potonthefire

by Pot On The Fire Free(Lit)

  4 large ripe tomatoes

  4 tablespoons fruity olive oil

  3 or 4 sprigs of fresh basil, separated into leaves and stems

  Cut the bread into cubes and place them in a bowl. Make a simple broth by boiling together the garlic and the basil stems in 2 cups of water, seasoning it to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

  Set a colander over the bread and put the tomatoes into it. Pour the broth over the tomatoes to loosen their skins. Then remove the tomatoes from the colander and peel and coarsely chop them, discarding the skins with the debris from the broth.

  Heat the olive oil in the same pot used to make the broth. When it is hot, stir in the tomatoes and cook, stirring occasionally, until they have thickened into a sauce. Tear up the basil into tiny pieces and stir this in.

  Pour the bread into the colander and, using the back of a wooden spoon, press out as much of the broth as possible. Stir the bread into the tomato sauce and season again with salt and black pepper. It will look like a red bread pudding.

  Bread rubbed with tomato has been described as the essence of the cultural identity of Catalonia—the last word in gastronomic pleasure. The large, dense loaves, called peasant bread, are baked without salt and have a cross cut into the top. The bread is cut into thick slices, then briskly massaged with tomato on both sides, bathed in that most penetrating balsam extra-virgin olive oil and, by the way of a blessing, sea salt…. Eatingpa amb tomàquet is an experience which requires full concentration.

  — Alicia Rios,The Heritage of Spanish Cooking

  According to Colman Andrews, writing in his masterlyCatalan Cuisine, Catalans characterize themselves as having an enormous appetite for bread. They even have a word—panarra— for those who devour it by the loaf. Ifpa amb tomàquet is for them the essence of their cultural identity, this may be because it is also the ultimate reduction of a classic Spanish peasant dish,sopa seca, or “dry soup.” Although its variations are many, asopa seca is basically a soup in which crusts of dry bread have drunk up all—or almost all—the broth, producing a kind of savory bread pudding enhanced with everything from seafood to leafy greens.Pa amb tomàquet is sopa seca for anytime when cooking is inconvenient, but especially during the long, hot Spanish summers. In many ways, it is the ideal summer meal.

  I have to admit that, for the longest time, I didn’t myself think of it that way. In fact, my imagining of it is nicely captured in the least effective photograph in that magnum coffee-table productionFrance: A Culinary Journey, where it is depicted as a pathetically skimpy slice of toasted French bread wiped with the single half of aplum tomato.47My first suspicion that I might have gotpa amb tomàquet wrong came when I read Leopold Pomés’sTeoria i pràctica del pa amb tomàquet, which, although written in Catalan, comes with an (occasionally surrealistic) English gloss. Pomés, a playful, heavily bearded Catalan intellectual, argues many things aboutpa amb tomàquet,48but the one that struck me most was his insistence that it is ideally eaten withknife and fork.

  Pa amb tomàquetlooks rather silly broken down into the standard recipe format, so let’s just present it so:

  PA AMB TOMÀQUET

  Have at hand a large, densely textured, slightly stale country loaf; plenty of ripe tomatoes; a cruet of fruity olive oil; a jar of sea salt.

  Begin by cutting the tomatoes in half, discarding any that are not quite ripe (the pulp is not yet soft and wet) or too ripe (the pulp has turned to water). Gently squeeze out the seeds and gelatinous juices so that nothing is left but pure, soft pulp. Slice the bread into half-inch-thick slices. Rub the cut side of the tomato gently but firmly against the bread, slowly enough so that the crumb can soak up the pulp (it shouldn’t be coated with it as if the pulp were jam).

  Do the same with the other side of the bread, discarding the tomato halves as soon as they are exhausted and making sure that every part of the surface has received its share. Lightly drizzle both sides with the olive oil and then sprinkle them with the sea salt. The bread slice should be neither wet nor dry, but at once firm and moist. The way to describe a properly madepa amb tomàquet: it glistens.

  What you are left with, after it has been coated, oiled, and salted on both sides, is still a piece of bread, but a piece of bread so unctuous and juicy that it is best enjoyed cut into bite-sized morsels and eaten with a fork. Not because it will fall apart into a mush; not even, as Pomés himself says, because it will get your fingers greasy; but for the same reason you don’t hoist a steak off your plate and eat it with your fingers:because that isn’t the best way to enjoy it.

