My fishmonger: One Saucy Lady
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March 2005

People always think I'm making it up but just two steps from my place in Italy, there is woman that actually sells seashells by the seashore. Come to Lecce and peel open the anti-fly beads and enter her dinky little fish market and you'll find us, bellied up to her case clutching shopping bags, waiting our turn for a private session, when for the briefest of moments, the whirlwind of a woman focuses her colourful gestures and warm laugh on each of us, one at a time. Her name is Romana and just mentioning her name around town will get you a warm, 'ah, Romana. E si e', the same gushy tone that older men use when fondly remembering their very first automobile.

Today's busier than usually and I've already been waiting several minutes, discreetly taking pictures and translating the fish names in my mind. Leaning over the fish and ice, Romana hands over change, and then suddenly it's my turn.

'Silvestro! Tell me something good', she belts out and instantly I feel that familiar prickly pressure in my cheeks.

'Um. The sign says that they're alive, are they really', I ask, pointing at the hand-written cardboard tag laying on top of three octopi, their bodies piled, as shapeless as dirty laundry.

'Aaaaaa-Oh! LOOK ALIVE BOYS!', she yells and whacks one several times, making a perfect smacking sound that reverberates around the white-tiled market. The purple piles quiver and seem to groan, not unlike a row of old geezers finding themselves abruptly elbowed awake during choir practice. She howls as if it's the first time she's ever seen it, and as the poor beast musters one last attempt at an escape, a shrieking three-year old runs for his mother's legs.

'Want one', she asks, cradling that fishmonger paper in her palm like a landing pad. 'Go to la Signora and give me a second to make up my mind', I say.

I'm not queasy about eating animals and I love octopus but I know myself enough to know that it's going to take a few days to divorce the purple pile from the voice of Snuffulluppagus that my mind just assigned him. I wait for the signora and her fresh sardines, and another signora who wants some baccalà, but is just too ashamed to buy the already rehydrated kind, even if at first glance it appears to be the same price (rehydrated is over fifty-percent water weight). 'Just a tiny piece though', the signora says, soberly. 'I'm alone now'. Her elegant top coat and fresh and intensive hairdo project one image, the single small potato hanging from her hand in a plastic bag, another.

Often I come to see Romana late mornings, when the choice has lessened but the sparse crowds give us more time to talk fish- she's fascinated that I teach local dishes to locals and foreigners- I'm fascinated that she has such a singular knowledge for fish that come from her nearby town of Porto Cesareo, a pretty fishing village on Puglia's western coast, on the dreamy blue Ionian. Italians tend not to know Italy as well as other nationalities tend to know their own countries, they tend not to move around a lot, nor sight-see their own cities, so I just assumed her chauvinism was that typical phenomena that translates as 'everything under the shadow of our bell tower is the best there is'. (Everywhere in Italy, Italians will tell you that this particular vegetable or dish is only found right here, and nowhere else in Italy or on the planet. Then go someplace where 'it doesn't exist', and you'll find someone munching on one, telling you that you can't find it anywhere else in Italy, and that they've never even heard of it, back at that place you just came from.)

But as Romana and I talked, over the summer and through autumn and on into the winter, I started to realize that while I go to great lengths to think about the origin of the meat, produce, wine and bread that I consume, I had never really thought much about fish, other than it was 'local'. I had never really thought much about the terrior of the Mediterranean Sea, the most hauntingly beautiful body of water I've ever seen.

But the terrior of the sea is complicated, because while everyone knows about the land's effect on a grape or a lentil, the location in the sea can affect the taste and chemistry of it's fruits in much the same way.

Take mussels. At the school we make that is often called peppata, a quick stew of mussels, olive oil, parsley, lemon and lots of black pepper, which produces a rich and steamy broth of surrendered mussel liquor and virgin oil. It's a simple dish but surprisingly good, but on occasions, it would end up extraordinarily salty, to the point that I started silently instructing the staff to discreetly remove the salt bowl from our work area, keen on stopping students from adding more, or in this case, even any at all. Even then, sometimes the dish would end up embarrassingly salty, to the point that we'd end up drinking a river of house wine and be singing camp songs and show tunes long before the whole fish secondi came off the fire.

