Passport & Plate - Octopus & Potatoes
Italy | Wednesday, March 12, 2014 | 5 photos
Ingredients
A fresh Octopus (800 g.)
Potatoes (4 or 5)
1 Onion
1 Carrot
1 Stick of celery
3 Laurel leaves
2 Cloves of garlic
1 Lemon
Salt
Vinegar
Pepper
Parsley
Basil
How to prepare this recipeOCTOPUS & POTATOES
The recipe
The twentieth century was late in Camogli. Tonio had a stove, a couple of oars and a light blue boat, Baxeicou . He has painted it every single summer since he was thirteen. You need perseverance when it comes to salt.
Near the stove and scattered all around, the needles for the nets, some fishing rods and a fillet knife with a bone handle. On the windowpane of the little house on the port, the shining green leaves of the basil waited in the hazy morning.
When he drags the net back, he already knows what will be: octopuses, anchovies and squid make for a good day. With red shrimp and swordfish it’s even better. That is how he makes ends meet: selling his poor catch to the restaurants downtown, but not today. Today is Sunday and he toasts to the coming season: the last summer of the century.
He brings the octopus to the table; with his pocket knife he takes the eyes away, then the beak and the entrails. Eventually he washes it carefully and leaves it on the cutting board.
In the meantime he fills the pot with water and puts it on the stove to boil. He adds salt, a spoonful of vinegar, two big laurel leaves, half an onion, one carrot and a stick of celery.
While the water boils, he hits the octopus on the worn out wood to make the meat tender; then, taking it by the head, he plunges it into the water: as in a ceremony he dips it in and out three times until the tentacles curl up and look like burned flowers.
He leaves it gently sliding into the hot water while inside another pot the peeled potatoes patiently boil too.
With wise and slow movements he chops up the parsley and slices two cloves of garlic.
Half an hour later the potatoes are ready to be sliced. Tonio cuts the red and tender octopus into pieces and puts them into the terrine with the potatoes.
A seagull sings, he opens the window and the crisp air from the coast washes his weariness away. His widowerhood and a son across the ocean are painful thoughts, but the patch of sun on his wrinkled face makes him feel less miserable, and while he picks some basil leaves a shy and yet warm smile appears on his lips.
He tears them with his fingers and lets them fall into the terrine, savoring the enticing smell.
As the sun is high in the sky he climbs the steps that lead to the tiny terrace above his room; here, sitting in the shadow he waits for the octopus to cool down, taking little sips from the glass.
He spends the whole afternoon on that terrace, trying to make out the distant waves until night falls and his land looks like a handful of glittering precious stones laid down onto the coast.
With the flavour still on his tongue he closes his eyes. The sea cradles his fishes and his dreams. The straw yellow wine helps him picture his corner of happiness, nestled tight between the land and the sea, yet roomy enough to keep on dreaming.
The story behind this recipePOLPO & PATATE
Behind the scenes
I love to melt imagination and reality, I’ve always done it. I just can’t do without them. That happens when I write as well as when I travel. It is powerful, overwhelming and I always try to make the best out of it, leaving the other side of the coin to my psychotherapist.
I have a big, quite strange family and I never met three of my four grandparents: they died decades before I was born. So I thought I could write one of them down in order to depict a glimpse of his life.
It all comes from what I lived, heard and then tied with my imagination. Because sometimes to cook a recipe from a century ago, is better than leafing through the pages of a yellowed photo album. My uncle had a van and I spent my infancy travelling with it throughout Europe, keeping the travel diary my mom gave me always with me. Then I grew up, the van became a plane and the travel diary turned into a constant restlessness.
When I first left home my mother gave me another sort of diary. She began to write hers and her mother’s old recipes in it and I am continuing the job. Some time has passed since an insecure fat kid used to hide away in food. Now food is one of the best ways I have to keep track of my past as well as to understand who I meet. It measures and shows people’s stories. It doesn’t change you only physically, because it doesn’t feed your body alone.
And then there is Camogli. It is a little breathtaking town near to my city. I felt free there, I felt lonesome and almighty. The way it carves thoughts out of your mind is one of its best secrets. I chose Camogli as the background for my story because that place is partly mine, just as the flavours that come from it. Even though I now live far from there, I can’t help smiling when I smell that dish, it is like a familiar dialect to me, like someone you maybe never met, but you know you belong to.