  After this essay appeared in our food letter,Simple Cooking, subscriber Maurice Frechette told us about the Maltese version ofpa amb tomàquet, calledhobz iz zejt, or “bread and oil.”

  My wife, Lynn, is Maltese, and we spent a week a few years ago on that island with her great aunt Rose. She would take us to the beach (rock—the Maltese think sand beaches are “dirty”) to swim, making us a picnic lunch ofhobz iz zejt in the morning before we went. Here’s how I described it in my journal at the time:

  cut a tomato in half, rub it on the bread, then dip the bread in a plate with oil add pepper and salt

  tastier: minced garlic in the oil

  traditional: use the tomato husk by chopping it up and putting it on the bread

  Aunt Rose: adds capers, olives, tuna, onions

  Maltese expatriates weep for this. We ate it every day on the beach that had no sand. It improves if you cover it with a towel and put in on a hot rock next to the sea in Sliema. Always by the sea.

  A few additional pointers (and a caveat). The tomato should be big and juicy (of course, it’s the cut side that is rubbed on the bread). The bread is the large, crusty, round loaf that Mediterranean bakers make from Portugal to Greece. I’m sure the toppings are a matter of local dispute, but not knowing more than two Maltese cooks, I can’t really comment on what the disputes are about. I know Aunt Rose would always make them with tuna, capers, and the chopped husk of the rubbed tomato. Sometimes, we’d see garlic.

  Now the caveat: no matter how carefully we make it,hobz iz zejt never tastes quite as good here as it did there. Maybe this is why Maltese expatriates reallydo weep when it is mentioned. The problem may lie in the nature of the ingredients, but my hunch is that the fat, soggy slices need to sit wrapped in a towel on a hot rock at the beach in a Maltese August until you are hungry enough to eat them.

  A Frenchman once told me, “A piece of crustypain ordinaire may be a spoon for your soup, but a slice ofpain de campagne is like a plate.”

  — Joe Ortiz,The Village Baker

  This image of a bread “steak”—of a thick slab of bread, dressed and eaten off a plate with silverware—did more to break the hold that fresh bread had on my imagination than any number of bowls of soup in which chunks of dry bread have been allowed to soak. If one equivalent ofpanzanella is pasta tossed with fresh tomatoes,pa amb tomàquet edged me into the neighborhood of the pizza slice. But if the similarity opened the necessary door, it was the possibilities inherent in the difference that propelled me through it.

  When I began to follow my appetite rather than the usual formulas in the composing of pizza toppings (see the essay “Existential Pizza” on page 129), I soon discovered that there were certain things that I yearned to eat on a crust that did not do well baked onto a pizza. Among them were freshly made compounds like pesto,olivada, tapenade, oreperonata,which, even if some pizza recipes utilize them, are really not meant to be eaten hot (or not meant to be heated at all).49

  Others, like eggs scrambled with fresh tomatoes and basil or abrandade of white beans, are simply antithetical to such treatment. Not so withbruschetta, orfrotté d’ail, as it is known in Provence. A dense country loaf does not, in my opinion, make good sandwich bread, but a slice of it grilled and brushed with olive oil makes an unmatchable edibleplate.

  Borne on this image, the crust has found a durable place in my culinary imagining. Consider: a bottle of wine, a loaf of country b
read, and the most basic of outdoor grills, under which a large handful of twigs has burned to a tangle of glowing embers. Throw on these a sprig of rosemary and grill slices of the bread in the aromatic heat. Brush them with olive oil (or not, as circumstances dictate) and generously—this a meal, not an hors d’oeuvre—top.

  Recently, food writers have discovered thatbruschetta —or its little brother,crostini —is an ideal medium for easy summer dishes (see the booklist below). However, I suggest that, before consulting them, you first turn to your own instincts. A good starting place is to enhance the olive-oil rub with a little crushed garlic, anchovy (anchoïade), or minced or puréed black olives (tapenade), and use this in conjunction with one of the many Mediterranean summer dishes—grilled eggplant,piperade, ratatouille—that will moisten and enrich a grilled crust. Instances are legion: fromanchoïade spooned over coarsely chopped broccoli totapenade mixed with wedges of tomato, slices of hard-boiled egg, or the traditional can of tuna … and on to fresh green beans dressed with garlickyaïoli and pesto stirred into a bowl of cooked tiny white navy beans.