'Taranto', Romana told me giggling when I recounted the event. 'Mussels from Taranto are raised in the 'small sea' (the city's natural bay) which is so shallow that it evaporates more than the rest of the Mediterranean, the water goes up, the salt remains and there you go.' At that point we had long since resolved the problem by adding raw potato slices to the pot (to absorb the salt, and then be tossed) and, of course, by learning more show tunes. Still, many of the late mornings at her shop- occasionally interrupted by tiny and ancient signore, seeking out something that other people in the world would think of as a horrific and terrifying deep-sea monster- you'll find just the three us, me, Romana and Alan Davidson, or least his guide book to the fish of The Mediterranean. Scrawled in the margins on each warbled page of my copy, the first names of individual fishermen reveal exactly where Romana procures each of her offerings. It's decidedly small time.

'Barracudas come from Gigi, for some reasons he always has more than anyone else', she says. 'Roberto always has the best sardines. I buy anything that Piero has to sell. These sea bream here are farmed, descent and you can't argue with the price. Hell, this is Fast Food in Porto Cesareo', she says laughing. The bream lay contorted with rigamortis, a sign that they died within the last 24 hours.

'This is what my husband and I eat a couple of nights a week', she says. 'What about your children', I ask. 'They complain about all the bones', she says. 'Of course I did too when my babbo brought home the smaller fish when I was a little girl. But my kids are still small enough that all my husband and I need to do is moan a little louder when we eat sea bream, and sooner or later they will want some.' 'Do you see a decline in local fish consumption here in the Salento'.

'My two shops are doing fine, and of course I sell sea urchins on the seashore in the afternoons, and people line up for them, 20 for 5 Euro. It's a whorehouse of confusion! I have to yell, 'People, some of that pink stuff is your fingers, take it easy folks!', she says and actually snorts when she laughs, which I just love. I cross the street to the hardware store and the boys there ask about my camera. 'Ah Romana', they say. 'Makes you buy fish you can't even eat and makes you happy to wait in line to do even that. Ah yeah. Romana. E si e'.

Addendum: Two days later I made a new friend and she invited me up to teach me her favourite baccalà recipe. We're having lunch next week as well.

Signora One Potato's Baccalà Recipe
1) select a good piece of salt cod from a reputable source 2) cover it in cold water and place in a covered bowl at the bottom of your refrigerator 3) change the water twice a day for three days 4) remove any bones with tweezers 5) fry paper thin white onion and parsley in good oil 6) add portioned baccalà to the pan (about the size of a deck of playing cards) and heat until warm inside. 7) serve with wilted cima di rape and rosato (local, pink and very dry wine) 8) if you forget to soak your baccalà, there is always Romana, who owns a shop, just two steps away.

More than the sun, either of the seas or even le orecchiette themselves, the thing closest to the pugliese heart is la cima di rapa, and this is the man that sells me mine. His name is Silent Luigi, he and his eight sons grow all their own produce themselves, and then bring it to market in an ape, a cross between a motorcycle, a wheelbarrow and that tiny car favoured by circus clowns. Silent Luigi has occupied this seat from seven a.m. to noon, for 74 years, and seems to more an institution than a man. That I rely on him for the most beloved of all pugliese products, still doesn't change the fact that I've never heard him once utter a single word. 'He's not really the chatty type', says Simone. Also next month: A crash course in the myriad of intricacies of Italian hand gestures: 'Did Silent Luigi just have a first- knuckle pinkie finger spasm, or is he just waxing philosophical again?

This is part two, of Two Steps Away, an ongoing, ten- part series featuring the vendors and purveyors we know and trust and frequent at our cooking school here in Lecce, in the sunny south of Italy. You can find out more about Romana, the town of Lecce or where you can shop for, cook with and dine on her fish, by visiting www.awaitingtable.com testo e fotografie da Silvestro Silvestori, Lecce, Italia, 2005

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Located in an 18th century aristocratic palace in the historic center of the South of Italy's prettiest city, The Awaiting Table offers Day, Weekend and Week-long courses, based on small classes of hands-on cooking and individual attention. If you'd like to see a different part of Italy, and see it in a different way, now you have an alternative.
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