Of Fish and Other Sea Creatures

Food Rule Number 24:

“Eating what stands on one leg [mushrooms and plant food]is better than eating what stands on two legs [fowl], which is better than eating what stands on four legs [cows, pigs and other mammals]”

Michael Pollan, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manuel, 2009.

Michael Pollan adds to this rule and includes fish and other seafood which majority are legless creatures which contribute to a good diet.

Being from a landlocked country, I plead ignorance with regards to the ocean, marine biology and anything sea related. I use this excuse when convenient.

Then, I moved to Bra and met people who know their seafood. Unfortunately for us as students, Bra is a two hour drive from the coast. The seafood that is found  in Bra has travelled a long distance to get to you. This brings about questions of freshness, and this limits the choice that is available. Your cooking experiences reflect what you learn through the Slow Food philosophy. This means that you are willing to try out new things, and innovation becomes a reality more than a philosophy. For example on Fridays, my Thai friend wakes up early and heads to the fish market to get her free salmon heads from the vendors. I had no idea what she was going to do with them until one Friday afternoon I stopped over for an early dinner and before me was a platter of a slowly baked salmon fish head! Chopsticks in hand, spicy flavourful dipping sauce of chillies, garlic and other Thai seasonings, I from the landlocked country devoured that fleshy fish head.

Armed with added knowledge about fish heads, I thought this was the pinnacle of all fishy knowledge. But alas I attend UNISG. Contrary to popular belief it is not a cooking school. You do learn about cooking but not trained to be a chef you would think that your close family members would remember that. My dear mother knows very well that I enjoy cooking but I’m not a chef. Nonetheless I received a desperate email about two months ago that my mother had been given some “sea creatures”. She took them home, alive and they were wiggling their antlers and legs all over the kitchen sink. To bring them to their death, she mustered up courage, stuffed them in a plastic bag and threw them into the depths of her freezer.

Upon hearing about the fate of the “sea creatures” who turned out to be either crayfish or crawfish I assured here that they were food, just in an alive state. I consulted a few of my classmates who knew a lot more about seafood  than I did. I also consulted Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking for a classic recipe. Her instructions on dealing with live lobster (or other crustaceans):

If you object to steaming or splitting a live lobster, it may be killed almost instantly just before cooking if you plunge the point of a knife into the head between the eyes, or sever the spinal cord by making a small incision in the back of the shell at the juncture of the chest and the tail.

It was too late for lobster wisdom from Julia Child, but nonetheless I sent the recipes and instructions. I expected to hear back from my mother saying that she had prepared the seafood and what she thought of them. Alas, she had not. They would  stay buried in the depths of the freezer until I came to visit, and then they would be cooked, by me.

That’s what I did. After a day or two of rest I asked about the “sea creatures”. I retrieved them, heated and salted some water and boiled them. You must know that I have never cooked such kind of food. We (I made Mother assist me in the cooking that she was supposed to have done) removed the fleshy meat from the tails. Rich in flavour only seasoned with salt it tasted like it had been doused in a buttery sauce.

An instant hit with my family. At the end of the meal, Mother considered that on her next ‘fishing’ trip she would come home with a lot more of these delicacies and try the other recipes.

Mission accomplished, crayfish or crawfish whatever they maybe, cooked, enjoyed; I think I am now more knowledgeable about crustaceans. I have considered eating more of them while I am here, nearby the ocean where they are in abundance, and this way I can get closer to eating wisely by following Michael Pollan’s Food Rules.

Ten Travelling Tips

Twenty-eight hours, one bus, three trains, two airlines and three flights, four train stations, four airports, three bags, a backpack a handbag, two airline dinners of fish and rice, two panini, blueberries, overpriced water and coffee, three time zones, two swollen ankles and one exhausted Coco, I made it to the other side of the world with all my bags and sanity intact- just about.

I said earlier that traveling is a good thing and everyone should do it. I still say travel but now I’m going to modify this statement. Traveling, like chocolate tasting is not for the faint hearted. Before you travel you should know a few things:

1.) Make sure you have time to get to where you are going. If you live in a place like Bra, you need say about six hours to get where you are going, especially if you are traveling by Train Italia on a Sunday headed to Milano Airport. That’s where you insert the Bus to Carmangola-train to Torino-then another one to Milano- and a final one to Milano Malpensa airport. It helps if you have friends on the way to help you get there and keep you company on the journey. Thanks L and S.

2.) Always smile and be friendly to the check in and immigration people. Most people have bad experiences with them, having been made to pay a lot of money for having excess weight, even as small as half a kilogram. I have had my fair share of paying for excess baggage seeing as the fact that I have tried to travel light all my life but have failed drastically at it. My excuse is that you have to pack things to be prepared for all the unexpected possibilities. I get away with my excess by traveling with others who are light travellers, we end up sharing the weight. This makes one of my brothers, K, an excellent travel companion, he carries literally nothing for a long trip but somehow it is always enough, even for the unexpected things.

Back to the smile- I was blessed this time round, I approached the check in counter, with my three bags (you are only allowed two and you pay for the third one) prepared to pay for the third one and the check in lady smiled and almost violently waved me away when I was talking about paying for my third bag. Three bags checked in headed off to the Western Part of Central Africa, I prayed that they all got there in tack and did not get redirected to another airport or anything funny like that.

