The fried fish is going to be happy
And there are times when you don't need big restaurants, linen tablecloths or luxury hotels. Only skin, sand, saltpeter and the heat —the color— of life, the electricity of things that have not yet been. The nap, the book and the meeting. The kisses that will be. The reunion with yourself (yes, that loser you leave aside for the rest of the year) clóchinas under an umbrella, the shelter of a book and the texture of some Fried anchovies ... The little fish is not a dish, it is a way of understanding the world.
The heat —the color— of those summers in Jávea, Dénia or Zahara de los Atunes. September in Cadaqués and the night that falls in Donosti, no night goes out like the nights in San Sebastián, the violence of the Bay of Biscay over Ondarreta and the shelter of your fears under the Urgull. Fritura (fritura) on the other side of the Guadalquivir and the reflection of the sun on the metallic texture of any table in the Balneario de la Caleta. Tolkien wrote that "Not all who wander are lost" ; and if we are, what?
No night goes out like the nights go out in San Sebastián
Fried fish. Say it out loud and color floods the room; it is the (immense) power of small things. A dish whose origin dates back to the Sephardic cuisine and beyond, to ancient Rome at the time with garum; fried fish with wheat flour or chickpeas, olive oil and salt, nothing more. Mullets, anchovies, pijotas or acedías; prawns, anchovies or baby squid.
Alhucemas in Seville, La Montillana in Granada, El Bar Navarro in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, El Pescador in Cases de Alcanar or the El Faro bar in Cádiz. Marinated dogfish and salt on (your) lips, asking for another round. Demanding one more minute of this glory. It's called being alive.
It has been a long season, sixty-three articles in Mantel & Knife —almost sixty thousand words dedicated to gastronomy: chefs, trends, chronicles, neighborhoods, routes and pleasures ; from the highest to the most popular, from the avant-garde most avant la lettre to grilled and root cuisine. We have also put questions on the tablecloth (Is haute cuisine sold out?) and a request. A letter to you, young cook.
Have we learned something? I do not know. What I really hope is that we have not forgotten on this trip the whys . The reasons why we sit (we continue to sit) around a table to continue celebrating an act, in fact, so basic. Manuel Vicente says that “ eating is a mystical act , turn anything into yourself.” And maybe it's true. Something more resounding is also asked: What is death? Joan Fuster used to say that to die would be to stop writing. For my part, I believe that death will be never again being able to drink some sea urchins accompanied by a dry wine, under the sleeping smoke of the January calms, on the shores of the Mediterranean , and not to taste other simple, natural and terrestrial delicacies that have fed me.
Amen.
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