by Craig Boreth
“Papa, tell us some more about when you and Tommy and Tommy’s mother were poor. How poor did you ever get?”
“They were pretty poor,” Roger said. “I can remember when your father used to make up all young Tom’s bottles in the morning and go to the market to buy the best and the cheapest vegetables. I’d meet him coming back from the market when I would be going out for breakfast.”
“I was the finest judge of poireaux in the sixth arrondissement.” Thomas Hudson told the boys.
“What’s poireaux?”
“Leeks.”
“It looks like long, green, quite big onions,” young Tom said. “Only it’s not bright shiny like onions. It’s dull shiny. The leaves are green and the ends are white. You boil it and eat it cold with olive oil and vinegar mixed with salt and pepper. You eat the whole thing, top and all. It’s delicious. I believe I’ve eaten as much of it as maybe anyone in the world.”14
Young Tom Hudson’s Leeks
It is fitting that Tom Hudson had become such a connoisseur of leeks and that young Tom had enjoyed them so regularly during the lean years in Paris. Poireaux is known in France as les asperges de pauvre (“the asparagus of the poor”).
1 SERVING
1 leek, as small as possible
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon vinegar
Salt
Pepper
Cut only the very top green and bottom root off the leek. Carefully clean out any sand from between the layers. Bring water to a boil in a pan large enough to hold the whole leek. Plunge the leek into the boiling water and cook for 10-15 minutes, or until the white part is tender. Drain the leek, pat dry, and refrigerate until chilled. Whisk together the olive oil, vinegar, and salt and pepper to taste. Serve sliced in half lengthwise and drizzled with the vinaigrette.
Back in Cuba a strong northwester churns the sea, blowing severe and cold and forcing Thomas Hudson ashore. He is content to let the Germans rule the sea for a few days and enjoys the company of his cats and his memories. He longs to make love to a princess, wanton and feline, and remembers his one royal affair, with a “plain girl with thickish ankles and not very good legs.”15 They were sailing from Mombasa, returning from safari, aboard a super luxury liner, and the denial of their passion became more dangerous than their possible discovery by the Prince. Hudson and the Baron, who was also on board (“Isn’t it nice to have a wicked Baron just as in olden times?”),16 get off the ship in Marseilles. Hemingway himself shared those cold afternoons in Marseilles in November 1933. He waited to depart for East Africa aboard the SS General Metzinger, hardly a luxury liner, like the Gripsholm upon which he would eventually return and on which Thomas Hudson’s affair must have occurred. He held onto the memories of the city, of its sidewalk restaurants in the Vieux Port, and when he brought Thomas Hudson’s memories there in Islands in the Stream, he knew exactly how to welcome him:
It was blowing colder than ever outside. It reminded him of the cold day there on the steep street in Marseilles that ran down to the port, sitting at the café table with their coat collars up eating the moules out of the thin black shells you lifted from the hot, peppery milk broth with the hot melted butter floating in it, drinking the wine from Tavel that tasted the way Provence looked …
“Do you want some more moules?”
“No. I want something solid.”
“Shouldn’t we have bouillabaisse, too?”
“Two soups?”
“I’m hungry. And we won’t be here again for a long time.”
“I should think you might be hungry. Good. We’ll have a bouillabaisse and then a good Châteaubriand very rare. I’ll build you up, you bastard.”17
THE MENU
Lunch in Marseilles
with the Baron
Moules in Peppery Milk Broth
Bouillabaisse de Marseilles
Châteaubriand
Wine
Tavel
Moules (Mussels) in Peppery Milk Broth
2 TO 3 SERVINGS
1 pound mussels
Several tablespoons cornmeal
1½ cups dry white wine
Bouquet garni (a few sprigs of parsley, thyme, rosemary, and a few bay leaves bundled and tied together)
3 cloves garlic, crushed
¼ cup olive oil
½ onion, coarsely chopped
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
¼ cup milk
Plenty of coarsely ground fresh black pepper
Salt
Pinch of cayenne pepper
Juice of ¼ lemon
2 tablespoons heavy cream
Scrub the mussels, removing any mussels with broken shells or that don’t close up tight when placed under running cold water. Debeard the mussels (pull or cut off the fibrous growth attached to the shell). Place the mussels in a large bowl and cover with cold water. Sprinkle on the cornmeal, which will help the mussels to expel their sand and fatten up a little. Let the mussels soak for about 15 minutes then drain.
