Wind and Water

A confession: I find the concept of traditional food difficult to be purist about. Traditional food is generally the food that most people in a culture have had access to, cooked with whatever flavourings they had to hand. If the foods we eat have changed in response to a changing world –whether by access to new ingredients or changing tastes, our foods are no less an insight into our histories and our ways of life.
In restaurants in coastal or island towns, the Fish of the Day is reliably a good bet. In Costa Teguise the Fish of the Day was alive today, brought to shore in Arrecife this morning.
Fishermen from the island spend their time on the water in crews of nine or ten. Though the boats have changed with time, the people of Lanzarote have been fishing since they copied the sailing ships of pirates and first took to the ocean. The island is home to the longest-sailing fishing fleet in the islands, and aspiring fishermen come from all over Spain to study at the Escuela de Pesca.
I have spent the last several hours sailing over and falling into the same ocean that was home to the Fish of the Day, and is the livelihood of so many on the island. There is a particular thrill as the wind fills the sail and pulls through my shoulders, sending me planing along the very surface of the water, as though the wind and water themselves are as alive as they are part of life.
The Fish of the Day is served on a bed of chips -a familiar concession to the steady flow of tourists through the town, but the spices wafting up from my plate are new to me, a reminder that we are far from the European mainland, that the coast of Morocco is barely a horizon away. Chips and mushy peas notwithstanding, the history of a people is on the plate before me.
The Fish of the Day is delicious. It savours of salt spray, straining ropes and the African continent gleaming in the distance.