Take a stroll down Stanley Street walking westward any fine morning. When you see a cluster of dai pai dong up ahead you’ll know you’re almost at Graham Street. Turn left and youíll see a ribbon of greenery and humanity running up the hill, offering all that could ever be desired by the Chinese cook. Well, maybe not birdís nests or monkey brains, but anything an average householder could desire on a average day.
So start your ascent into the cacophony and bustle and press of goods, people and appetites. Fishmongers call out their wares, singing their goods and prices down through the street. Herb sellers rely on the aromas of their goods to lure business. A bouquet of mint, coriander and garlic beckons. Across the street colourful spices laid out on trays like painters’ palettes compete for your attention. How many artists will choose their colours here today? Fish are laid out on beds of shaved ice. Ducks and geese are hanging from entry ways, their golden and brazen skins glinting in the light.
“You buy!” urges the seller. “No!” cries another. “You buy here!”
Up the hill where the market branches out onto Cage Street, the butchers are hanging their offerings on hooks and poles; curtains of meat, freshly slaughtered. If you’re here early they are dripping blood. If you’re here late, well, they may be drawing flies. Best to come early. In the midst of all this hanging flesh are a cluster of restaurants, which offer a calm refuge within this bustling market street. Stop in for tea and a snack.
We come to Graham Street with our friend Alan Lu. As with most Hong Kong shoppers, every ingredient Alan buys is carefully chosen for beauty as much as anything else. He probes and prods every item individually, subjecting it to test of fragrance, ripeness, and giving demerits for blemishes. Alan thinks nothing of searching long and hard for the perfect papaya, the crispiest bean sprouts, the greenest water spinach.
This is not some dreary chore. Alan knows the owner of each stall, for he and his fellow shoppers have been coming here for years. The shopkeeper asks Alan about his father. Alan commends the merchant for the superior goods available today. Yet he doesn’t hesitate to ask why some goods are hidden while others are on prominent display. “These are good people here at this market”, Alan tells us. “But even they can be sold poor goods by unscrupulous dealers. Be sure to inspect everything you buy. It was my mother who taught me to shop. She is even stricter than I. She will scold a merchant who offers her anything less than perfect. They fear her.”
He leads us over to a butcher. The larger chunks of meat are draped in front of the stall, entrails and organs just behind. Alan sniffs, then smiles. “Still warm. Just killed.”
Heading back down Graham Street we stop at a fishmonger. A woman is yelling out the fish varieties she has for sale. She has a few live ones in a tank and dozens laid out on ice. Alan eyes the tank suspiciously. “Some people have used the polluted water of the harbour to fill their fish tanks”, he explains. He can’t decide if this tank is good or bad, so he buys from the ice bed. “Always look at the eyes. If they are not bright and clear, the fish is no good. Press the flesh with your fingertip. It should rebound. And then smell it. If it smells fishy, it is no good.”
“But shouldn’t fish smell like fish?” we inquire. Alan looks disturbed, and mutters something in Cantonese. We think it was Cantonese. We continue down the hill, Alan buying small amounts of this and that, chatting with the merchants, catching up on gossip, talking horse racing, the city passion. When we reach the bottom of the hill at Stanley Street we realise that we, ourselves, have purchased nothing. But hereís the herb seller we passed on the way up. She smiles from behind her fragrant display of leaves and buds. We buy a bouquet of mint. We have no idea what we will do with it. We don’t care. Goods and money exchange hands. We nod and smile, both happy with the transaction. Then we catch up with Alan, satisfied that we have been to market.
It’s all happening in the street. Every kind of human intercourse except the sexual (invitations thereto notwithstanding) goes on in the streets. You can get your hair cut in the street; you can have your eyes examined and glasses prescribed, then stroll down the block a way and take tea with friends, all on the street. Heel of your shoe falling off? Stop at the corner and let the boy sitting on the curb with a box of tools fix it for you.
The street is where life is lived in Vietnam, so it can be no wonder that it is also where life is sustained. You can eat, and eat gloriously, in the streets of Vietnam. As the city in which you stay awakens, just before dawn, the empty sidewalks begin to sprout little tables and chairs, and tiny plastic stools. The smells of sweet star anise and pungent ginger and insistent fish sauce are soon afloat upon the air. Office workers are among the first to occupy the tables as they sensuously slurp through a breakfast of pho while neat, well scrubbed children troop off to school. Industrious artisans and mechanics begin work in dim, close shops. If they have no shops they set up operations on a street corner, or carry their tools in old American ammunition boxes and go from house to house. Finishing their breakfast the office workers pause to watch the lazy coffee drip, drip, drip, into their cups. One last moment of calm before a busy day.