In a large skillet over high heat, combine the wine, herbs, and garlic. Add the mussels and cook, tightly covered, until the shells open, 5-7 minutes. Remove the mussels, disregarding any that have not opened. Remove the empty half of each shell and arrange the mussels in a shallow serving dish. Cover with foil to keep warm.
Strain the mussel cooking liquid through a fine mesh sieve or cheesecloth and set aside. In a large saucepan over medium heat, add the olive oil and onion and saute until the onion is soft. Stir in the flour and cook a few minutes more. Remove the pan from the heat. Beat in the cooking liquid and the milk. Return to the heat and bring to a boil. Add the pepper, salt, and cayenne to taste, and lemon juice. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Stir in the cream and pour the sauce over the mussels. Serve immediately.
Bouillabaisse de Marseilles
As Thomas Hudson and the Baron acknowledge, true bouillabaisse is, in fact, a soup rather than a stew. Marseilles is the home of bouillabaisse, and this recipe attempts to follow the strict traditional guidelines of the genuine article. The key element is the variety offish that flavor the broth. As this dish was originally prepared on the beach by local fishermen, it included those fish least suited for sale in the marketplace, such as the scorpion fish or rockfish.18 Even if this and other local fish are unavailable, a respectable facsimile is achieved through use of four or five different types of local fish.
6 TO 8 SERVINGS
4 cloves garlic, crushed
2 onions, chopped
¾ cup olive oil
3 tomatoes, skinned and finely chopped
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
Pinch of dried fennel
1 bay leaf
1 sprig thyme
Freshly ground black pepper
Small pinch of saffron threads
4-5 pounds offish (such as whiting, bass, red snapper, haddock, cod, or any other firm-fleshed fish), cut into medium-size pieces
1 cup dry white wine
Several cups of boiling water
1 pound mussels (see preparation tips in preceding recipe)
1 pound large shrimp or prawns, sliced in half lengthwise
Parsley for garnish
Several thick slices of bread
In a soup kettle or large heatproof casserole, saute the garlic and onion in the olive oil until lightly browned. Add the tomatoes, parsley, fennel, bay leaf, thyme, pepper to taste, and saffron. Allow to simmer for a few minutes, then add the fish, white wine, and boiling water to cover. Cover and cook over high heat for 7-8 minutes. Add the mussels, shrimp, and more water to cover. Continue to cook, covered, for another 8 minutes, or until the mussels are open. Remove the fish and shellfish and place in a serving bowl, garnished with chopped parsley. Arrange thick slices of bread in a soup tureen. Strain the bouillabaisse and pour over the bread. Serve the soup and the fish at the same time.
Châteaubriand
2 SERVINGS
Châteaubriand is simply a thickly cut t
ournedo of between ¾ and 1½ pounds, cut from the thickest part of the fillet. For two people, ¾ pound will suffice. As with tournedos, it is important that they not be overdone but merely seared on the outside and underdone inside.
¾ pound beef fillet
2 tablespoons butter, melted
Salt
Coarsely ground pepper
Preheat the broiler.
Slightly flatten the meat with a cleaver. Brush the meat with butter and lightly season with salt and pepper to taste. Broil the Châteaubriand for about 1 minute on each side, basting with additional butter. Lower the oven temperature to 450° F. Transfer the meat to a rack in a baking dish and roast for 12 to 15 minutes. For very rare, the meat should reach an internal temperature of 115°-120° F. Place the meat on a heated platter and let stand 5 minutes before serving. Serve with bearnaise sauce (see page 61).
Hemingway takes time to share a traditional meal in Hong Kong, March 1941, while covering the war in China.
