The Man Who Ate Everything (38 page)

When my depression lifted a few days later, I reviewed the sections of Marcella’s books that show you how to cook Atlantic seafood the Adriatic way, remembered what I had learned in Venice, and went on to concoct a reasonably authentic

Grigliata Mista di Mare

Mixed Grill of Shrimp, Eel, and Sardines

Each fish is handled differently and each is delicious. The sardines and shrimp are adapted from
More Classic Italian Cooking
and Marcella and Victor’s terrace. Marcella was not in a flaying mood when we cooked together and declined to skin an eel for me, but I watched two restaurant chefs grilling eel slowly over charcoal and tried it successfully at home.

You can use a little hibachi or a fancy barbecue, but the fuel should be hardwood charcoal, not briquettes, which are made from small particles of carbon glued together with distasteful chemicals and may contain resinous softwoods that make your food taste as though it were basted with turpentine. In each recipe, you arrange the fish in a flat, hinged rack; this prevents them from curling, allows you to turn them all at once, and leaves the skin undisturbed, at least until the last
minute. Even if you use an oven broiler, the hinged rack is quite a help.

Throw a few bay leaves on the coals just before you grill the fish. Buy the best Italian extra-virgin olive oil you can find. Serves 6 as a main course.

Shrimp Grilled Like
Cannocchie

Buy 1 1
/2
pounds of medium shrimp (about 24 to the pound), still in the shell but with the head removed and fresh, if possible. Rinse them in cold water and dry with paper towels. Insert a sturdy toothpick into each shrimp along its back, between the shell and the meat, to keep it straight. Put the shrimp in a large bowl, add 1/3 cup of extra-virgin olive oil, and turn to coat them well. Add 1 teaspoon each of salt and freshly ground pepper and 1
1/2
cups of fine, homemade toasted bread crumbs. (These hold the other ingredients on the shells during marinating and cooking.) Turn them again and allow to marinate for 1 to 2 hours. Put the shrimp in a hinged rack, gently shaking off any excess bread crumbs, and cook close to the hot coals for 2 minutes on one side and 1 1/2 minutes on the other, until the shells are partly charred. Eat them immediately with your hands, peeling the shell and sucking out the meat as you go.

Grilled Eel

Have your fishman bone a long center piece of eel, or do it yourself by cutting around the backbone through the flesh side and removing it. You should wind up with a reasonably flat rectangular piece of eel with skin on one side and flesh on the other. Cut this crosswise into 4-ounce servings and place them in a hinged rack, latched tightly. Slowly grill the skin side at a good distance from the coals (I measured the temperature at 300°) until it is very crisp and bubbling and the fat under the skin has rendered and drained, about 20 to 30 minutes. Lightly salt and pepper the skin side, and cook the flesh side for 5 minutes, this time nearer the coals, until it is golden. Salt and pepper this side and serve. Lemon is optional.

Grilled Sardines

“There are some smells that have the power to summon intact a whole period of one’s life,” Marcella writes. “For me it is the odor of sardines roasting over a slow charcoal fire … and an image of my father’s mother in never-changing long black dress and black kerchief, bending over a wobbly grill set on bricks in our yard, waving at the embers with a fan of rooster-tail feathers.” Marcella says that the silvery fish sold in the United States as sardines are probably small, strong-tasting herrings or large Atlantic anchovies, but they work well in some recipes all the same. Or you can use small smelt. In any event, scrape and gut 2 pounds of
fresh “sardines,” each about 6 inches long, or have your fishman do it. Wash out the belly cavities, draining the sardines well. Dry with paper towels, and lay them on a platter. Sprinkle with
1/
2 teaspoon of salt,
1/2
teaspoon of freshly ground pepper, and
1/2
cup of olive oil, and allow them to marinate for 20 minutes, turning once or twice. Put the sardines in a hinged rack and cook them close to the glowing coals, 2 to 3 minutes on each side. To eat, hold the head and pull the meat from the backbone with your lips and teeth.

Venetian Seafood Glossary

Photocopy this glossary and head for the Adriatic as soon as convenient. If it does not include everything edible in the waters and restaurants of Venice, it comes pretty close. The Italian names are given first and the Venetian in parentheses. I use the plural for creatures you eat lots of, like
cozze,
and the singular for creatures you eat one at a time. The Venetian names will make you sound like a native within twenty-five kilometers of San Marco, and like a Martian beyond that. If you think that I lifted this information from some book, just try to find one. After I had exhausted my notes from the Rialto market,
La pesca nella Laguna di Venezia
(Amminis-trazione della Provincia di Venezia, 1981), Alan Davidson’s
Mediterranean Seafood
(Penguin, 1981), and a gigantic Italian dictionary, Victor Kazan graciously returned to the fishmongers on the Rialto to help fill the gaping holes.

