Cod_ A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World - Mark Kurlansky [71]
BACALAO-NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL
BACALAO A LO COMUNISTA (COMMUNIST-STYLE SALT COD)
Divide the salt cod into thin filets, then dredge each in flour and then fry them. In a baking dish put a layer of salt cod, then a layer of sliced potatoes and parmesan cheese. Cover with bechamel sauce and gratin in the oven.
-El Bacalao, the recipes of PYSBE
(Salt Cod Fishermen and Driers of Spain),
San Sebastián, 1936
BACALAO BANDERA ESPAÑOLA (SPANISH FLAG SALT COD)
Choose the best salt cod, boil it, remove the skin and bones, flake it, and put the flakes in a serving dish. Make a good mayonnaise with garlic. Put it over the salt cod, completely covering it, and the width of the dish. On either side place strips of red pepper, roasted or fried, thus resulting in the colors of the Spanish flag. Each pepper strip has to be half the width of the strip of mayonnaise.
—Alejandro Bon,
Leonor, Superior Cook, Barcelona, 1946
14: Bracing for the Canadian Armada
THE TIME MUST COME WHEN THIS COAST WILL BE A
PLACE OF RESORT FOR THOSE NEW ENGLANDERS WHO
REALLY WISH TO VISIT THE SEA-SIDE.
—Henry David Thoreau, Cape Cod, 1851
Today, Gloucester has as much in common with its neighbor on Cape Ann, Rockport, as Newlyn has with Mousehole. Rockport is a pretty little town with a pretty little harbor full of expensive yachts. The waterfront shops sell crafts and snacks for “New Englanders who really wish to visit the sea-side.” Gloucester could have been Newlyn’s sister. It is a rough, downhill fishing town. Fine old wooden merchant’s houses view the sea from up on the hills, while nineteenth- and twentieth-century brick buildings—the look of old blue-collar New England—dominate the lower part of town around a well-sheltered and busy waterfront. Bottom draggers, a few longliners, gillnetters, and lobster boats line the docks. In early morning they head out, a few at a time, and from four o‘clock on they come back, trailed by gulls as they make their way with their catches toward the landing docks of the seafood companies. The companies are small. Birdseye’s old company, which became Postum, which became General Foods, was then sold to O’Donnell Usen, which left for Florida. Seafood companies didn’t need to be in fishing ports anymore. Their fish arrives in freezer containers, often from other oceans. Gorton’s is still in Gloucester, the largest plant with the biggest sign, but the company hasn’t bought a fish from a Gloucester fisherman in years. Gorton’s buys no Atlantic cod from anyone anymore. In 1933, with the invention of the filleting machine, redfish, which had always been tossed overboard, became a major catch, and by 1951 represented 70 percent of all fish landed in Gloucester. But in 1966, Gorton’s bought its last Gloucester redfish too, closing down the plant on what had been called “redfish wharf.”
By the mid-1990s, the town had about 400 working fishermen left, down from 2,000 forty years before. Gloucester’s fleet had the fatal flaw of being picturesque. There were too many old wooden hulled trawlers, which insurance companies won’t even cover anymore, or rusting old steel ones and too many little low-built gillnetters. They gave a wonderful look to the old harbor, but it meant that the Gloucester fleet was not modern. But maybe not modernizing was the way of the future.
The New England Fishery Management Council was charged with the task of holding back the fleet from scooping up the last of the groundfish in New England waters. The Magnuson Fisheries Conservation and Management Act of 1976 had extended the exclusive U.S. fishing zone to 200 miles offshore and set up as regulators regional fishery management councils dominated by fishing interests. Fishermen never had been good regulators, but they were virtually encouraged not to be by loan guarantees and other