Thomas Hudson also remembers his time in China, describing Hong Kong for Honest Lil, a prostitute at El Floridita. Hemingway had followed Martha Gellhorn to China in January 1941. They were both covering the China-Japan War, and witnessed the destruction and the squalor of the front in Canton. Hemingway foresaw the eventuality of war between Japan and the United States as well as Communist domination of China after the war. He would not use his experience as the subject of a novel or story, but he would share with Thomas Hudson his image of Hong Kong. As he had done with Richard Cantwell in Venice, Hemingway takes this opportunity to share his pleasure in experiencing the color and flavor of a Hong Kong market:
I would wake in the mornings and even if it were raining I would walk to the fish market. Their fish are almost the same as ours and the basic food fish is the red grouper. But they had very fat and shining pompano and huge prawns, the biggest I have ever seen. The fish market was wonderful in the early morning when the fish were brought in shining and fresh caught and there were quite a few fish I did not know, but not many and there were also wild ducks for sale that had been trapped. You could see pintails, teal, widgeon, both males and females in winter plumage … as delicate and complicated as our wood ducks. I would look at them and their unbelievable plumage and their beautiful eyes and see the shining, fat, new-caught fish and the beautiful vegetables all manured in the truck gardens by human excrement, they called it “night-soil” there, and the vegetables were as beautiful as snakes. I went to the market every morning and every morning it was a delight.19
The Old Man and the Sea
The Old Man and the Sea is an idyll of the sea as sea, as un-Byronic and un-Melvillian as Homer himself, and communicated in a prose as calm and compelling as Homer’s verse. No real artist symbolizes or allegorizes—and Hemingway is a real artist—but every real work of art exhales symbols and allegories. So does this short but not small masterpiece.
—Bernard Berenson, art historian
He held the story in his mind for fifteen years before making it his own. In the mid-1930s he heard the tale of an old Cuban fisherman, fishing alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream, who hooked into a great fish. The giant marlin pulled the old man far out to sea. He fought the fish for two days and nights, and was finally able to raise the fish and harpoon him. When the sharks came, the old man fought them alone and lost. When the fishermen found the old man, crying and exhausted in his skiff, the sharks were still circling.20
Hemingway began writing The Old Man and the Sea in 1951. It was completed in eight weeks, and he would not rewrite a word. He appeared to have reached the pinnacle of the art for which he strove most of his life. The Old Man and the Sea was a tribute to the “simple strength of character, deeper than [the] will.”21 Hemingway won the Pulitzer Prize for the book in 1952, and it was cited specifically when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.
The story begins as the old man returns yet again from the Gulf Stream with an empty skiff. The boy, who now fishes with a lucky boat, helps the old man carry home his tattered sail and gear. They speak of baseball and inexperience and wisdom. The boy leaves the shack for sardines. He returns with supper—black beans and rice, fried bananas, stew, and two bottles of Hatuey beer—in a metal container from the Terrace, compliments of Martin, the owner. The old man is proud, accepting the gift, assured that he will return the favor with the belly meat from a great fish.
“What have you got?” he asked.
“Supper,” said the boy. “We’re going to have supper.”
“I’m not very hungry.”
“Come on and eat. You can’t fish and not eat.”
“I have,” the old man said getting up and taking the newspaper and folding it. Then he started to fold the blanket.
“Keep the blanket around you,” the boy said.
“You’ll not fish without eating while I’m alive.”
“Then live a long time and take care of yourself,” the old man said. “What are we eating?”22
Fried Bananas
Hemingway calls this dish fried bananas in The Old Man and the Sea, but Santiago and Manolin no doubt enjoy fried plantains (platanos), a larger, flatter version of the common banana with more starch and less sugar. The cooking method depends on the ripeness of the fruit, with the less ripe, very green plantains requiring an additional cooking stage.
4 SERVINGS
2-4 plantains, either very green or almost completely black
Oil for frying
To peel the plantains, cut the tips of both ends, make slits in the skin lengthwise, and unwrap the peel of the plantain under running water.