At midday the street cafes and stalls become an organized chaos of chopping, grilling and steaming; of hollering for orders of noodles, or rice cakes steamed in banana leaves, and spring rolls, and tumblers of freshly pressed sugar cane juice. In Hanoi it might be raining as you sit on a bench beside the lake. But it is a rain so gossamer and fine and gentle that it embraces rather than falls, and you don’t mind it. Besides, the baguette seller working his way toward you has his wares covered with a plastic sheet and so will deliver your lunch to you unmarred by the weather. In Hue a furious sizzle as rice-flour crepes turn crispy in a smoking hot pan being tended smack-dab on the sidewalk in the shade of the old city’s walls. And in Saigon a hundred different dishes are being served on a thousand different side streets, intersections and alleyways. Everyone comes to dine on the street at sometime.
In the evening, many people put their labors aside and a graceful and refined cafe society emerges. Cafes in Vietnam are deep and narrow, no larger than a two-car garage. As though they were set in a Doonsberry cartoon, the word on the sign outside is often spelled "Ca Phe." They open completely onto the street and all the little tables and reclining beach chairs are arranged in neat rows facing outward wit an aisle running down the middle. They call to mind the fuselage of an airliner flying to the street. We have come to call them "747 Ca Phes."
The patrons relax after yet another meal on the street and sip tea, coffee and beer and watch their cities go by. Music is constant in the cafes. The river of life rushes by to the music: lithe women in limpet hats and ao-dai dresses; porters in black "VC" pajamas bearing baskets balanced on bamboo poles; pedicabs, bicycles, motor scooters, pedestrians out for a walk. All busy-busy-busy, hurrying past the monuments, markets, tinkertoy apartment blocks. Beggars, vendors and whores insistent, people urging "Hello! Where you from?" The music of the cafes makes of it all a pageant, a film scene, something to lose yourself in.
The people and their lives have grace and poise. But the Vietnamese also have a boisterous, in-your-face aggressive side. Vendors need to be firmly shooed away. People will insist on practicing their fractured English upon you even when you want to be left alone. And never make eye contact with a souvenir seller. You won't be free of him till you buy. It’s all in the street.
"A bride should not eat fish on her wedding day. Otherwise she might flip flop like a fish from man to man for ever more." —Greek proverb
For as long as records have been kept, and for no doubt longer, the people who inhabit the land we now call Greece have been mad for fish. And rightly so in a land of 11,000 islands and innumerable miles of coastline. This is a people wedded to the sea, and its colours and its moods and it creatures. The ancients spoke of the appetite for fish in the same terms in which they spoke of the appetite for sex. Carp and courtesans came under the same heading when talk at the symposion or the lyceum turned to ungovernable desires. And they still lust for their finny fare, as well as lobster, shrimp, mussles, clams and anything else with its house on its back. Although it must be said that with Greece’s recent prosperity the people are eating much more meat than they ever have at any time in their history. Indeed Greek travelers of the past used to note with distain the amounts of meat consumed by western Europeans. But western Europe has arrived in Greece. And many Greeks, in the effort to be good modern western Europeans, faithful members of NATO and the EU, have increased their consumption of meat by over 150% in the last generation. Consumption of fish has gone down, but not by a corresponding amount. The government says 7%. The biggest decrease in the Greek diet has been in plant foods. It would seem that you could tear them away from their pease porridge, flummery and gruel, but not their fish.
In keeping with ancient attitudes, the best way to cook a fish is generally as simply as possible. Catch, kill, expose to fire, eat. A little oil, a squeeze of lemon; if you want to get fancy a pinch of herb, but no, no, no, gloppy sauces, no curry powders, no tartar sauce or ketchup. Bake it, fry it, grill it, broil it or boil it. But don’t interfere with it. Don’t do anything that will mask its fishy flavour. If you don’t like the taste of fish, then don’t order fish in here sir, because we will not accomodate your fussy French ways. Well, actually, they will accomodate your fussy French ways if you happen to be in a resort full of fussy Frenchmen. And you’ll get your damned fish n chips with malt vinegar if you are where the English tend to school. And if it should come to pass that India sends hordes of hungry Hindus to a certain island for fortnights of frivolity and fish foods, then Greek cooks will cook curry fish. But if you go for the Greek, for the genuine article and accept no substitutes, you will get your dish of fish as little adorned as possible and true to its seaborne taste.
