There is no hint of pretension in Stacy’s Fish Shop. The window contains the same exhibition of giant sea shells, coral curiosities, mounted lobsters, and stuffed fish that has been there for years. Once you are inside you will observe a Spartan exhibit of cod liver oil flanked by a few wooden boxes of salted cod fillets and a lonely squad of catsup bottles. Clean sawdust is on the floor. Before you is a small white marble counter, covered with chopped ice that all but conceals a few freshly caught haddock and cod. That is all you see as you enter Mr. Stacy’s shop, except a blackboard. It isn’t impressive.
But there is one hint that indisputable treasures are concealed in icy bins in the back room. It is on that blackboard, upon which Job lavishes a fine Spencerian flourish. When the Beck family studied this handsome document for the first time, a ray of pure rapture burst through the clouds. We began to realize our enormous good fortune in choosing this New England seaport as our home. For Job Stacy lists upon his blackboard an almost utopian stock of freshly caught fish. He has haddock, mackerel, and young cod at excursion rates. And there are handsome butterfish, rock bass, perch, and bluefish. He has fillets of cusk, plaice, and flounder, besides smoked fillets and finnan haddie of unimpeachable integrity. His bins hide an ample supply of halibut, swordfish, and salmon. He has clams—soft-shelled ones for steaming, cherrystones for appetizers, and for your chowder ponderous quahaugs. He has oysters—bluepoints, Cotuits, and Narragansetts. His lobsters are so alive they are athletic, but he has lobster meat if you prefer it. In season you can find tender young soft-shelled crabs, or you can have shrimps or crab meat at any time. He has not only the large sea scallops, but those rarities of the American gourmandise, small Cape scallops as well.
It was natural that Clémentine should share our enthusiasm, once we introduced her to Mr. Stacy and his well-stocked back room. Here was a shop that reminded her of France and of the amiable Monsieur Chollet, who used to sell us merlan, turbot, and sole. Clémentine began to pay almost daily visits to Mr. Stacy’s shop, chattering affably in French, a language that he obviously did not understand, until she finally thawed out his Yankee reserve very perceptibly. Meanwhile the Becks saw the beginning of a dream come true. Our table became beautified with the freshest of Atlantic fish, cooked as a French Cordon Bleu would do it.
Here I would like to share our good fortune with you by tearing a few leaves from Clémentine’s notebook. There is nothing brilliantly original about any of these recipes. They merely follow the old French fundamentals. But to judge by the comments of our dinner guests, they have opened up a new vista to at least a few New England hostesses. And since they can be achieved rather easily in an American home, we hope that they merit your sympathetic consideration.
Clémentine’s approach to preparing New England fish was refreshing and direct. It never occurred to her to fry fish in deep fat. Fried scallops, fried oysters, fried clams, fried “fillet of sole”—the inevitable vocabulary of the restaurant cook in these parts—did not become a part of her culinary jargon, and we were certainly just as glad. Clémentine took the simplest and most obvious French path, which was to bake this clean saltwater fish in white wine with mushrooms. The unassuming haddock and baby cod take on surprising distinction when prepared in this rudimentary manner:
HADDOCK AU VIN BLANC
Place haddock fillets in a shallow buttered baking dish. Add at your discretion thinly sliced mushrooms and thin slices of small white onions, though chopped shallots are best. Season with a little salt, pepper from the pepper mill, a bay leaf, and a sprig of thyme. Sprinkle with fine bread crumbs and dot well with butter. Pour a generous glass of dry white wine into the baking dish and bake the fish in a moderate (350°) oven until just firm, basting now and then—it should not take more than 20 minutes. Serve with steamed potatoes and a trickle of lemon juice.
—from Clémentine in the Kitchen, 1943
WOLE SOYINKA ON AN EVENING MARKET IN NIGERIA
Wole Soyinka is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, and poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. Aké is his autobiographical account of growing up in a western Nigerian village.
—M.K.
