THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 19, 1997 TAG: 9701160035
SECTION: FLAVOR PAGE: F1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JIM RAPER, SPECIAL TO FLAVOR
DATELINE: PORT VENDRES, FRANCE LENGTH: 189 lines
OUTDOOR GRILLING and anchovies had nothing to do with my decision to pull up stakes in Virginia and settle on the unspoiled, mountainous Mediterranean coastline where France dissolves into Spain.
I wanted to spend a year in close communion with the wines and wine makers of southernmost France.
But along the way two topics horned in. Outdoor grilling and anchovies began to compete for space in my notebooks. Even in my dreams I'm smelling barbecue smoke and tasting the exotically different anchovies that seem to be on every dinner table here.
As a boy I studied pit barbecuing under several backyard experts and became a proponent of what is known as the North Carolina method: medium-heat cooking over oak and hickory coals with a basting sauce of apple vinegar, melted butter, cayenne flakes and black pepper.
Later, I tasted my first anchovy and soon was eating them right out of the tin, wonderfully salty and still dripping in yellow oil.
In October, not long after I moved into an apartment in Port Vendres, I was in the neighboring town of Banyuls for a grape harvest festival that was nearly as much a celebration of Catalan heritage as of the wine vintage. On this warm and cloudless day I was to get an advanced course in outdoor grilling from Catalan old-timers.
Catalonia has sections on either side of the Pyrenees. The Nord is in France and its ``capital'' is Perpignan. The larger Sud is in Spain, anchored by Barcelona. The regions' mountains and isolated fishing villages formed a Catalan majority that has had little temptation, and less desire, to fall into step with times.
So when they grill outside they do it without the Martha Stewart sort of correctness that requires a double-decker, gas-fired, elaborately utensilized outdoor kitchen with built-in butcher block.
The Catalan custom is mighty close to Fred Cash's shallow pit method, which I observed numerous times back in Youngsville, N.C., circa 1957. He would dig a pit, shovel some coals into it, cover it with chicken wire and grill freshly killed young chickens, one per person. He slapped on his vinegary sauce with a mop.
The Banyuls fete was obliged to have ceremonial arrivals of grenache grapes from terraced vineyards on nearby mountain slopes. Some were delivered by Catalan barque, a wooden sailboat that moved goods along the rugged coast before there were paved roads or railroads. More of the antique, stave-sided harvest tubs arrived in a procession of children and mules decked in the traditional costumes. A priest blessed the grapes, and then everyone was off to the beach for the chief draw of the day, the outdoor barbecue.
While gangs of men built bonfires of dried grape vines on the town's beach, I chatted with sculptor Percy Salley, a Maine native who ``retired'' from the United States nearly 25 years ago and moved to Banyuls to cut nudes out of the local rock. He rolled a cigarette with his broad hands and strained to remember how to express himself in English. ``Love it here,'' he said. ``Yes, me, and you will, too.''
The purpose of the bonfires was to make embers. These pros have available to them 40- and 50-year-old vines that have worn themselves out in the windswept and shale-pocketed vineyards. This is real wood, with trunks up to seven inches in diameter. It burns down to chunky embers that send up a nutty, slightly sweet smoke, not so overpowering as hickory or mesquite.
Most of the two dozen or so barbecuers on the beach were no more modern in their approach than their great-grandfathers were when they took a lunch break in some Mediterranean cove or in a shepherd's mountainside pasture. They raked off glowing embers from their fires and spread them two inches deep on the pebble beach. On top they placed simple rectangular grill racks with legs only three or four inches high, just high enough to hold the racks above the embers.
Onto the racks for the 2,000 hungry people went thin-sliced pork chops, fresh Catalan sausage in casing, a blood sausage, called ``boudin,'' lamb chops, wire baskets of mussels, petite escargot, here and there a paella, and, of course, some of the local sweet red peppers that are both huge and hugely popular.
Seasonings were used sparingly on the meats: sea salt, black pepper and perhaps a little sweet red pepper powder. The Catalan sausage seems to have a little anise in it and is marvelously accepting of the grapevine smoke. I didn't eat enough of the ``boudin'' to know what was in it, other than chunks of pork belly and the coagulated obvious.
Foods that go on a Catalan grill rack are usually cut or otherwise prepared so that they cook in less than an hour, sometimes much less. The pork chops, for instance, were ready to eat in only about 10 minutes. A local recipe directs the barbecuer to split and flatten a chicken before putting in on the grill - which is exactly what Fred Cash did back in Carolina - and to cook for 35 minutes.
This quick cooking, as efficient as it is, does increase the chance of overcooking. One wag from Paris held up a well-done lamb chop and lamented, ``These are good, simple, life-loving people, but they simply must learn not to cook meat so thoroughly.''
Perhaps, but my lamb chops were delicious.
This barbecue fete was also noteworthy for its paucity of vegetables. The daily diet of the locals includes tomatoes, eggplant, garlic, onions and zucchini, plus a generous amount of potatoes, leeks and carrots. But all I could find on the beach, other than the roasted peppers, were a few baskets of tomatoes. Some picnickers bit into them as if they were apples; others cut them into quarters with their pocket knives. (Many of the locals, even the women, came equipped with pocket knives, which were much more efficient than the plastic utensils that were handed out.)
