Basque History of the World by Mark Kurlansky Read Free Book Online Page A

in the casserole and let it simmer a little.
    In another skillet put the olive oil and the garlic cloves cut in slices. Heat the skillet with the oil and garlic. When the garlic begins to turn golden, add the guindilla and turn off the heat. Add the reduction of vinegar and fish juice.
    Bring to a boil for 1 minute.
    Uncover the sea bream and add the liquid.
    This leaves the question: What is meant by a “beautiful sea bream”? The answer was suggested in a 1933 book about fish written by the pseudonymous Ymanol Beleak, a native of Bilbao who lived many years in San Sebastián and whose real name was Manuel Carves-Mons. Beleak, an entrepreneur who, among other projects, manufactured chocolate boxes and created his own label of sparkling wine, wrote, “A sea bream of quality has a small head and thick back. It does not need to be large to be good.”
    O RIGINALLY,THE B ASQUE idea of the sea, itsaso , was the Bay of Biscay, that part of the Atlantic between France and Spain that on some medieval maps is marked El Mar de los Vascos , the Basque Sea. This, by Atlantic standards, is a relatively unfertile corner of the ocean, because while fish tend to cluster in the relatively shallow water over continental shelves, the Iberian shelf is short, dropping off steeply close to shore.

    Detail of a map by Giacomo Cantelli entitled “Vizcaya is divided into four major parts,” from Mercurio Geográfico , Rome, 1696. Note that the gulf is labeled Mare di Basque , the Basque Sea. (Photography archive of the Untzi Museoa-Maritime Museum, San Sebastián)
    With flair and imagination, the Basques have created great dishes out of even the least fleshy little creatures of their unfruitful Basque Sea: txangurro , the scrawny spider crab of winter; txitxardin , tiny baby Atlantic eel caught in the rivers, also in winter; antxoa , the spring anchovies; txipiron , small squid caught off the coast in the summer; and sardina , the fat summer sardines that were a specialty of the Bilbao area before the pollution that came with the industrial revolution.

    Txipiron
    Basque fishermen invented ways of cooking inexpensive local catch. Ttoro is a dish traditionally prepared by Labourdine fishermen based in towns at the mouth of the Nivelle: St.-Jean-de-Luz, Ciboure, and the village at the harbor entrance, Socoa. It is made from locally available fish, and the recipe varies from cook to cook. The following recipe is from Casinto De Gregorio, a Guipúzcoan who established a cozy little restaurant in St.-Jean-de-Luz in the 1920s. The restaurant, Chez Maya, is still in the family, and the cook, his grandson, Freddy, still uses his ttoro recipe.
    TTORO
(for six)
    6 hake steaks
2 large onions
6 very small monkfish
2 leeks
3 rascasse (a local redfish
1 3/4 pound tomatoes
in the same family as ocean
4 garlic cloves
perch, which is not a
1 pint white wine
substitute)
1 bouquet garni
2 large red gurnard
    (thyme, bay leaf
(a bony European fish)
    and parsley)
1 1/3 pound mussels
pepper
6 nice-sized langoustines
 
     
    Clean the fish. Cut the gurnard in slices. Filet the rascasse. Keep the bones.
    Sauté the chopped onions, minced leek, and chopped garlic in olive oil for 15 minutes; add the heads and bones of the fish and cook slowly. Add the tomatoes, crushed, the wine, a quart of water, the bouquet garni, and pepper. Cook 90 minutes.
    Clean and open the mussels, adding the juice to the pot.
    Strain the liquid.
    Flour the fish and sauté for 1 minute in olive oil.
    Combine everything and cook slowly for 10 minutes.
    Serve in soup bowls with garlic croutons.
    Despite their inventive cooks, the Basques did not stay in their little sea, content with its little creatures. What first drove them out farther than the known world was the pursuit of a deadly but profitable giant: the Basque whale.
    P LINY, THE FIRST-CENTURY Roman naturalist, described whales as creatures that lived off the north coast of Iberia. Until the Basques overhunted them, giant