For green plantains: Cut the plantain into 1-inch slices. Deep-fry over low heat until tender. Drain on brown paper. When cool enough to touch, flatten each slice with the palm of your hand. Reheat the oil over high heat until very hot. Dip each plantain slice in a bowl of iced, salted water. Pat dry, then fry quickly until browned. Drain on brown paper and serve.
For black plantains: Slice the plantains thinner, about ¼ to ½ inch thick, and cut diagonally to produce longer chips. Deep-fry in hot oil until dark brown. Drain on brown paper and serve.
Note: Learn from Nick Adams’s example in “Big Two-Hearted River”: wait awhile for the plantains to cool before eating them, otherwise a burned tongue may put you off these delicious treats for years.
Aboard the Pilar
More than the local characters in the bars and restaurants, stronger than the windswept memories of Paris and Africa and the East, more than the early morning processionals from fishing villages along the coast, it was the sea itself that mingled Hemingway’s soul with that of Cuba. Sailing out into the Gulf Stream, fishing for giant marlin, Hemingway engaged his passion head on. As we saw with the bullfights, and will soon see with the safari, when Hemingway was truly living, his appetite grew accordingly.
Aboard the Pilar, Ernest’s beloved fishing boat, food took on epic proportions. Even something as simple as a peanut butter and onion sandwich, his lunchtime favorite, can be elevated to heroic status while at sea:
“Well, go down to the galley and see if that bottle of tea is cold and bring it up. Antonio’s butchering the fish. So make a sandwich will you, please?”
“Sure. What kind of sandwich?”
“Peanut butter and onion if there’s plenty of onion.”
“Peanut butter and onion it is, sir.”
He handed a sandwich, wrapped in a paper towel segment, to Thomas Hudson and said, “One of the highest points in the sandwichmaker’s art. We call it the Mount Everest Special. For Commanders only.”23
Mount Everest Special
A. E. Hotchner, in his biography, Papa Hemingway, notes that this sandwich, along with a glass of red wine, was Hemingway’s favorite.24
1 SERVING
2 slices white bread
Peanut butter
2 thick slices onion
Spread 1 slice bread thickly with peanut butter. Place onion slices on top. Cover with second slice of bread.
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THE PILLAR OF THE PILAR
In 1928, aboard Sloppy Joe Russell’s fishing boat, the Anita out of Key West, Hemingway sought shelter from a squall in the Dry Tortugas islands. There he encountered a run-down sailboat, the Joaquin Cisto, and its amiable skipper, Gregorio Fuentes. Fuentes helped the young and inexperienced Hemingway contact Key West and served him wine and raw onions, a favorite combination. Hemingway and Fuentes became great friends, and Gregorio would help Ernest out of many tight spots similar to the Dry Tortugas, eventually working aboard Hemingway’s own boat. In the mid-1930s they parted company, only to reunite in Cuba in the early 1940s when Fuentes accepted the job as mate, deckhand, and cook of the Pilar.
Gregorio was not only an excellent cook but also took charge of the “Ethylic Department,” a duty of great importance aboard the Pilar. Fuentes was a meticulous and thoughtful bartender, complementing Ernest’s desire to be a gracious and generous host. Hemingway kept the ship’s bar well stocked, aiming to satisfy the thirsts of all those aboard. Ernest had a habit of not drinking from a bottle opened the previous day and so would open a new bottle every day. Fuentes kept the drinks refreshed, believing that a cold drink should be held no more than half an hour and then be discarded and replaced. After the drinks were served and it was time to eat, Fuentes truly made his name and reputation. Fuentes took great pride in pleasing those for whom he cooked. His dishes display the simple techniques and subtle tricks of a master and should be enjoyed in the spirit of camaraderie and adventure that flourished aboard Hemingway’s boat. Gregorio could turn the galley of the Pilar into a kitchen worthy of the Ritz in Paris. In fact, when Charlie Ritz visited Cuba in 1954, Ernest bet him that Gregorio was a better chef than anyone in the Ritz’s employ. It was a challenge that Gregorio embraced with pride. Fuentes set out to astound the Frenchman with three dishes, the likes of which he had never tasted.