Why Italians Love to Talk About Food (42 page)

By Margherita Bourtsev

 

I have summoned you as spokesmen of the Florentine table, the loftiest examples I know of that fare light, lean, savory, full of pith and flavor, fit for active wits, foes to sedentary obesity; lords of a table that never knew
risotto
, never conceived
maccheroni
, a table that execrates fats and reveres the spit and the griddle, with their lustral flames of wood and coal; a flame that fries you its fries without grease and roasts you its roasts without drip.
²

 

The Tuscan specialty described by Prezzolini consists of light, lean meat, larks of field or forest, or thrushes threaded onto the skewer along with chicken livers, bay leaves, and small pieces of pork fillet seasoned with thyme, all of it alternating with toasted bread (
crostini
) and slices of bacon and cooked over a wood fire. An old recipe, still alive today.

Michel de Montaigne, in his
Journey Through Germany and Italy
, noted, “The people about here are not near such meat-eaters as we are.”
³
Giacomo Castelvetro, in his work about the roots, herbs, and fruits of Italy, written in England, declares: “Beautiful Italy is not as abundant with meat as France and this island.”
⁴
Bartolomeo Scappi, in his imaginary journey through Italy, wrote a summary description of Italian cuisine that is actually a catalog of fish dishes.
⁵
Contemporaries emphasized the prevalence of fish and seafood products as a common Italian characteristic. A sign of hospitality in ancient Rome and in medieval Italy was an offer of bread with fish sauce (
garum
).

Indeed, why shouldn't the population have taken advantage of the country's rich fish resources, since they were subject, among other things, to the strict rules of a religious calendar that imposed 160 to 200 meatless days a year (see “
Calendar
”)? Surrounded almost entirely by sea, with abundant rivers and lakes, these people found in fish the chief ingredient of their diet: a wholesome, endless reserve of protein to sustain them in a healthy and economical way. Furthermore, over the centuries they had acquired a unique ability, still unparalleled today, to process all kinds of fish, transforming them into simple dishes at some times and elaborate ones at others.

Italian fish soups are a showcase of culinary perfection: the Sardo-Genovese
buridda
; the
cacciucco
of Liguria and Tuscany; the Rimini-style broth in Emilia Romagna; and all the soups taught to cooks in the Accademia del Brodetto (fish soup academy) of Porto Recanati, in the region of Macerata.

There are five hundred species of fish, seventy species of crustaceans, and thirty edible cephalopods living in the seas that surround Italy—the
mare nostrum
of ancient Rome. According to statistics, the average Italian ranks second in the world for fish consumption, after Japan. His average consumption is twenty-five kilograms of fish per year.

 

At 2:40 a.m. on a starry night in November, the wholesale fish market on Via Lombroso in Milan looks like the scene of a fashion show. Driving through the huge area by car, you see lights, crowds, action everywhere. Cars are parked in front of all the entrances of the main building. In the large hall the light is blinding; a wide corridor has been left in the center, and counters with “spectators” line both sides of the long “catwalk.” The “spectators” look on with dead faces as they lie prostrate, sometimes sliding down off the counters. The spectators are tuna and swordfish, their protuberances turned toward us as we move down the “runway” amid a crowd of merchants, restaurateurs, wholesalers, and those who are just looking. With swordfish and hammerheads leaning threateningly out
into the aisle, the scene recalls not only a fashion parade, but also a company of Cossacks with sabers drawn before an attack.

The most picturesque are the tuna, the large sturgeon, and the salmon, packed in polystyrene boxes, extended so that the head sticks out entirely from a hole on the left, while the tail protrudes by half a meter from a corresponding hole on the right—more or less like the lady in sequins whom the circus magician prepares to cut in half with his fake saw.