  ANCHOÏADE

  Versions for this abound in Mediterranean cookbooks, but the simplest—described by René Jouveau inLa Cuisine provençale de tradition populaire —directs that for each serving you rinse and remove the backbone from 1 or 2 salted anchovies and set these in a small skillet, pour over some olive oil and a touch of wine vinegar, and, on the lowest possible heat, allow everything to gently meld into a sauce.

  TAPENADE

  The Provençal shepherd or field hand might not have had a flask of olive oil with which to anoint his grilled slice, but he could rub it with olives and sprinkle it with bits of fresh herb. To my mind, the besttapenade still has the feel of that olive-rubbed crust. To make it, prepareanchoïade as above but omit the vinegar, and mix into it a large quantity of coarsely chopped black brine-cured olives, a much smaller amount of minced capers and garlic, and a pinch of crumbledherbes de provence. It is all the better when made with two or three different types of cured olive.

  The bed in Van Gogh’s painting possesses density of being because it is at once ordinary and durable, an object that promises always to be there. We look at it and see sleep. To those who know and value it, the peasant loaf offers this same gift. It radiates a density of being precisely because it calls no attention to itself. The peasant who reaches for it is instantly assuaged by its familiar presence, a touch as familiar to his hand as that of his own body. Hunger has already begun to fall away; the spirit is resuscitated by anticipation of the revivified crust.

  Our culture no longer values what is durable. Intimations of mortality discomfit us: the cheese that deliquesces, the country ham that molds, the bread that crusts. We turn instead to the instantly eatable, the always fresh—which is also how we want to think about ourselves. We are what we eat. The peasant loaf asks us to decide which metaphor we want to appropriate for ourselves: the tired crust revived in hot and soothing broth … or the plastic-wrapped slice that never stales.

  Further Reading

  As anyone not residing in Ultima Thule must by now know, in the past few years trend-conscious American chefs and cookbook writers have seized hold of the rustic Italian snack of grilled country bread rubbed with garlic and dribbled with olive oil, most commonly calledbru-schetta (which we are slowly learning to pronounce “broos-KET-ta”). This is because such a tasty slab of bread can—as much as any pizza crust—stretch a little savory topping a long way. Italians well understand this, as witness, say, the way that farmworkers regularly enhance their morning snack ofbruschetta with some slices of salami or prosciutto or the flesh of a few black olives before they wash these down with plenty of cool white wine.

  Of the many writers who have tackled this subject, my personal favorites are Ann and Franco Taruschio, who, in their unjustly overlookedBruschetta: Crostoni and Crostini, bring to the subject great culinary talent, an easy familiarity with authentic Italian cooking, and some dogged backroads research onbruschetta’s home turf, and so return us to the inspiration of the original.

  In their recipes—many of them traditional—one enticing combination follows another: anchovies and ripe figs; fontina and spring onions; ricotta and walnuts; soft scrambled eggs and Gorgonzola; cockles and fresh basil; black olives and mushrooms. Always, the ingredient list is as short as the flavors are long. The authors also share a very unusual method for makingpane pugliese that was taught them by a farmer’s wife, and they devote a whole chapter to the little-discussed topic ofbruschetta made with polenta or flatbreads.

  Perhaps my favorite moment in the book came when I discovered that the cheeseburger has a wealthy uncle in Rome: a filet mignon set on a grilled slice of bread and topped with mozzarella and an anchovy, then drizzled with a sauce made of the steak drippings and a reduction of Marsala and white wine. This one I’ll wait to try until I visit the authors’ countryalbergo in Wales, The Walnut Tree (said to have been Elizabeth David’s favorite British restaurant), but others—thefettunta with cannellini beans and pancetta or thebruschetta alla Giudia with marinated green tomatoes—I can’t wait to make for myself.

