The Basque History of the World - Mark Kurlansky [126]
The seventy-five gastronomic societies in San Sebastián are considered important enough that the mayor is expected to eat in each of them at least once a year. Constant meals at these men’s clubs was one of the things Ramón Labayen said he liked least about being mayor of San Sebastián.
On Saint Sebastián Day, half of the members of the local gastronomic societies dress as chefs in white with toques, aprons, and even towels on their hips. These potbellied chefs pursue the other half, who are wearing Napoleonic military uniforms. Throughout the evening, groups of chefs pursue Napoleonic soldiers through the streets. The soldiers in tall cylindrical hats beat drums, and the chefs, led by a conductor-chef using a giant knife, spoon, or whisk for a baton, clank out the same on their barrels. The seemingly vexed soldiers then pound even harder and more elaborately on their drums. Only to get a flat echo from the barrels at the rear of the column.
When Napoleon’s troops occupied San Sebastián, Basque citizenry taunted them by following behind and beating on barrels. But then, when it was daring, it was mostly women doing it.
The festival lasts from midnight on January 19 until the following midnight. The chefs pass around bottles and get progressively red faced and bloated looking, but both chefs and soldiers beat out their rhythms and responses with great seriousness.
By 10:30 P.M., the crowds go into the restaurants to eat txangurro a la Donastiarra, San Sebastián-style stuffed spider crab. The dish is all in the stuffing, since the crab is a leggy but scrawny animal that many cultures have ignored because it requires a gastronome’s heart and a surgeon’s hands to extract its meat.
TXANGURRO A LA DONASTIARRA
Use sea water, or else water with salt and yeast. Once the water boils, put the crab in for 15 minutes. After it has chilled, remove all the meat from the legs and the center, and whatever water is there, to pass through a food mill.
The preparation is as follows: put some olive oil in a skillet with minced onion and a finely minced clove of garlic; when they start to brown add a glass of wine (some prefer brandy), reduce and pass through a food mill with a little white pepper, a teaspoon of English sauce and a litte mustard, according to taste, and a couple of spoonfuls of previously prepared tomato. When all this is reduced, add a spoonful of bread crumbs. Once you have made the preparation, add the crab meat, and when all this is seasoned, put it in the shell and add a little butter just before serving and a little more bread crumbs and slip it into the oven.
—Nicolasa Pradera, 1933
ON SAINT SEBASTIÁN NIGHT, 1998, by the central market at Nicolasa Pradera’s famous old restaurant, the contemporary chef-owner, Juan José Castillo, from Bermeo, surveyed the crab dishes coming out of the kitchen. Meanwhile, the chefs and soldiers were marching through town saluting the police station and various other institutions. When they came to Casa Nicolasa, Castillo ran out to the balcony and bounced up and down on his toes, waving his arms to the drum cadence in unconcealed boyish glee as his waiters ran below distributing bottles of champagne. Then he suddenly decided it was too cold for champagne and ran downstairs to distribute coffee and brandy, then charged back up to his balcony to listen some more.
As the gastronomes got increasingly merry and plodding, toques and high Napoleonic hats starting to slide to one side, another group began to form. They were marching for amnesty