishermen, it included those fish least suited for sale in the marketplace, such as the scorpion fish or rockfish.
¹⁸
Even if this and other local fish are unavailable, a respectable facsimile is achieved through use of four or five different types of local fish
.

6
TO
8
SERVINGS

4 cloves garlic, crushed

2 onions, chopped

¾ cup olive oil

3 tomatoes, skinned and finely chopped