Something Fishy This Way Comes

We in America tend to be sheltered from the source of our food. I recall a story that Greg's daughter, Kate, told of a young man in a summer camp in which she worked. It was a camp for inner city youth with limited "advantages", such as, I suppose, a local butcher. She explained to the young person that she wasn't eating the hot dogs offered for the free lunch because they were made of animal products. In fact, she had explained, hot dogs came from pigs. At which point said youth jumped up on a chair and shouted to the entire lunchroom: "Yo! Don't eat these hot dogs, man! Y'all are eating pig! Hot dogs is PIG!!"
It never occurred to me that the same veil of ignorance could be suddenly yanked from my own eyes with the delayed realization that "calamari", that exotic delicacy in which I delight in so many forms at home is, yes, actually.......squid.

Fishmonger Wagon

The fish man comes to Castiglione on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He pulls up his little van at about 10 AM just below the back of my house, across from the bellevedere, announcing his presence by playing Italian and Italianate music over a tinny loudspeaker. For a few weeks I had been thinking about how to immerse myself in local culture by striking up a conversation with this fixture of the town. What could I talk about? That I could actually have a conversation about fish did occur to me, and after a week of pondering and coming up with nothing more literarily imaginative and unique, I did just that. Thursday was as good a day as any to make pasta with fresh fish for pranzo, so when I heard the music (Rosemary Clooney's "Mambo Italiana, I kid you not) announce his arrival, I ran down to the wagon with my wallet. Too many of the fish looked too foreign, too far from the way they arrive on a plate to be viable. I was feeling overwhelmed and disoriented when he spread his arms wide over the selection of marine life in numerous baskets and plastic tubs and said "Prego" (Please...). I not only did not know the names of any of the fish in Italian, I didn't know them in English! The only familiar sea creature my mind could alight on was my quintessentially Italian favorite appetizer, calamari. So I said I'd take some. The fishmonger slapped several onto a scale. I said "Troppo. Sono da sola. (Too much; I'm by myself)". We went back and forth for a while about how much calamari  a person of my size requires, and then I got into the real conversation "Come prepararli? (How do you prepare them?). This precipitated a long explanation of what sort of dish you were going to use them in, or were they to be used for a sauce, as a main dish or accompaniment, etc, etc. Essentially, the basic Italian answer to most questions: "Depende". I told him I would be using them with pasta, and he shrugged and said, "Just cut them and put them in a pan" (I forget what this was in Italian.). So I ran back up to my kitchen and dumped them onto a cutting board. That's when I suddenly became cognizant of the source of this generic antipasto I'd enjoyed for years: It was an animal! With eyes! And guts! And a spine, for cryin' out loud! My automatic reaction was to look around for someone to deal with these guys. To get me off the hook. Too bad. It was up to me and me alone. If I wanted to eat that afternoon, I had to take on the transformation from life form to serving portion my very own self. I grabbed a knife and brought it down. Chop. There went the head. Chop. Off came the tentacles. Pause. Deep breath. My hand went all the way down into the body. Out came the guts. Snap. Lastly, the spine. It looked like a piece of transparent plastic, like you might see holding a zip-lock bag together. Chop chop chop chop down the body and finally there was something resembling the nondescript little rings you see underneath all the crispy breading in the red plastic basket at the local TGI Fridays. Now I was safe. Combined with olive oil, garlic, zucchini, and some fresh tomatoes several minutes later, I could almost forget that my food was once alive. Until next time.