  Otherwise—to select a few from a wealth of titles—anyone interested in summer bread dishes should start with Pino Luongo’sA Tuscan in the Kitchen; among its many bread dishes is the Tuscan version ofpa amb tomàquet: fettunta al pomodoro. Robert Freson’s photographs inSavoring Italy are an education in Italian breads and bread dishes, further explored in the recipes and essays on Tuscany (by Leslie Forbes) and Sardinia (by Louis Inturrisi). Robert Carrier writes eloquently on bread and olives inFeasts of Provence. And Carol Field devotes a chapter inThe Italian Baker to traditional peasant bread dishes. Finally, three books with strong discussions of the role of bread in peasant cuisines are Jeanne Strang’sGoose Fat and Garlic: Country Recipes from South-West France; Colman Andrew’sCatalan Cuisine; and Mary Taylor Simeti’sPomp and Sustenance.

  CIOPPINO IN THE ROUGH

  In California the Italians have a dish known as cioppino, which, as it becomes better known, will undoubtedly have quite a vogue in this country.

  — Evelene Spencer and John N. Cobb,Fish Cookery (1921)

  Cioppino is often condescended to in historical studies of our national cooking. Read, for example, what Waverley Root and Richard de Rochemont say about it in one of the first genuinely thoughtful surveys of our national cuisine,Eating in America:

  Cioppino sounds authentically Italian, but both the dish and the name were invented in San Francisco, with the freest of fantasy in both cases. Cioppino is a seafood stew which admits of infinite variations, oftenest built around crab, and the Italian-looking word is explained as a reduction of the English word “chop” to its Italian phonetic equivalent.

  For much of my cooking life, passages such as this succeeded in establishing cioppino in my mind as something bogus—that is, not only vulgar but, worse still,touristy. And, certainly, cioppino was once thepiéce de résistance of San Francisco seafood restaurants, where the diner was ceremoniously draped in an apron and presented with a tureen heaped with giant Dungeness crabs, whole jumbo shrimp, clams, mussels, squid, and chunks of assorted fish. With this came a loaf of the famous local sourdough bread for soaking up the garlicky, spicily seasoned wine and tomato sauce in which all this seafood swam.

  A little reflection might have led me to the realization that such a meal is not the worst fate that might befall the unwary traveler, but until a year or so ago I never had any reason to take heed of cioppino at all. Then, on the cookbook shelf of a used-book store up in Maine, I happened upon a vintage (1921) seafood cookbook,Fish Cookery, by Evelene Spencer and John N. Cobb, which contained the first of two narratives that would have the peculiar synergistic effect of turning my opinion of cioppino on its head—and in the process giving me a far more complex perspective on the dish.

  If its authors are to be believed (Cobb was director of the University of Washington’s College of Fisheries and Spencer the fish cookery
expert for the United States Bureau of Fisheries), Americans were much more adventurous in their tastes for seafood seventy-five years ago, when regional tastes remained strong and certain species had not yet become endangered. (For instance, there are several recipes here for whale meat, including one for whale pot roast and another for whale curry.)

  The book contains a fascinating discussion of cioppino, and, more importantly, quotes at length from what must be one of the earliest printed descriptions of the dish, written by H. B. Nidever for the July 1917 issue ofCalifornia Fish and Game:

  The cioppino (pronounced chipeno) is one of the simplest, healthiest, and cheapest ways of cooking fish. Originated by Italians, it is cooked and eaten by them almost exclusively. Cioppino is a great dish among the fishermen, some practically living on it because of its healthfulness and muscle-building qualities, and the ease with which it is prepared. When fishermen are out on trips for days at a time the only supplies that are taken are bread, wine, a little coffee, and the ingredients that are used to make up a cioppino, depending on their luck to catch the needed fish.

  Butter is never used in the preparation of the cioppino, olive oil taking its place. There are a great many kinds of cioppino; that is, most of the people that cook it prepare the dish in a slightly different way. Sometimes it is what one might call fancy—shellfish, celery, parsley, wine, etc., being used in its preparation. But the kind generally prepared by the fisher folk is very simple and inexpensive, the olive oil used being the most expensive ingredient. Some prefer salad oil, which is less expensive and not quite so rich.

  The cioppino is neither a roast, a chowder, nor a fry. In America, it would probably be nearer a pot roast than anything else. In preparing a cioppino the whole fish is used, including the head, which contains some of the best part of the fish. The large-sized fishes are generally preferred on account of the size of their bones. Most any of the larger-sized ocean fishes, such as the rock fishes, rock bass, sea bass, halibut, and barracuda, can be used. The wings of the skate are highly prized among the Italian fishermen for a cioppino; striped bass are very fine. Several different varieties of fish are sometimes used.