Zuppa di Cozze (mussel soup)

Mussels
2 peeled and seeded tomatoes, diced
1 onion chopped fine
2 cloves of crushed and chopped garlic
1 16 oz can of Italian tomatoes
1 cup of white wine
2 bay leaves
¼ cup olive oil
salt to taste

I learned this recipe from an Italian cookbook years and years ago and I haven't changed a thing, so why change the name? If I remember correctly, the book was The Food of Italy by Waverly Root, a famous food writer. I have used mussels from the Mediterranean, Maine, and Penne Cove in Washington state. Penne Cove mussels are la puta madre (a good thing, in this case) of mussels but this dish is splendid with any sort of mussel. I made this at some friends' house the other night as we were having a dinner party and this dish doesn't travel well, even though we only live two blocks from each other. This isn't so much a soup as just a bit of broth to accompany the mussels. I will sometimes put a big baked croûton in each serving dish as an added touch. Nothing could be simpler than Zuppa di Cozze and few dishes are better when you are preparing mussels, wherever they were fished.

The first step is to clean the mussels. You need to de-beard each mussel which just means ripping the fibers from the shell. After this I like to use a piece of steel wool to thoroughly scrub each shell. Let the mussels sit in a pan of fresh water after they have been cleaned.

In a large soup dish, sauté the onion and garlic in the olive oil. When this has cooked thoroughly, add the chopped tomato. Let this cook until most of the moisture has evaporated. When the mixture is beginning to stick to the pan, add the cup of wine to de-glaze the pan. Add the can of whole tomatoes (I crush them by hand in a bowl before I put them in), throw in the bay leaves, and season with salt to taste. Allow this to simmer for about 15 minutes.

Next, add the mussels and cover the pot. They only need a few minutes to cook and as they do the shells open. Discard any which do not open.

You can serve it at this point. I have also made another version in which I pull all of the mussels from the shells and discard the shells. Then I add some sort of cooked pasta to the pot to make a noodle soup. Here in Valencia I use fideos which are very fine, small noodles that they use to make a form of noodle paella called fideua.

I have been making this dish most of my life and it has always been a treat. My Spanish friends enjoyed it especially since I gave it an Italian name.

Michael Clayton

Don't read this if you haven't seen the movie. If you haven't seen the movie, see it.

I have to place Michael Clayton way up on my list of all-time favorite movies. It was absolutely superb in every way: great actors, a demanding and relevant story, cool music, and it just has a great depth to it that is hard to define but you know it when you see it. The story requires that you fill in a lot of the blanks about the characters without the director just dumping the usual Hollywood clichés in your lap. He is a compulsive gambler but they don't go into much detail. What they do give you are a few ancillary views into his problem. The debt collector guy who is there when his restaurant is being broke down is a very original version of the mob bag man. I also thought the card game was done really well and revealed a lot about the central character—mainly that he had a serious problem with gambling. We get just enough dialogue to learn what we need to know about his restaurant, problems with betting, and family difficulties.

The dudes who worked for the hit man agency, or whatever the hell it was, were really creepy and totally believable. The agency itself was thoroughly creepy and you have to wonder if something like this service is available to huge corporations to take out their garbage. Even these guys, the worst people in the film, weren't shown as heartless pricks but as professionals dedicated to their nefarious jobs. The fact that they worked with a professional detachment made them far more ominous than the usual Hollywood thugs.

I noticed a lot of the dialogue that was directed to people off-screen—telephone calls, orders given to employees in the office, etc. It's something you usually don't think about much but I couldn't help but notice how well done this was throughout the film. I did noticed that they used the tired old expression, “We have a situation,” but the rest of the dialogue was excellent. Even if people really do say stuff like, “We have a situation,” writers should keep it out of films. The only reason people say shit like that in real life is because they heard in so many movies. It's time to break the vicious circle.