Some of the more common items on the fish menu include: barbounia, red mullet. This is one of the favourites of the Greek table and rightly so. It’s about five or six inches long, fat, and red in colour, of course. Usually fried or grilled. Bream, a kind of sea bass, may be called fagari or lithrinia. It’s prepared like mullet and is also quite good. Kalamari is squid cut into rings and deep fried. You either love it or you hate it. There seems to be no in-between. Grilled octopus is so common it’s taken for granted. You’ll often see it whole, pre-cooked, and hanging from a nail on a wall or a post. When you order it as a meze the tavern keeper will simply hack off a tentacle with a knife, toss it on the fire to warm it, then serve it drizzled with oil and lemon. Yummy stuff. Perhaps the most elaborate, maybe the only elaborate, fish dish is kakavia, fish soup. You could compare this to the French boulliabaise, though it tastes more of the sea, while its French cousin tastes more of other French stuff.
ASIDE Cathedral of Ham The Spanish don’t merely enjoy their jamon, their ham. It isn’t even enough to say that they love their ham. In fact, they worship the Holy Ham. You will see shrines to it everywhere in the land. Jamonerias, all hung heavily with hams, are among the most common type of restaurant. Inside them hams hang thickly from the ceilings and walls. They grace the bar. Their hammy scent fills the air. And the establishments have names that sing the importance of ham. You will see names like The Palace of Ham; The Jewel of Ham; The Museum of Ham; The Salon of Ham. But the ultimate ham sight in all of Spain, the hammiest, the jamonissimo, is The Cathedral of Ham: Palacio de la Bellota, La Catedral del Jamon, Mosen Fernandes 7, Valencia. “Donde jamon es jamon!” is their proud motto. “Where ham is ham!” Within this hammy cloister the hams are so numerous that they obscure the ceiling from which they hang. They are a very forest of hams! A stalactite cavern of cured hindquarters! To take a table in this place is almost intimidating, as though you are sitting beneath some terrible Sword of Jamonocles, or Ham of Damocles. If you are an observant Muslim or Jew it could give you the creeps, or fill you with a strange desire to convert among this hammy host of hundreds. Ironically, this is a seafood restaurant. And the fried fish is especially good. Nevertheless, the hams are not here for show. They are the popular appetiser, and the restaurant goes through a lot of them. For fish may be fish, but here ham is ham! END
This is the great culinary constant. This is what unites the Spanish gastronomically into one people. They speak different languages and belong to different political parties. Some revere the crown and others would abolish it. Some are Celts and some are Iberians and others are Gypsies, Basques or Catalans. But 99.9% of them are eaters of cured ham, and have been since ancient times. Strapped into a cradle-like frame called a jamonera, every bar, restaurant and tasca in the Kingdom of Spain has at least one ham a’ carving at any given time. More often the establishment has several hams, the skins and hooves still attached, hanging from the walls or ceilings. Stuck into the bottom of each hanging ham is a little plastic cup resembling an upside-down umbrella to catch the slow drippings. It’s a culinary mantra uttered by every eatery from Galicia to Granada, from the mountains to the valleys and from sea to shining sea. Even your average Spanish home has a jamonera in the kitchen. It might not have a cookie jar, but a Spanish kid can always have ham.
And this is ham like no other in the wide world. Salted and semi-dried by the cold dry winds of the Spanish sierra it’s closest relative is the Italian prosciutto. But if we could say that the Italian version is feminine, then the Spanish is pure male. The Italian is delicate and pink. Sliced paper thin and arranged in ruffles and curls on a plate, often with chunks of fruit lying within its folds, it presents a coy appearance, it’s aroma slightly flowery and its taste of a gentle come-hither kind. It’s very tender.
