Pick the oregano and parsley leaves off the sprigs. Pile directly on top of the garlic and roughly chop.
Add the red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper directly onto the board. Mix all.
A few hours later, guests arrived, and when Adam gave me the go-ahead, I began to cook the paella. Some of the teens helped me embed the chicken wings into the rice, and after they’d cooked for a bit we distributed the clams, mussels, and shrimp evenly around the pan. For some reason every time I make paella I find that if there is a teenager around they particularly like to help with this part of the cooking process. I don’t know why but I’m glad of it. As I said earlier, paella cooked outdoors draws people into its orbit like crows or monkeys are drawn to shiny objects. They linger around the pan as it burbles away, slowly chatting about this and that but all the while taking in the slow transformation that happens as the rice expands and grows deeper in color as the soffritto works its way into each grain, the mollusks open slowly, and the shrimp change from an opaque blue-white to reddish pink. So many slow-cooked meals are secreted away inside an oven and presented in their finished state, but paella invites one into the process. It has nothing to hide.
With the paella completed, the top of the Caja China was removed, revealing something that looked nothing like the hog that had been placed inside hours before. What we carefully raised from the box was a golden, sumptuous, crackling-encrusted pig that elicited moans and applause from the now-ravenous guests. We laid it onto a table covered with a hodgepodge of cutting boards, released the pig from its racks, and Adam began the process of freeing the meat from its bones as the corn was placed into pots of boiling water to cook for five to ten minutes.
We served it all up on countless paper plates, poured more wine and beer, and raised a glass to the Spanish and Cuban visionaries who had created two of the best dishes ever cooked in an iron pan and a metal box.
* * *
I got carried away by the pigs. I need to write a little more about fish.
I?I had never tasted samphire until I came to the UK and instantly took to its briny sweetness.
18
Felicity and I both love seafood, and seafood stew is something we cook quite often. It’s quick to make; it’s healthy; it can be served with pasta, rice, or toasted bread to create a complete meal; and it’s bloody delicious. As a kid I was never that keen on fish and therefore I never fully appreciated how well my mother, also a seafood lover, cooked anything that came from the water. Many of her specialties were served on Christmas Eve, as I described earlier, but I don’t really remember her making a seafood stew. As I began to travel for work and started eating in restaurants more often, I became fascinated by seafood stew and would order it if it was on the menu in any restaurant I went to.
One of my first jobs away from home for an extended period of time was in 1988 in Vancouver, British Columbia. Vancouver was about a quarter of the size it is now, but even then it had some fairly good restaurants. （Now it has some amazing restaurants.） One was a place called Joe Fortes, a sort of old-fashioned seafood and chop house, which is still around. Here they served a fish stew called cioppino. It is said that cioppino was created by Italian fishermen who had immigrated to San Francisco in the early part of the twentieth century and was based on a stew they had made back in Liguria called ciopin. Like most fish stews, it is composed of whatever fish were hauled up in the daily catch. I had never heard of it before going to Vancouver but I was very happy to have found it.
There are many versions of fish stew, or in Italian, zuppa di pesce, throughout Italy itself and the world over. For instance, in Livorno there is cacciucco, in Croatia there is brudet, yet another from Liguria is called burrida, and of course from Provence, there is the brilliant bouillabaisse. （The latter may be my favorite, heretical as that is given my heritage.）
Basically most fish stew recipes are quite similar. However, there are some ingredients that in most places would be acceptable but in certain regions of Italy are blasphemous to use. For instance, I was once explaining to a Tuscan how I made my fish stew, and when I mentioned the word “onion” she became practically apoplectic.
“No! Never! Onion?”
“Yes, a little—”
“No. Never!” she repeated. “Never onion with fish!”
“Really?” I asked meekly.
“Yes. Never.”
“Huh, I always find it gives a sweetness—” I ventured, but was abruptly cut off by her saying, “No. Horrible. Never.”
We stopped talking about seafood stew at that point. As I have said, Italians can be very dogmatic when it comes to food in general.