Edun, who lived on the other side of Ibarapa morning market, was inducted at the same time. We celebrated the occasion as yet another liberating step from the demands of our households. In addition to lessons, scouting, and a few fictions, there was now the legitimate escape through choir practice. And although I lived nearer to the church, it was somehow accepted that it was I who should go past the church, cross the street between Aké square and Ibarapa market, go through the market, pick my way through the intervening agbole and return with Edun through the same passages to the church for choir practice and, when we began to robe, for church services.
We varied the course. The evening market was normally out of our way since it lay on the other side of the road to Iberekodo, but the morning market was mostly bare and devoid of interest by the hour of choir practice. Going through the sister market only added some ten or fifteen minutes to the walk and I made sure that I set out early enough to make up the time for it. The flavours of the market rose fully in the evenings, beckoning us to a depletion of the onini and halfpennies which we had succeeded in saving up during the week. For there they all were, together, the jogi seller who passed, in full lyrical cry beneath the backyard wall at a regular hour of the morning, followed only moments later by the akara seller, her fried bean-cakes still surreptitiously oozing and perfuming the air with groundnut oil. In the market we stood and gazed on the deftly cupped fingers of the old women and their trainee wards scooping out the white bean-paste from a mortar in carefully gauged quantities, into the wide-rimmed, shallow pots of frying oil. The lump sank immediately in the oil but no deeper than an inch or two, bobbed instantly to the surface and turned pinkish in the oil. It spurted fat globules upwards and sometimes beyond the rim of the pot if the mix had too much water. Then, slowly forming, the outer crust of crisp, gritty light brownness which masked the inner core of baked bean-paste, filled with green and red peppers, ground crayfish or chopped.
Even when the akara was fried without any frills, its oil impregnated flavours filled the markets and jostled for attention with the tang of roasting coconut slices within farina cakes which we called kasada; with the hard-fried lean meat of tinko; the ‘high,’ rotted-cheese smell of ogiri; roasting corn, fresh vegetables or gbegiri. Akàmu, the evening corn pap, was scooped into waiting bowls from a smooth, brown gourd sitting in enamelled trays on bamboo trestles, presided over by women who daily improvised new praise-chants. An onini, even a halfpenny did not fulfil every craving but the sights and the smells were free. Choir practice became inseparable from the excursion through Ibarapa’s sumptuous resurrection of flavours every evening. When, a few months later, our apprenticeship was over and we became full-fledged choristers, I continued to leave early on Sundays and other church seasons to call on Edun for both morning and evening services. The morning market was not open on Sundays but, there was a woman who appeared to have converted all the smells and textures of both morning and evening markets in her pot of stew, a crayfish and locust-bean biased concoction which queened it over rice and a variety of yams. Apart from a few stalls of fresh vegetables, she alone defied the claims of Sunday to a market-free gesture of respect. The consequence was predictable. Breakfast at home was not niggardly, so it was not a question of hunger. It was even special on Sundays—yams, fish stew, omelette, bread, butter and the inevitable tea or lemon grass infusion. But it was not yet breakfast on Sunday until I had picked my way through the stalls of Ibarapa, cassock and surplice thrown over the shoulder, rescued Edun from his home and, robbing God to pay Iya Ibarapa, used up the pennies we were given for offering on the steaming, peppery, glutinous riot of liver, of chunks and twists of cows’ insides served by the old woman as church bells signalled the half-hour before confronting God. Once or twice, probably a little oftener, we were struck by the fear that God might object to this weekly
deprivation of his rightful dues, but I think I lightened our apprehensions by suggesting that we sang better after the richness of the markets in our throats than we ever did with the delicacies of the parsonage alone. In any case, we watched for signs of disapproval from the designated owner of those Sunday pennies, but received none.
