Imperative cooking: fruits of the sea
SPANISH fish markets on the south-west coast — the Atlantic — sell some 50 vari- eties of fish. You can just about get through them in two weeks if you eat two courses each for lunch and dinner. What better holiday to take? There are far more varieties of fish than baroque churches or Moorish gardens but, unlike the trippers who trudge round the churches and gar- dens, the fish-loving holidaymaker, if he is serious, has to find a flat to stay in so that he can shop and cook. Buying, cooking and eating the fish is the only way to sort through the confusing varieties of bream, the different names, the diverse ways of cooking and the relative importance of size, freshness and origin of different sorts of fish. It is not an arduous holiday. The daily market raid where I was, in Puerto Santa Maria, started at nine — the market of the Immaculate Conception only opens then — or go over to the Cadiz market on the nine o'clock boat. Either market leaves mornings and afternoons free if you must go to the churches and gardens.
Actually, there are more than 50 sorts of fish because with many fish size is every- thing. It is not so much that tiny soles are better than the larger ones, or that small cuttlefish (say 20 in a pound) tastier than the big ones, or that small live shrimps are better or worse than the huge deep-red prawns, they are just different and need dif- ferent cooking techniques. There is as much difference between different sizes of the same fish when cooked appropriately differently, as between different types of fish. If you can't get through all the types and sizes, leave out some which are avail- able in England, such as the skate or mack- erel — though even these taste different when taken from different waters.
Try some of the following tasks to keep you busy. First work your way through the How dare you suggest that I'm not patriotic? I'm red-neck, white trash and blue-collar.' breams, down from the expensive doradas and urtas through the herreras and zapatas, down to the cheaper brecas and besugos. Depending on size and type, these range from £3.50 down to less than 50p a pound. Then try the 'steak' fishes, the different cuts of tuna, swordfish, shark and the superb corvina. Next are small fish, the confusing different fish called boquerones, including varieties of anchovy and white- bait, the sardines, tiny mackerel, baby whit- ing (pijotas), baby soles (acedias) and red mullet. Strangers to Spain will not believe just how small some of these are when sold. With the last three there might be, say, eight to the pound or more — an environ- mentalist's nightmare, a gastronome's dream.
By week two you are ready for the cephalopods. You thought there were just three, didn't you: squid, octopus and cuttle- fish? But, once again, size turns that into six or nine different types, with the small deep-fried tasting totally different from the medium a la plancha, or in their own ink, and the large stewed — not forgetting their eggs, cold with garlic and tomatoes. There are at least five sorts of almejas and coqi- nas, maybe five sorts of crab, certainly six or seven of prawn and three of sea snail, plus goose-neck barnacles, sea anemones, mussels, cockles, crayfish, dates and a few I've forgotten.
And we have not started yet on the scabbard fish (very inexpensive), the John Dory, the gurnards, monk and murena eels, oh, and the little smelt, the tiny jurels (scad). Why not end up with a bass or two? But you have not finished till you have included the dried tuna and the dried roes.
The cost of a fish-buying, cooking and eat- ing holiday? The fish itself is about £30 a week each, the cheaper offsetting the expen- sive, and that is for two meals a day. Add olive oil, salad, the odd bunch of asparagus, garlic, tomatoes and it is a few pounds more. Manzanilla is about 70p a pint.
Of course you have to get there, but BA (food foul, take own) do a direct flight to Jerez in the summer months, and it is a £12 taxi ride from there to Puerto Santa Maria. Leave mid-afternoon and you're in the fino bars by 9 p.m., ready to eat at 10.30 p.m. The difficult part is finding a flat so that you can cook. There are lots in ghastly estates along the coast, but you want one in town, preferably near the market. A splen- didly efficient English-speaking lady at one agency — Inmobiliaria Centro, Cadiz code, then 851545 — found me a very good one at about £35 a night. Her name is Immacu- lada — ask for Ada.
I can safely give you this valuable infor- mation because it is now July, and no one would want to go to the place in July or August. By the autumn the flights will be indirect and tedious, or you will have for- gotten, or once again the churches and gar- dens will have re-exerted their usual hold over the educated classes.
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