Each fish is officially assigned a commercial name, coupled with the Latin name, as required by law. Professor Renato Malandra, director of the market, knows not only the correct, official names of the fish but also their countless dialect variations, unique to each city and each village. The fish have the right to have two Italian names—two, but no more than two. The
molo
is the
merlano
(whiting), the
melu
is the
potassolo
(blue whiting), the
spigola
is the
branzino
(bass), the
busbana
is the
cappellano
(poor cod). The problem is that only one of these two names can be written on the cardboard signs that both fish market owners and itinerant fish vendors display on their counters. Writing any other dialect name for the fish in question is absolutely prohibited.
⁶

The signs are replaced each day. The ones from the day before cannot be reused, since they have become soaked with ice and permeated by the fish smell; then, too, the price has changed. So each day the fishmongers make new signs; they are cunning when it comes to the rules, replacing one dialect name with another dialect name, trying to choose the one that will suggest a more superior variety. For example, they put a cardboard sign on the stand with the illegal designation
piovra
rather than the legitimate one
polpo
(octopus). Instead of
smeriglio
they write
palombo
(dogfish). Finally, instead of
pagello atlantico
they write
pagello fragolino
(both types of sea bream), which costs twice as much. Buyers swallow the cunning vendors' baited hook like hapless gobies.

Therefore, the director of the market, Malandra, must be an expert in psychology, in addition to his other skills. He is a university professor (two final-year students patter along behind him, having the honor of doing the nightly rounds with this luminary), a specialist in ichthyology, medicine, and helminthology, and a linguistics expert. It is his job to sort out and correlate the regional names of all these fish and shrimp, shellfish and invertebrates, snails and frogs. He knows how to deal with the unscrupulous itinerant vendors—hardened, chapped by wind, seasoned, and crafty—whose sector is protected by a solid trade union. It should be said that many of them inspire genuine admiration: they are outstanding, first-rate masters whose knowledge, manual dexterity, and work style is supreme virtuosity.

A man who holds the post of director of a market such as this, who spends every night except Saturday and Sunday on the job, must have solid skills in both the economics field (to decide quickly how to regulate complex fish bidding, to prevent financial crashes, the spoilage of merchandise, or the ruin of individual players) and the field of physical geography. He must be familiar with all the harbors where rate fixers accept the fish of the day and define the quantity of fish that can enter an Italian port on any given day, depending on the season, on the weather forecasts, on upcoming holidays, and even on the different days of the week, since more fish is consumed on abstinence days (see “
Calendar
”).

The first requirement of the goods sold in this fish market is, of course, freshness—a freshness that is not defined by smell. In terms of smell, everything is always perfect, simply because in this market no merchandise smells. Well, maybe there's a very faint, salty aroma of seawater. Freshness, on the other hand (the absolute kind), is unmistakably clear. It is demonstrated when a fish picked up by its tail stiffens, like a stick, parallel to the ground: that's rigor mortis. The dorsal fin is erect, the muscles are tense. The eye must be bright and convex (although the eyes of fish that live in deep waters cave in immediately as a result of pressure, and this does not mean that the fish is not fresh).

Saltwater fish, therefore, are not sold alive: these types of fish, unlike freshwater fish, die quickly when removed from their environment. Not so with crustaceans. The market value of lobsters, crayfish, prawns, and shrimp depends on their vitality. Like bivalve shellfish, snails, and all related species, they must be alive to sell. As we pass the tanks and huge vats full of lobsters (the lobsters' pincers are taped so that they will not harm one another), the professor occasionally smacks the prisoners, who shake their antennae. You can see that they are alive and somewhat irritated.

On the “runway” of the fish market showroom, there's a crowd of specialists who have come from Milan, Bergamo, Brescia, Lodi, Cremona, and Pavia: restaurant owners and wholesalers. But the more numerous buyers are the street market vendors. These are the cheerful, rowdy, omnipresent fishmongers to whom Italian cities owe their unique, lively atmosphere. Their markets are the legacy of the Greek agora.

Around five or six o'clock in the morning, the itinerant vendors begin carrying the crates and tubs to their locations in the market, which differ depending on the day of the week. If you stroll through the piazzas of any city and look carefully under your feet, you will see that nearly invisible figures have been drawn on the pavement: these mark the spaces rented by the street vendors for the weekly market. Some of them have occupied their squares of space on the central piazza or on the main street of the city or village for
three decades or more. The spaces are handed down from the dynasty's oldest member to the youngest.

