The Man Who Ate Everything - Jeffrey Steingarten [130]
Bowls of little clams were placed before us, vongole veraci—oblong and slightly pink, only an inch across, sweet and peppery and impossibly tender. Like everything else, they were cooked very simply: garlic is lightly colored in a little oil, chopped parsley is added, and then the clams; the pan is covered, the heat is turned high, and within a minute or two the vongole veraci have opened, surrendering their juice to the oil and garlic, composing a sauce. No salt or pepper is added, no wine or broth, no herbs. “We have a saying in Italy,” Marcella told me, “that what you leave out is as important as what you put in.”
Our lesson continued with cuttlefish risotto bright with peas and dark with ink, plates of shredded granzeola (the local spider crab), and grilled eel. From these I learned that cuttlefish ink is milder and sweeter than squid ink, that lemon is also too assertive for perfectly fresh crab, but that a little olive oil is ideal, and that everybody in the United States should grill eels on their barbecues this summer.
Mere hours after it had begun, the eating lesson at Da Fiore was over, and we made plans for my cooking lesson at ten the next morning.
The Hazans’ apartment occupies the top floor of a small palazzo built in 1520 by a branch of the Contarini family, whose Ca’ d’Oro on the Grand Canal, begun in 1424, was the finest house in Venice. Marcella’s kitchen is white, with sloping dark wood beams and polished gray granite countertops, just the right size for her classes of six students but, as Marcella pointed out when I made a far-reaching mess later that morning, slightly too small for one of me.
Venetian Seafood Glossary
Photocopy this glossary and head for the Adriatic as soon as convenient. If it does not include everything edible in the waters and restaurants of Venice, it comes pretty close. The Italian names are given first and the Venetian in parentheses. I use the plural for creatures you eat lots of, like cozze, and the singular for creatures you eat one at a time. The Venetian names will make you sound like a native within twenty-five kilometers of San Marco, and like a Martian beyond that. If you think that I lifted this information from some book, just try to find one. After I had exhausted my notes from the Rialto market, La pesca nella Laguna di Venezia (Amministrazione della Provincia di Venezia, 1981), Alan Davidson’s Mediterranean Seafood (Penguin, 1981), and a gigantic Italian dictionary, Victor Hazan graciously returned to the fishmongers on the Rialto to help fill the gaping holes.
Acciughe (sardoni): anchovies, called alici around Rome
Aguglia: garfish, sometimes found in the better sushi bars
Anguilla (bisato): eel
Aragosta: rock lobster, called langouste in France
Astaco (astise): like Maine lobster; imported from Yugoslavia or France; astice in vernacular Italian
Bianchetti: whitebait; also known as gianchetti
Branzino (bransin): bar or loup de mer in France; Marcella compares it to striped bass; others say it’s a sea bass of a different species (Labrax lupus) from ours; spigola or spinola in Rome; delectable in and on any tongue
(Cagnoleto): very small shark, often stewed with tomato sauce
Calamaretti: baby squid, one and a half inches long, fried whole, incredible
Calamaro: squid
Calamarone: large squid
Canestrelli (canestreli): minute scallops, tinier than bay scallops and spicy in taste; nearest U.S. cousins are Peconic and Digby Bay scallops; here, as elsewhere (for example, schile), Venetians don’t pronounce the final i
Cannocchia (canocia): squill, or mantis shrimp, found only in the Adriatic and Japan, pinkish gray and flat, two inches wide, eight inches long; grilled or steamed, the sweetest crustacean you can