A friend from Port Vendres said she had been to a barbecue once in the United States and had been fed our ``very sweet, very bad, melange of baked beans.'' She seemed to be telling me that if baked beans were my vegetable of choice for a barbecue, I'd be better off going without.
There was no potato salad either, but there was plenty of mayonnaise. In this case the mayonnaise was laced with garlic, and it's called ``aioli.'' I love it, and continued eating it even after it began to change colors in the sun. The typical local would cut the bone away from a pork chop, lather it with ``aioli'' and tuck it inside a baguette. Not bad.
Large rounds of Roquefort and Camembert were brought for dessert, along with baskets of apples. These cheeses cost about 30 percent less here than they do in the United States. The locals don't know how lucky they are.
Anchovies may not be typical barbecue fare. Nevertheless they were set out on one table at the Banyuls fete, plates of them mixed with strips of roasted red peppers and drizzled with olive oil and Banyuls wine vinegar, which is similar to balsamic. It's nearly impossible to get through a day here on the 20-mile costal strip known as the Cote Vermeille without being offered an anchovy, and a visitor is quick to learn that not all anchovies are created equal.
At least since the Middle Ages, fishermen have been bringing the shiny small fishes into Cote Vermeille ports, and they have been processed in the town of Collioure, a tourist mecca two miles northeast of Port Vendres.
Today the anchovies are brought into Port Vendres, the area's one thriving commercial fishing port. Two processing houses, or ``ateliers de fabrication,'' are operating the old-fashioned way in Collioure.
Visitors are allowed to wind up a cramped stairwell to a large room where men wrestle with barrels of the fishes in salt or brine and women sit at tables - as if at a quilting bee - cleaning and packing them.
To my surprise, I was allowed to wander about the room, through puddles of waste water, around piles of bones and skins and heads, and stick my nose in the business of every work station. Some of the women wanted to pose for a picture. The men ignored me. As interesting as the work was, I soon got my fill of the sights an aromas and beat a wretching retreat.
I am told the operation is exempted from public heath codes. As I bounded down the stairs I remembered the maxim about our not needing to know how sausage or laws are made.
Some of the anchovies processed in Collioure are like those commonly sold in the United States. They are small, dark and salty from the curing process, and packed in inexpensive vegetable oil. They have been cured in brine and then relived of their heads and tails, backbones and as much skin as possible by the quick but delicate hands of the women at the tables.
An 8-ounce jar of these anchovies costs $6. For $11 the same size jar comes filled with the same style of anchovies, but the filets are of a higher grade. These grand filets are often the ones local restaurants arrange like spokes of a wheel on a round plate. (Alternating spokes are strips of roasted sweet red pepper.)
Two other styles of anchovies have even deeper traditional roots. High grade whole anchovies are cured in barrels of sea salt and sold whole, except for heads. They must be soaked and boned before serving. This process can preserve anchovies for a year or more. The other alternative is to buy fresh anchovies from a fishmonger for about $2 a pound and practice, as I did, some home vinegar curing.
This Catalan, or Spanish style, of anchovy has milky colored flesh, much like that of fish that has been marinated in citrus juice for seviche. Prepared food sections of ``supermarches'' sell the vinegar-cured anchovies in a salad mix with peppers and onions for about $10 a pound. But several locals say the best anchovies of this style are made by home cooks.
I was encouraged to buy some fresh ones myself. I wouldn't even need a knife to clean them, I was told, just run my fingernail down the stomach and gut them with one flip of the thumb. The backbone would virtually fall out and the fish would divide into two neat filets.
After a week of deliberating, I bought some of the shiny little fishes and, sure enough, cleaning and fileting them was a cinch.
A wine writer from Perpignan told me most vinegar-cured anchovies are so vinegary they ``destroy the wine.'' He suggested I use only a little vinegar, a bit of salt and lots of olive oil for the overnight cure in the refrigerator. I decided to use only a few capfuls of vinegar and substitute white wine, lemon juice, and a few drops of Tabasco. (I found a little bottle of it at a ``supermarche'' in Perpignan and decided it was a taste of home I could not do without.) I doused the mixture with olive oil, sprinkled on some salt and put it in the refrigerator.
For lunch and dinner the next day I feasted on the filets with a friend who was visiting from Norfolk. We agreed that anchovies couldn't taste much better, and they mated well with the Roussillon rose I can buy in bulk and bottle myself at a cost of about $1.25 a bottle.
The prices of things here are enough to bring on vertigo in an American bargain hunter. In the States I don't expect bargains from a gourmet shop. Yet in France, the best deals are in wine, cheese, pate and fresh-baked bread. These are things all of the French seem to feel entitled to. In the States similar feelings apply to red meat, fresh milk, potato chips, pizza and Coca-Cola, all of which are more expensive in France.
MEMO: Jim Raper, who formerly wrote the Humble Steward win column for
The Virginian-Pilot, is living in Port Vendres, France. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
DEBORAH MARQUARDT
TOP: The Roque anchovy house in Collioure operates the old-fashioned
way. ABOVE: A typical Catalan grill.
DEBORAH MARQUARDT
Terraced vineyards in the Catalonia region of France descend toward
the Mediterranean Sea.