3.) Don’t wear too may accessories that have metal. When going through the security clearance sometimes I get really irritated. You wait on a line for so long only to get there, you have to take out your computer, which is in a case, inside your stuffed backpack, then if its winter you remove your boots and boots can be difficult shoes to wear. Then you take off all your jewellery- don’t be silly and go wearing an armful of bangles to the airport. I did it once, that was silly. And then you have to take of you belt. Make sure that you are wearing something that can survive a few footsteps without a belt otherwise you are in for embarrassing moments! All that for a few seconds through the security. If you are unlucky enough to cause the machines to beep you might just be frisked- Not fun.

4.) Take a look through the shops in the airport but don’t buy anything, unless you really have to. Why you ask? Because you are going to have to carry that stuff with you till you get to your destination and if you decide to be silly and get things that are heavy and overpriced well, you might regret it later. And you might come across an airline that is super strict about hand luggage. You will have to stuff all your purchases into you already over stuffed bag. How did I get away with it with a backpack and a handbag? Somehow the purchases squeezed into the backpack and I decided/ convinced myself and the guy at the boarding gate that that my handbag was actually a part of me and I only had one piece of hand luggage.

5.) Eat and Drink. While travelling it is important to keep hydrated, I would stick to water since the airplane wine is-well for me (a budding wine guru/snob) the wine is subpar. The problem with water is that you can’t bring any with you from home. You can only buy it after the security checks. That means you will fork out about €2.00 for a 500ml bottle of water. I found that water was conveniently only sold in 500 ml bottles so that’s was a dent in my pocket because a on a four hour layover you need to drink water lest you get dehydrated. If you are like me I have to munch a bit when I travel, it passes time and I do not like being a hungry traveller. A hungry traveller can be an agitated traveller. Carry snacks from home (home-made chocolate chip cookies, blueberries, peaches) you will save money and if you are like me with allergies some airports do not cater very well for your allergies and you will be stuck with a limited overpriced selection of things you can eat. And don’t wait saying that you will have a meal in the plane. You will have one but it will probably be an hour into the flight and you probably won’t like what is being served (another airplane meal of rice and fish?) but you will eat because you are hungry.

6.) Sleep or Watch the in flight entertainment. The only way you will survive a long journey is taking a nap between the flights/ buses. You will feel better and it will pass time when you are crossing the time zones. I started watching The Godfather, it made much more sense now that I have been living in Italy for nine months. My brother T, will be very happy that I have finally watched some of the movie. But I will stay away from the underworld gangs and bosses.

7.) There is no need to push! Honestly, you will all get in to the plane and you will all get out of the plane! Relax and don’t shove people. When travelling know that the concept of personal space is something that many travellers do not understand or want to understand. On the  last flight, fully booked, no leg room, people, their ‘hand’ luggage and me.  As soon as we landed they removed their seatbelts and decided it was time to leave (contrary to the cabin crew’s warning) opened up the overhead cabins and then stood waiting. I knew that we had a long way to go so I stayed seated and enjoyed another 30 minutes of sleep while the animated and agitated passenger kept complaining that everything was taking too long.

8.) Have you story straight. Remember I said that you should smile and be friendly to the check in people. Different story when dealing with immigration. Smile, but be confident and know your story. The immigration people like to make you sweat and ask you unnecessary questions when all the information is right in front of them. Sometimes you find some kind ones who put you at ease. The immigration gentleman in Frankfurt decided to have a long conversation with me about food and cooking when he saw where I was studying. If anything he was intrigued, in a good way. Seems like being at UNISG pays off for a conversation starter. On the last leg it was more difficult to explain. I had to go through two immigration officials. One strictly to check the visa and the final one to check my vaccine certificates. He held me hostage for a while, looking at my documents and looking at me, somewhat confused, I think my ‘straight story’ appeared to be dubious. His puzzled statement was: “You were born in country A, you hold a passport of country B, you live in country C, and you are coming here to country D, and finally you do not have the one required vaccine to enter country D because you are allergic to it”. I gave him a frank, yes that is my story and he let me through.

9) Always mark your bags and know what they look like. On these fully booked flights from Europe to the Western part of Central Africa, there will be several stops. You hope and pray that you get your luggage and that in the journey it is not rerouted to some obscure airport or that it is not tampered with. That does not include acts of God such as a rain storm in East Africa. After being pushed around by the other overzealous passengers who kept grabbing pieces of luggage they thought was theirs then upon discovery that it was the wrong thing they would throw it back on the baggage claim. I got my luggage, although it did not look like mine. The rain storm in East Africa had changed soaked my bright red suitcase allowing it to be blotched by brown and black marks of the baggage handling. My grey suitcase has a few more battle scars added to its exterior casing, it lost one of its wheels but it is still usable. My third little bag, the one I feared for the most did well and came out a survivor- maybe because it was too heavy (it felt like I put some mercury in it) to be tampered with.

10) Rest. When you get to your destination, rest, breathe in your new environment and don’t have too many expectations, that only leaves room for disappointment. Have an open mind to new experiences, tastes, flavours, smells sights, sounds, and enjoy the adventure.

Bon Voyage.

Now an added disclaimer. After talking with my parents I found out I have nothing on them when it comes to travelling and adventures. If you really want to know about adventures talk to people older than you. They have seen many more sunrises and sunsets than you and possibly they are more adventurous than you give them credit to be.