just tomatoes and thyme from his garden.
It was the best fish I’d ever eaten.
Reading your book, I almost felt I was
reading a book of literature like Izaac
Walton’s The Compleat Angler (1653). “It must
be confessed,” you wrote, “the life history
of the sole is not entertaining, delicious
though it may taste.” And this about lobsters:
“One should, ideally, find a seaside town
where lobsters are caught and make an
expedition, an occasion, if you like, which
will become part of one’s family ritual.”
Your comments about caviar are fabulous:
“Caviar is a grand and painful subject.” You
described it as nutritious and expensive with
“an air of mythical luxury... The food of czars,
of those incredible tyrants who cherished
fine fat fleas and Fabergé knick-knacks, while
most of their subjects lived in a poverty of
indescribable squalor”. Where does writing
like this exist in cookery books now?
You wrote the book in the 1970s and
bemoaned people’s lack of interest in the
enormous varieties of edible species. You
filled the book with recipes for weever fish,
eel, dogfish, john dory, bluefish, conger eel,
shark and shad, as well as those we know
and love – turbot, cod, haddock, salmon,
dover sole, lobsters, crab, oysters, mussels
and prawns. There were sections on smoked
fish, wind-dried fish and even a recipe for the
sun-dried fish bombay duck.
Yet you were aware you were writing for
a small audience. A particular thought you
noted at the time was that fish could not be
served as a main course “when men were
present as they needed steak or some other
good red meat”. How nourishing, though,
were your recipes; what man could fail to
be satisfied by a Ligurian fish stew called
cacciucco(pronounced‘catchuko’),whichyou
recalledhavingina restaurantinViareggio
on the Tuscancoast.Youweremightilyput
off whenit arrivedatyourtable,it beingjet
black fromcuttlefishink,butdescribedit as
the bestthingyou’devereaten.
Your recipecallsforall,ora selectionof,
the following:squid,cuttlefish,lobster,langoustines,prawns,shrimps,mussels,
hake, johndory,weeverfish,monkfish,
rascasse,gurnardandredmullet.Thepages
of this recipearesplatteredwithtomato,
testimonytothenumberoftimesI’vecooked
it. The crowninggloryofyourcacciuccois the
toasted orfriedbreadyouputineachguest’s
bowl priortopouringonthestew.I founda
similar butsimplerdishcalledcioppino,in
San Franciscoofallplaces.InmyrecipeI’ve
used toastedsourdoughbreadrubbedwith
garlic. I hopeyoulikeit.Yourssincerely
I wasinaweofyou...Your
fishbookwasmybible
deliciousmagazine.co.uk 35
people.
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