| Food
& Other Important Things
Words
of descriptive elegance
by Don Curto
It is true there are occasions when a picture is worth a thousand
words. However, there are writers who are so good that no one
picture could possibly capture the world portrayed by their words.
Such a writer was Elizabeth David, the first great modern food
and travel writer who brought French and Mediterranean cooking
to staid, starved and rigidly rationed England after WWII.
She was born in 1913, died in 1992. You can read her biography
elsewhere.
Quite a few years ago I found her book titled An Omelette and
a Glass of Wine. This is a book of travel—in Spain,
France and Italy, mainly. It also is a book about food in those
places, and it is a book about small restaurants, and private
meals with friends, new and old.
When Ms. David wrote about an area, one comes away from the reading
with a rich appreciation of the area, with a feeling for the culture,
a picture of the colors and a wonderful mental tasting of the
foods there. This essay published in November 1964 is about Para
Navidad—“for Christmas”—and is a good example
of her observation ability. If you are unable to “taste”
the olives and the figs and the white cheese and the rich red
tomatoes, you have a problem.
Para Navidad
It is the last day of October. Here in the south-eastern corner
of Spain, the afternoon is hazy and the sun is warm, although
not quite what it was a week ago. Then we were eating out-of-doors
at midday, and were baked, even in our cotton sweaters. The colours
of the land are still those of late summer—roan, silver,
lilac and ochre. In the soft light, the formation of the rock
and the ancient terracing of the hills become clearly visible.
In the summer, the sun on the limestone—white soil dazzles
the eyes, and the greens of June obscure the shapes of the ravines
and craggy outcroppings. Now there are signs of autumn on the
leaves of some of the almond trees. They have turned a frail,
transparent auburn, and this morning when I awoke, I devoured
two of the very first tangerines of the season. In the dawn, their
scent was piercing and their taste was sharp. During the night
it had rained—not much, nothing like enough to affect the
parched soil—but all the same, there was a sheen on the rose
bricks and grey stones of the courtyard. The immense old terracotta
oil jar in the centre was freshly washed, and over the mountains
a half-rainbow gave a pretty performance as we drank our breakfast
coffee.
At midday, we picked small figs, dusty purple and pale jade green.
On the skins is a bloom not to be seen on midsummer figs. The
taste, too, is quite different. The flesh is a clear garnet red,
less rich and more subtle than that of the main-crop fruit, which
is of the vernal variety, brilliant green. Some of the figs have
split open and are half dried by the sun. In the north, we can
never taste fruit like this, fruit midway between fresh and dried.
It has the same poignancy as the black Valencia grapes still hanging
in heavy bunches on the vines. These, too, are in the process
of transforming themselves—from fresh grapes to raisins on
the stalk as we know them. Here the bunches have been tied up
in cotton bags.
The two ancients who tend the almond trees (this is Valencia almond
country, and it has been a bad season. If the rain fails, next
year’s crop may prove to be another disaster) and who have
known the estate of La Alfarella all their lives, were hoping
that the grapes could be cut late and hung in the storeroom until
Christmas. Their plans have been foiled by the wasps. This year,
there has been a fearsome plague of the persistent and destructive
brutes. They have bitten their way through the protecting cotton,
sucked out the juice of the fruit and left nothing but husks.
Here and there, where a bunch has escaped the marauders, we have
cut one and brought it back to the house in a basket with the
green lemons and some of the wild thyme that has an almost overpowering
scent, one that seems to be peculiar to Spanish thyme. It is perhaps
fanciful, but it seems to have undertones of aniseed, chamomile,
hyssop, lavender.
My English host, who has recreated this property of La Alfarella
out of a ruin and is bringing its land back to life after twenty
years of neglect, is at the cooking pots. He seizes on the green
lemons and grates the skins of two of them into the meat mixture
he is stirring up. He throws in a little of the sun-dried thyme
and makes us a beguiling dish of albondigas, little rissoles fried
in olive oil. He fries them skillfully, and they emerge with a
caramel-brown-and-gold coating reflecting the glaze of the shallow
earthenware sarten, the frying dish in which they have been cooked
and brought to the table. All the cooking here is done in the
local earthenware pots. Even the water is boiled in them. They
are very thick and sturdy, unglazed on the outside, and are used
directly over the Butagaz flame, or sometimes on the wood fire
in the open hearth. As yet, there is no oven. That is one of next
year’s projects.
Surprisingly, in an isolated farmhouse in a country believed by
so many people to produce the worst and most repetitive food in
Europe, our diet has a good deal of variety, and some of the produce
is of a very high quality. I have never eaten such delicate and
fine-grained pork meat, and the cured fillet, lomo de cerdo, is
by any standard a luxury worth paying for. The chicken and the
rabbit that go into the ritual paella cooked in a vast burnished
iron pan (only for paella on a big scale and for the frying of
tortillas are metal pans used) over a crackling fire are tender,
possessed of their true flavours. We have had little red mullet
and fresh sardines a la plancha, grilled on primitive round tin
grill plates made sizzling hot on the fire. This is the utensil,
common to France, Italy, Spain and Greece, that also produces
the best toast in the world—brittle and black-barred with
the marks of the grill.
To start our midday meal, we have, invariably, a tomato and onion
salad, a few slices of fresh white cheese, and a dish of olives.