Sydney Pollack recently passed away. He was a fine director and a rather fine actor as well. He brought out a lot in his small part. Every character in the film just looked exactly like the person should look like whom they were portraying—if that makes sense or is grammatical. I think that too often in movies the casting director is thinking of somebody from another movie when he makes his choices instead of trying to see a real person. I think that far too many Hollywood writers are guilty of using stock movie characters to hatch their own fictions instead of finding their own in the real world (defined as everything outside of movies).

I like how the movie ended; not with a shoot out but with a soliloquy delivered by Clooney. That was just a great scene and really boiled down the essence of the whole film. The woman lead counsel was a great character and they really showed her moral dilemmas. Her vulnerability was evident as she allowed herself to be consumed by the corporate ethos or putting humanity on a lower priority than the bottom line. There weren't any cartoonish bad guys in the film; as I've said before, most action movie bad guys seem less threatening than Ferris Buehler's principal. The woman lawyer was too frail to be a villain on her own; she needed the group-think of everyone associated with the business at hand which was to screw over a lot of injured people. There wasn't really one person who was the bad guy, it wasn't even one corporation. The bad guy was simply the corporation in general. The real villain was the idea that evil is when people surrender their will to the collective nature of the group.

Roasted Chicken with Cabbage and Cherries

Roasted Chicken with Cabbage and Cherries

I remember having this dish—or a version of it—at one of my favorite Seattle restaurants called Marjorie—the restaurant, not the dish. I don't know what the dish was called or what I should name it but it was (is) wonderful. After I had it at Marjorie I returned a couple weeks later only to find that the dish was no longer on the menu. I asked the owner, Donna, about this and I can't remember what her answer was or if she answered. I have tried to cook the dish myself a couple of times but without a recipe I have met with something less than success...until yesterday.

Cherries are in season here in Valencia and I always looking for something to do with them. I thought I would have another go at this dish. I think I pulled it off rather well. Here it is.

One whole chicken cut into two halves
1 green cabbage chopped coarsely
¾ Kilo of pitted cherries (I know that it's a pain in the ass but it will give you a good excuse to buy a cherry pitter which can also be used with olives. I actually brought mine with me)
¼ cup toasted rye seeds
1 cup red wine vinegar
Olive oil
2 table spoons of flour
Some sort of mild white cheese

In a large pot with a lid throw together the cabbage, rye, cherries, and vinegar and simmer until the cabbage has wilted, add salt to taste. Heat oven to 190°c. In a large baking dish throw in the cabbage concoction and lay the two chicken halves on top (I use my big clay dish I use for arroz al horno). Flip the chicken when the tops have cooked and cook the other side. When you remove the dish from the oven there will be a lot of liquid in the pan. Pour the liquid into skillet and reduce it a bit. In another skillet heat a few spoons of oil and add sifted flour to it to make a roux. When the roux is ready pour in the liquid and stir well. To this add the cheese and stir it in well. The sauce should be thick enough to coat a spoon but it shouldn't be pasty. You can simply spoon a layer of the sauce on each plate and then add the cabbage concoction with the chicken on top.

This came out really well. I served this with roasted potatoes. Sorry I don't have a picture.

Simplicity Defined (Chapters 112, 142)

It is the city dweller's version of people coming by unexpectedly for a visit. I was at home last night and some friends called and told me to meet them down the street for a drink. It's not like people never drop by your apartment unannounced, but it is a lot easy just to call and meet up at a corner café or a local bar which serve as the collective living rooms of city folk. I was already dressed when my friends called and not really doing anything. I wasn't in the middle of cooking and I didn't have plans.

I was there in about ten minutes and spent about and hour and a half catching up with two friends at a bar that is equidistant from our apartments. While we were there a few more people we know showed up. I wouldn't say that I have more friends here in Valencia than I had when I lived in other places, but I would say that of all the people I hang out with, we all live within a few blocks of each other. My neighborhood of Ruzafa has an even more dense population than where I lived in Seattle. I almost always run into someone I know when I am sitting at a café reading a book. For lack of a better description, I wold say that this place is starting to feel like home—whatever that means to a lifelong wanderer.