Every Tuesday, after leaving the wholesale market around 6:30 a.m., the president of the provincial association of itinerant vendors, Ercolino Piva, cleans, slices, guts, and sells his fish—explaining in detail the various ways to cook them. This lasts from 7:20 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. in front of an ATM window (Ercolino's buyers often need to replenish their funds) on Via Eustachi in Milan. At 7:20 a.m. his line forms. There are mistresses from large, wealthy homes, difficult to manage, accompanied by their domestic help (the lady of the house will hurry to the office, the maid will put the fish in the refrigerator), journalists leaving the newspaper office early in the morning after a night shift, the elderly woman from next door who slips out for a piece of tuna, mothers (starting from 8:15) who have brought their children to the nearby elementary school, and an engaged couple who have come to buy two dozen oysters.

“Sapore di mare. L'arte di gustare il pesce fresco” (The taste of the sea: the art of enjoying fresh fish) is the title of a short article by Lina Sotis in the
Corriere della Sera
(spring 2006), which is dedicated to this local vendor: “A famous city haunt, offering magnificent specimens that live in the sea, is the mythical fishmonger Ercolino, who has a stand in the city's most famous markets . . . As we were saying, fish is in vogue.”

The wholesale market has every tuna that exists. The
Thunnus thynnus
(bluefin, the kind the Japanese use for sashimi and sushi), caught during the
mattanza
(tuna killing)
⁷
among the Egadi Islands off Trapani in Sicily, not far from Favignana. There are also yellowfin tuna, albacore (these do not interest the Japanese, but do the Spaniards, for their traditional dishes), and bigeye. They all have different prices, and are in greater or lesser demand. Even the different parts of the tuna have different prices. Particularly prized is the
ventresca
(stomach muscle), followed by
tonnino
(dorsal muscle), and then by all the other parts (
tarantello
). There is a minimum size limit for tunas: fishing of smaller ones, those that have not lived long enough, is prohibited.

In general, the most prized element in all fish is muscle mass, and for this mass to be significant and the flesh supple, the fish must spend its life in an incessant struggle for survival, not vacationing in a guesthouse with three meals a day. It is even better when the muscle mass is suffused with sex hormones. Therefore, the best fish is that caught at the moment just prior to mating. Not after spawning: once the eggs or semen are ejected, fish become quite inedible.

We notice two rigid blocks, externally indistinguishable from each other: they are fillets of dried cod, or stockfish, a subject already covered in this book. Thus at the wholesale
market there is the opportunity to observe the best species of stockfish, protected by the Slow Food Association: the
Gadus morrhua
(cod), on whose skin a lengthwise yellow stripe can be seen amid the many gray ones. To buy a slab like this you must pay a substantial sum. The other type of stockfish does not have the stripe; it is called
molva
(ling) and costs significantly less . . . except in cases where it is fraudulently passed off as the expensive type.

In the past, one of the most sought-after products at the Milan fish market was the
mosciame
, the dried dorsal muscle of the dolphin. But dolphin fishing in the Mediterranean Sea has been prohibited since 1980. So now
mosciame
may only be tuna.

The particular mine of national gastronomic wealth that deserves special mention is
pesce azzurro
(blue fish): herring, anchovies, sardines, mackerel, sardinellas, horse mackerel or scad, sand eels, and needlefish. The flesh of these fish is rich in polyunsaturated omega-3 fats and vitamin D. They are precious substances that can protect against thrombosis and various other illnesses.
Pesce azzurro
, a true medicine, prescribed in cases of psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis, are a source of mineral elements and contain more calcium, iodine, phosphorus, fluorine, and zinc than other marine species. Moreover, these fish are caught mainly in the Adriatic Sea, so they are local, inexpensive, and reach the market the same day they're caught. This is important to the consumer, particularly because polyunsaturated acids decompose at high temperatures. Therefore, to maintain the incredible quality of
pesce azzurro
, it should be eaten raw, after a brief marinade, or baked for a short time in the oven or in foil. Only with these cooking methods are the beneficial acids preserved. These fish are good with pasta, the soft inner part of bread, and tomato sauce. Different varieties of anchovies are distinguished by the salinity of the waters in which they've lived: those caught in the Adriatic Sea have a less marked flavor, while the anchovy of the Ligurian coast is much more salty.