When I asked Ibidun, Mrs Lijadu’s niece, what our Aunt put in her stews to make it taste so peculiar she said, pasmenja. It was a strange word but one which was perfectly suited to the flavour of the meals we had with our Aunt who, we had decided, belonged to the vague Brazilian side of some of our relations. An axis of tastes and smells was formed between her and our grandmother, Daodu’s sister, who lived alone in Igbein almost on the other side of Abeokuta. We did not visit her much but, when we did, I would realize with a start—and not just at mealtime—that I was not at Mrs Lijadu’s but in the home of our maternal grandmother, the mysterious elder sister of Rev A. O. Ransome-Kuti. It remained one of the mysteries of the family relationships over which Wild Christian spent so much time trying to educate us. Were the Olubi our cousins and did this mean blood or marriage relations? I listened, understanding none of the elaborate and intricate family history. Links were formed of far more tangible matters. Our Igbein grandmother had nothing in common, as far as I ever discerned, with her formidable brother Daodu. Equally stern and just as affectionate perhaps, but I was more ready to accept, and indeed continued to believe for a long time that she was Beere’s mother. And I thought that she and Mrs Lijadu were sisters because they both cooked with pasmenja, both homes were constantly wreathed in the smell of pasmenja. Even their buns and chin-chin had identical flavours; as for food in both homes, it could only have been cooked, not merely by sisters, but by two people who had been sisters all their lives. Daodu’s wife, Beere, I never associated with any form of cooking. Eating, that was a different matter.
Beere had a passion for moin-moin and she was so fond of moin-moin made by Wild Christian that she often sent one of her elder children, Koye or Dolupo, all the way from Igbein to Aké for Wild Christian’s moin-moin. When she came in person and joined our parents at table, a shriek of outrage was wrung from her if an overzealous maid had unwrapped the steamed delicacy from the leaves. For her, the sublime parts of moin-moin were those wafer-thin truants which leaked into the folds of leaves and were now steamed into light, independent slivers, to be peeled leisurely from their veined beds and sucked smoothly through the lips in-between, or, as a finale to the chunky mouthfuls of the full-bodied moin-moin. The hapless maid produced
moin-moin paraded in all its steamy, but naked glory and Beere would confidently insist that the leaves be retrieved. There was no danger; she knew very well that they had not been thrown into the dust-bin. We watched her glide meticulously through every leaf, prise through the stuck-together leaves with a skin-surgeon’s care. She levered apart the baked veins of the leaf-wraps, casually picking up the oiled wafers along the way and licking her lips in ostentatious enjoyment. She acknowledged our unvoiced stares of protest by remarking loudly—if she happened to be in the mood—that anyone who really believed that such tidbits should be left to children was either a fool or an Englishman. Then, with a roguish look on her bespectacled face, she measured off a slice from the centre of the moin-moin, pushed it aside for us and winked, remarking afterwards that she would sooner forgo the main lump than lose those insubstantial slivers with their Wild-Christian flavour, sealed in secret corners cunningly pinched by her practised fingers.
The hawkers’ lyrics of leaf-wrapped moin-moin still resound in parts of Aké and the rest of the town but, along Dayisi’s Walk is also a shop which sells moin-moin from a glass case, lit by sea-green neon lamps. It lies side by side with McDonald’s hamburgers, Kentucky Fried Chicken, hot dogs and dehydrated sausage-rolls. It has been cooked in emptied milk-tins and similar containers, scooped out and sliced in neat geometric shapes like cakes of soap. And the newly-rich homes stuff it full of eggs, tinned sardines from Portugal and corned beef from the Argentine. The fate of wara, among others, is however one without even this dubious reprieve. The vendor of milk-curds, floated in outsize gourds has been banished by chromium boxes with sleek spouts which dispense yellowish fluids into brittle cones. If it were, at least, ice cream! But no. The quick-profit importer of instant machines is content to foist a bed-pan slop of diabetic kittens on his youthful customers and watch them lick it noisily, biting deeper into the cone. Even Pa Delumo’s Sunday school children knew better; the ice cream king of Dayisi’s Walk would have been dethroned, through neglect, by the wara queen.