The tomatoes are the Mediterranean ridged variety of which I never
tire. They are huge, sweet, fleshy, richly red. Here they cut
out and discard the central wedge, almost as we core apples, then
slice the tomatoes into rough sections. They need no dressing,
nothing but salt. With the roughly cut raw onions, sweet as all
the vegetables grown in this limestone and clay soil, they make
a wonderfully refreshing salad. It has no catchy name. It is just
ensalada, and it cannot be reproduced without these sweet Spanish
onions and Mediterranean tomatoes.
In the summer, seventeen-year-old Juanita asked for empty wine
bottles to take to her married sister in the village, who would,
she explained, preserve the tomatoes for the winter by slicing
them, packing them in bottles, and sealing them with olive oil.
They would keep for a year or more, Juanita said. Had her sister
a bottle we could try? No. There were only two of last year’s
vintage left. They were to be kept para Navidad, for Christmas.
Yesterday in the market there were fresh dates from Elche, the
first of the season. They are rather small, treacle-sticky and
come in tortoiseshell-cat colours: black, acorn brown, peeled-chestnut
beige; like the lengths of Barcelona corduroy I have bought in
the village shop. Inevitably, we were told that the best dates
would not be ready until Navidad. That applies to the oranges
and the muscatel raisins; and presumably also to the little rosy
copper medlars now on sale in the market. They are not yet ripe
enough to eat, so I suppose they are to be kept, like Juanita’s
sister’s tomatoes, and the yellow and green Elche melons
stored in an esparto basket in the house, for Navidad. We nibble
at the candied melon peel in sugar-frosted and lemon-ice-coloured
wedges we have bought in the market, and we have already torn
open the Christmas-wrapped mazapan (it bears the trade name of
El Alee, “the elk”; a sad-faced moose with tired hooves
and snow on its antlers decorates the paper), which is of a kind
I have not before encountered. It is not at all like marzipan.
It is very white, in bricks, with a consistency reminiscent of
frozen sherbet. It is made of almonds and egg whites, and studded
with crystallized fruit. There is the new season’s quince
cheese, the carne de membrillo, which we ought to be keeping to
take to England for Navidad presents, and with it there is also
a peach cheese. How is it that one never hears mention of this
beautiful and delicious clear amber sweetmeat?
There are many more Mediterranean treats, cheap treats of autumn,
like the newly brined green olives that the people of all olive-growing
countries rightly regard as a delicacy. In Rome, one late October,
I remember buying new green olives from a woman who was selling
them straight from the barrel she had set up at a street corner.
That was twelve years ago. I have never forgotten the fresh flavour
of the Roman green olives. The manzanilla variety we have bought
here come from Andalucia. They are neither green nor black, but
purple, rose, lavender and brown, picked at varying stages of
maturity, and intended for quick home consumption rather than
for export. It is the tasting of familiar products at their point
of origin (before they are graded, classified, prinked up and
imprisoned in bottles, tins, jars, and packets) that makes them
memorable; forever changes their aspect.
By chance, saffron is another commodity that has acquired a new
dimension. It was somewhere on the way up to Cordoba that we saw
the first purple patches of autumn-flowering saffron crocuses
in bloom. On our return, we called on Mercedes, the second village
girl who works at La Alfarella, to tell her that we were back.
Her father was preparing saffron—picking the orange stigmas
one by one from the iridescent mauve flowers heaped up in a shoe
box by his side and spreading them carefully on a piece of brown
paper to dry. The heap of discarded crocus petals made a splash
of intense and pure colour, shining like a pool of quicksilver
in the cavernous shadows of the village living room. Every night,
during the six-odd weeks that the season lasts, he prepares a
boxful of flowers, so his wife told us. The bundle of saffron
that she took out of a battered tin, wrapped in a square of paper,
and gave to us must represent a fortnight’s work. It is last
year’s vintage because there is not yet enough of the new
season’s batch to make a respectable offering. It appears
to have lost nothing of its penetrating, quite violently acrid-sweet
and pungent scent. It is certainly a handsome present that Mercedes’
mother has given us, a rare present, straight from the source,
and appropriate for us to take home to England for Navidad.
An even better one is the rain. At last, now it is real rain that
is falling. The ancient have stopped work for the day, and most
of the population of the village is gathered in the cafe. The
day the rain comes, the village votes its own fiesta day.
The Spectator, 27 November 1964
Permission to reprint “Para Navidad” has been requested
of The Globe Pequot Press, P.O. Box 480, Guilford, Conn. 06437.
Elizabeth David has little recipes that seem almost to pop up
from nowhere and turn out to be gems—this is one I recommend
highly.
Potted Chicken Livers
This recipe from Elizabeth David produces a rich, smooth and gamey-flavored
mixture, rather like a very expensive French pate, at a fraction
of the price and with very little fuss. In the autumn and winter,
I make this often, and properly covered, (plastic will do) it
will keep in the refrigerator for several days or a week.
Take four ounces of frozen, cleaned chicken livers. Heat one ounce
of good butter in a small heavy frying pan and cook the livers
for about five minutes, turning them constantly. The outside should
be browned; the insides should be pink, but not raw.
Using a slotted spoon, transfer them to a food processor. To the
buttery juices in the pan add a tablespoon of good brandy and
some salt and pepper and let it sizzle for a few seconds. Pour
over the chicken livers.
Put in the remaining two ounces of butter, softened, but not melted.
Process the whole mixture to a very smooth paste. Taste for seasoning.
Put into small custard cups, smooth the tops. Cover and chill
in the refrigerator. Serve with crostini.
—Don Curto
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