But a Spanish ham is a bold red, deep, sometimes even the colour of wine. It’s well marbled with buttery fat streaking through the lean like a rainbow. It smells like meat, and forest and field, and of the mushrooms and acorns and herbs that the beast has fed upon. Of its good features perhaps the most remarkable is its texture. It is neither tough nor tender. It offers something to the teeth, yet yields easily. It is rarely fibrous, and rather than being reduced by the molars to yet smaller and smaller particles, it seems to dissolve upon the tongue like rich fat chocolate. One does not swallow a masticated mass, but a succession of liquefied reductions of robust flavour and nourishment. People don’t serve fruit with Spanish ham. They serve caviar, cheese, peasant bread, nuts, beer, glasses of port, and more ham. Aficionados will gather for ham tastings in the same way that others will attend wine tastings. They select hams from the various regions and styles of Spain. Of various ages and methods of ageing. They will discuss the subtleties and complexities and other virtues of the artisan ham from a small village in Extremadura, and compare them to the more scientifically produced ham of a larger enterprise. They will make notes. And they will eat more ham.
So know your ham, traveller. Let’s bone up on it now. Spanish hams are of two principal types: Iberico and Serrano. The Iberico is from a pig indigenous to the Iberian peninsula and believed to be a descendant of sus mediterraneus, a wild boar. The animal has evolved entirely in response to its native habitat and so is very distinctive from other breeds. It has a black coat and usually black trotters. Gastronomically one of its most important distinctions is its ability to infiltrate fat into the muscle tissue, thus producing an exceedingly well marbled meat. Its habitat is known as dehesa, loosely translated as “free range,” well populated with acorn bearing oak trees. After weaning they are brought up to a weight of at least 80 kg on a diet of fodder, cereals and other tasty pig treats. Then begins a period known as the montera. It starts when the acorns appear and ends when they are gone. During this time the pigs eat little other than acorns, which makes them very fat and happy. If they gain at least 50% of their pre-montera weight they will be classified as Iberico de bellota, acorn fed. This is the creme de la creme of Spanish ham. If they fail to make weight on acorns alone they will be given supplemental fodder and classified as Iberico.
Slaughter takes place in Winter and is followed by a fortnight in which the hams are packed deeply in salt so as to draw off excess moisture. Then they are hung in sheds called secaderos where the cold, dry winds can get at them and slowly “cure” or dry them. Over the course of the year the mean temperature gradually rises, and as it does so the fat demonstrates its unique ability to infiltrate the muscle tissue and impregnate it with its rich aroma. In the Autumn the hams are transferred to ageing cellars where they will begin to acquire the taste and flavour characteristics unique to their microclimate. They can be ready for market after 15 months, but they may spend as much as 24 months in the cure. As this entire process is a natural one, Iberico ham is an artisan product. It is also addictively delicious and can be ruinously expensive. Indeed, in villages where small family operations produce Jamon Iberico de Bellota the hams can actually be the target of burglars who eschew the family’s jewels and heist the hams instead!
Serrano means “of the sierra” or the mountains. It used to designate any cured ham from Spain. Now it refers to hams made from white coated pigs that were originally introduced into Spain from northern Europe in the 1950s. At that time it was customary for ham producers to set up shop in mountainous areas so as to take advantage of the cool dry air for curing. Nowadays, most serrano hams are cured in climate controlled sheds and cellars for between 9 and 14 months. They are raised on farms where they live in sheds or pig pens and are fed on commercial fodder if it’s a big operation, and on a mix of fodder and kitchen slops if on a small farm. Both the hindquarter, the jamon, and the foreleg, the paleta are used for curing. The paleta will be the less expensive at market. Serrano accounts for over 90% of the cured ham production of Spain. And if the very expensive Iberico is heaven in your mouth, the very reasonably priced serrano is at least knocking on the Pearly Gates.
How best to enjoy Spanish ham? In great quantity! But start out with the proper temperature. It needs to be at “room temperature,” ideally about 25C. This is when its taste and smell constituents are at optimum volatility. It’s warm enough to release them, but not warm enough to dissipate them. It should not need refrigeration, but if so, take it out to acclimate before serving. Cut it as thin as you can into bite size pieces just before serving. (This stuff dries out quickly when exposed to air. Always cover it with plastic wrap when not in use.) Serve it as an appetiser with Manchego cheese. Pour a cold beer or some deep red wine, or a glass of Sherry. Though a Spaniard would not do this, would be aghast even, we find a well shaken Martini straight up with an olive to be the perfect foil to el jamon.
The Spanish love to cook with ham as well as eat it plain. Rehogado con jamón, which might be translated as “hash” is popular: Lightly fry diced ham in olive oil, then sauté parboiled or blanched vegetables in the mixture. Try it with artichokes, or green beans. Throw in some garlic. Or chop up the ham and add it to spaghetti sauce or an omelette. Fry slices of jamon and eat it on toast. Put a dollop of caviar on it. Yum!