Our teeth were cut on robo, hard-fried balls of crushed melon seeds, and on guguru-and-epa, the friend and sustainer of workers on the critical countdown towards pay day. A handful of guguru was washed down in water, palm-wine or pito and hunger was staved off for the rest of the working day. Evening, and konkere department took over, a bean-pottage with a sauce of the darkest palm-oil and peppers, and of a soundly uncompromising density. Mixed with gari, it fully justified the name of concrete whose corrupted version it proudly bore. The Hausa women who sold guguru carefully graded their corn; we combined in our purchases the hard-roasted teeth-breakers, the fluffy, off-white floaters and the half-and-half, inducing variations into taste-buds with slices of coconut or measures of groundnuts. Today’s jaws on Dayisi’s Walk appear no less hard-worked, indeed they champ endlessly—on chewing-gum. Among the fantasy stores lit by neon and batteries of coloured bulbs a machine also dispenses popcorn, uniformly fluffed. Urchins thrust the new commodity, clean-wrapped, in plastic bags in faces of passengers whose vehicles pause even one moment along the route. The blare of motor-horns compete with a high-decibel outpouring of rock and funk and punk and other thunk-thunk from lands of instant-culture heroes. Eyes glazed, jaws in constant, automated motion, the new habituees mouth the confusion of lyrics belted out from every store, their arms flapping up and down like wounded bush-fowl. Singly, or in groups of identical twins, quad- or quintuplets they wander into the stereo stores, caress the latest record sleeves and sigh. A trio emerge with an outsize radio-cassette player in full blast, setting up mobile competition with the already noise-demented line of stores.
—from Aké, 1981
CHAPTER SIX
Not Eating
SHOLOM ALEICHEM ON YOM KIPPUR
Both eating and not eating are essential to the ritual of Judaism. The most important day of fast is Yom Kippur, the day of atonement after the New Year. Many stories emerge about this important festival of not eating. In the Talmud, there is the story of R. Joseph, the son of Raba, who became so engaged in an argument with his father that they missed the last meal before sundown. It being Yom Kippur, they would have to wait another twenty-four hours before eating.
Sholom Aleichem, the pen name of Solomon Rabinowitz, one of a number of nineteenth-century writers who developed a literature in the Yiddish language, tells a different story of fasting for Yom Kippur in “The Search.”
—M.K.
“Now, listen to me,” said a man with round bovine eyes, who had been sitting in a corner by the window, smoking and taking in stories of thefts, holdups, and expropriations. “I’ll tell you a good one, also about a theft, which happened in my town, in the synagogue of all places, and on Yom Kippur too! You’ll like it.
Our Kasrilevke—that’s where I come from—is a small town and a poor one. We have no thieves and no stealing, for there is nobody to steal from and nothing to steal. And aside from all that, a Jew just isn’t a thief. I mean to say, even if a Jew is a thief, he is not the kind of thief who sneaks in through a window or goes at you with a knife. He may twist you and turn you, outtalk you and outsmart you—granted; but he won’t crawl into your pockets, he won’t be caught red-handed and led down the street in disgrace. That may happen to a thieving Ivan but not to a Jew. Imagine, then, someone stealing in Kasrilevke, and quite a bit of money too—eighteen hundred rubles at one stroke!
One day a stranger arrived in ou
r town, a Jew, some sort of contractor from Lithuania. He appeared on the evening of Yom Kippur, just before the time for prayer. He left his bundle at the inn and hurried out to look for a place to pray and found the old synagogue. He arrived in time to attend the evening prayer and ran into the trustees with their collection box.
“Sholom aleichem!”
“Aleichem sholom!”
“Where are you from?”
“From Lithuania.”
“And what’s your name?”
“What difference does that make to your grandmother?”
“Well, after all, you’ve come to our synagogue!”
“Where else do you want me to go?”
“You surely want to pray here?”
“Have I any choice?”
“Then put something in the box.”
“Of course. Did you think I was going to pray for nothing?”
Our stranger took three silver rubles out of his pocket and put them in the box. Then he put a ruble in the cantor’s plate, gave a ruble for the rabbi, another for the school, and threw half a ruble into the poor box; in addition, he handed out coins to the beggars standing at the door—we have so many poor people in our town, God bless them, that if you really went at it you could distribute Rothschild’s fortune among them.
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