The Man Who Ate Everything - Jeffrey Steingarten [128]
September 1991
Creatures from the Blue Lagoon
To get the most out of a trip to Venice, the traveler must master several local words and phrases. Two of the most useful are Senta, portrei avere un’altra porzione colossale di vongole veraci (Waiter, another gigantic bowl of those tiny little perfect spicy clams, please) and Ucciderei per un piatto di cannocchie ai ferri (I would kill for a plate of those charcoal-grilled mantis shrimp, also known as squill, the sweetest crustacean in all creation).
The seafood of Venice and the Adriatic coast to the south is easily the best I have ever tasted, and on a recent trip there I ate nothing but mollusks, crustaceans, and fish for six days and nights. I could have kept it up forever if the lady at Pan Am had not thrown around words like “forfeiture with extreme prejudice” when I tried to extend my stay. It was my contention that the airlines should have warned me, before I bought the ticket, that I would completely miss the seppioline season. Seppioline are baby cuttlefish the size of your thumbnail, quickly deep-fried until they are crunchy and irresistible. As I was explaining this, the lady from Pan Am threw around words like “Ciao!” and the line went dead.
To say that I ate only seafood in Venice is an exaggeration. The Venetians have carelessly left many priceless paintings and mosaics in the churches for which they were created instead of collecting them conveniently in museums, and even a casual survey of the major works requires relentless trudging from church to church. This, in turn, ignites the appetite. Eating seafood in basilicas and museums is considered disrespectful, so you must bring along something else to tide you over. I recommend the roasted corn nuts sold throughout the Rialto market and the pungent, gaily colored licorice pastilles offered in every sweet shop. These put you in the proper mood to understand why the painters Carpaccio and Bellini truly deserve the food and drink that were named after them. Venice also has a wealth of pictures depicting dinner, of which my favorite is Veronese’s Supper in the Pharisee’s House, with its tempting rack of lamb and several round crusty loaves. And don’t miss Tintoretto’s Creation of the Animals, which shows eleven distinct species of fish leaping from the oceans that He had created just two days earlier.
Marcella Hazan tells me that nibbling is not Italian, and she is the reason I traveled to Venice. I had yearned to meet Marcella ever since feasting my way through her Classic Italian Cookbook in 1973 and More Classic Italian Cooking in 1978. (I am still working on Marcella’s Italian Kitchen, from 1986.) It was Marcella who gave us the very first detailed instructions in English for making fresh pasta and our first generous helping of northern Italian home cooking. Along with a handful of others, she inspired the flowering of Italian cuisine that has transformed American eating. Do you remember what most Italian restaurants were like in 1973? Do you remember spaghetti and meatballs?
When the opportunity to meet Marcella arose last January, I hurried over to the Hazans’ New York City apartment. Our conversation turned to Venice, where Marcella and her husband, Victor, now live most of the year and where Marcella conducts her classes from April through October. They told tales of the remarkable creatures that dwell in the Venetian Lagoon and the Adriatic beyond: of clams the size of quarters and shrimp so small that four could fit inside each clam; of sea dates that burrow into underwater rocks, and fishermen who drag the rocks to shore and crack them open to harvest the little mollusks; of sea truffles eaten cold and raw, and soft-shell crabs two inches across and exquisitely sweet; of eel grilled slowly over charcoal until its fat renders crisp and its skin crackles. Marcella offered to teach me