Acciughe (sardoni):
anchovies, called
alia
around Rome

Aguglia:
garfish, sometimes found in the better sushi bars

Anguilla (bisato):
eel

Aragosta:
rock lobster, called
langouste
in France

Astaco (astise):
like Maine lobster; imported from Yugoslavia or France;
astice
in vernacular Italian

Bianchetti:
whitebait; also known as
gianchetti

Branzino (bransin): bar
or
loup de mer
in France; Marcella compares it to striped bass; others say it’s a sea bass of a different species
(Labrax lupus)
from ours;
spigola
or
spinola
in Rome; delectable in and on any tongue

(Cagnoleto):
very small shark, often stewed with tomato sauce

Calamaretti:
baby squid, one and a half inches long, fried whole, incredible

Calamaro:
squid

Calamarone:
large squid

Canestrelli (canestreli):
minute scallops, tinier than bay scallops and spicy in taste; nearest U.S. cousins are Peconic and Digby Bay
scallops; here, as elsewhere (for example,
schile),
Venetians don’t pronounce the final
i

Cannocchia (canocia):
squill, or mantis shrimp, found only in the Adriatic and Japan, pinkish gray and flat, two inches wide, eight inches long; grilled or steamed, the sweetest crustacean you can eat; also
pannoccia

Cannolicchi (capelonghe):
razor clams

Capitone:
a long, fat type of eel

Cappe sante (capesante):
large scallops, sweet and tender

Carpa:
carp

Cefalo (lotregan, verzelata, bosega, caustelo, volpina):
varieties of gray mullet, of which the
cefalo durato (lotregan)
is the most esteemed

Coda di rospo:
monkfish tail; literally tail of the toad, though most of this fish is an extremely ugly head; formally,
rana pescatrice

Cozze (peoci):
mussels; also called
mitili

Datteri di mare:
sea dates, related to mussels; eaten in soup or spaghetti sauce; embed themselves in rocks, which must be
hauled from the sea and smashed to harvest them

Dentice:
sea bream

Folipetti (folpeti):
baby octopi, boiled and served warm with a drop of vinegar

Gamberetti:
small gray shrimp, which jump like crickets on trays in the market

Gamberi (gambari):
shrimp;
gamberi difiume
are crayfish

(Go):
yellow and black, used for soup and as a base for risotto

Grancevola (granzeola):
spider crab, delicate and sweet; the crabs are boiled, and the meat is meticulously picked from the shell

(Granzoporo):
increasingly rare shore crab; small, slightly furry, with powerful pincers; much sought after in the south of France

Latterini (anguela):
sand smelts, like long, silvery sardines

Lumachine (bovoleti):
tiny sea snails, similar to periwinkles

Mazanette (masanete):
tiny crabs, a little larger than your thumbnail; boiled, chopped into two or three pieces, and served with
chopped garlic; you chew on the shells to extract the flesh and juice

Mazzancolk:
large, blue-gray shrimp

Mazzola:
sea robin, pinkish gray and used in soup; Marcella says that the broth is as esteemed as capon broth; discarded in the United States; called gurnard in England and
pesce capone
in Liguria

Merluzzo (merluso):
hake, small and gray; cooked as in recipes for whiting

(Moleche):
soft-shell crabs, two and a half inches across, like the smallest and most prized specimens in the United States; found nowhere in Italy but Venice

Mormora:
small striped bream, silver and black, excellent grilled

Moscardino:
tiny curled octopus, often brought to Venice from Liguria, wonderful deep-fried

Murici (garusoli):
snails that live in a murex shell, unlike French snails or the Italian
lumache

Orata (orada):
gilthead bream, called
daurade
in France; the highest attainment of the bream family; like the apotheosis of a U.S. porgy
Ostriche (ostreghe):
oysters, now rarely harvested in Venice

Paganello (paganelo):
small and creamy gray, used like the larger
go
for soup and broth

Pagdlo:
reddish sea bream

Papalina:
sprat, halfway between an anchovy and a sardine

Pesce spada:
swordfish

Polpo (folpo):
octopus

Razza (raza):
skate, ray

Rombo chiodato:
turbot, diamond shaped, with nail head-like protuberances, prized for its delicate flesh

Rombo liscio (soaso):
brill, like
rombo chiodato
but less esteemed

San Pietro (sampiero):
John Dory; called Saint-Pierre in France; a dark mark remains on its side where Saint Peter touched it; also called
sampietro

Sardina (sardela, sarda):
sardine, sleek and silvery with turquoise reflections

Scampo: langoustine
in France, Dublin Bay prawn in England, unavailable here;
rose-gray or pink, with claws and feelers like a small lobster; among the most delectable of all crustaceans; scampi are not large shrimp, as Italian menus in the United States pretend

(Schile):
the tiniest of shrimp, they remain gray when cooked; increasingly rare; sometimes known as
gamberetti grigi
in Italian
Scorfano:
scorpion fish, bony, reddish, used for soup;
racasse rouge
in France and indispensable to bouillabaisse;
scorfano
is slang for “ugly person”

Seppie (sepe):
cuttlefish; eight tentacles but more tender than octopi; their ink is sweeter and milkier than the squid’s in risotto and gnocchi; their broad, flat bones hang in birdcages the world over
Seppioline:
baby cuttlefish, as small as your thumbnail, irresistible when deep-fried whole; season begins in August
Sgombero:
mackerel
Sogliola (sfogia, potato):
sole, the world’s finest flatfish, says
Marcella, and unavailable in United States

Tartufi di mare:
sea truffles, a kind of clam, usually eaten raw

Tinea:
tench, a type of carp

Tonno:
bluefin tuna