It is hard to think of anything more delicious than a ripe tomato. I like to slice a tomato thinly and lay the pieces on a plate. I sprinkle a bit of salt and crushed pepper on each slice and then anoint (this is the word they use in Spanish) them with good olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Then I flip over each piece to let the other side soak up what has dripped on to the plate. If I am really trying hard to make this into a meal I will add a few choice (very choice) olives, bread, and even some sardines. Of course, it would be rude to have this without a small glass of wine. We aren't animals, after all.

You may be thinking to yourself that these two things, meeting friends and tomatoes, have nothing to do with each other but they are both chapters in the book The Best Things in Life.

Walk-up Culture: All the World's a Bar

A lot of restaurants in Spain have a little walk-up window that connects the street directly with the bar which obviates the need to even walk into a place to get your cortado or your quinto (a small 1/5 liter bottle of beer). So not only are there more bars per capita in Spain than any other place in the world, they make it even easier for you to get your shot of coffee or whatever suits your mood. 

I first noticed bars with walk-up windows in Miami. At the time I thought it was a Cuban thing—which it is but its origin is Spanish. I had been to Spain a couple of times before I moved to South Florida but I didn't notice this feature in Spanish bars. There was a little café near my apartment in Florida that had one of these windows and I thought it was pretty cool. I have never seen one of these walk-up windows in Mexico, Peru, or Puerto Rico, and I've been to a lot of bars in Mexico, Peru, and Puerto Rico—the only other Spanish-speaking countries I have visited. Perhaps this aspect of Spanish life immigrated to other Latin American countries.

The whole notion of knocking back a quick shot of coffee at a walk-up window almost seems antithetical to the unhurried pace of life here, unhurried at least until people get behind the wheel of an automobile. If I were forced to explain the phenomena of the walk-up window, I would say that the services provided by bars are so important in the quotidian life of Spanish people that direct access to the street if sometimes necessary. It's like removing a buffer zone between citizens and espresso. I'm surprised that they don't have waiters with trays of espresso patrolling the sidewalks so people don't even have to stop walking to have a shot.

Depending on the weather, I usually prefer to sit at a table outside at a café or stand at the bar inside. This is an important part of every single day for me. If I am alone I use the time to read a book, a football paper, or a newspaper. I sometimes study my vocabulary lists or I study what is going on around me. If you are a tourist, bars provide the best place to connect with Spanish people, something that is true even if you aren't just passing through. If you are out to literally “rub elbows” with the locals, the walk-up window is the place to do it. Whenever I stop for a drink at one of these widows I always feel like I couldn't be more Spanish if I were wearing a matador's costume. I would love to have a picture of a matador at a walk-up window (to digress a bit, I saw a little boy the other day wearing a matador costume and it was so cute that I almost tinkled myself). The walk-up is also handy if you are on your bike and don't feel like locking it up to go inside.

Not every bar in Spain has a walk-up window. In fact, when I went out looking specifically for bars with this attribute I found a lot fewer of them than I thought I would. However, it seems like the bars that don´t have a window were just built wrong, with the bar being against a back wall away from the street instead of along the side of the place moving up to the sidewalk. If I ask an older person here about this I'm sure they will tell me that back in the good-old-days every bar had a walk-up. I actually had someone tell me the other day that there used to be a lot more bars in Spain than there are today. I can't see how that is even possible unless there used to be bars inside of other bars.

I'll probably never find out why the Spanish feel these windows are necessary and other people of other nations don't. Spanish people probably just feel that it is too much of a chore sometimes to walk inside of a bar to get a coffee. I mean, if you have to actually walk through a door you might as well cover the place in barbed wire or build a damn moat around the place. When you are walking the block and a half home from the market who needs the hassle of opening a stupid door just to get a beer?

It's not like there aren't millions of cars in Spain but walking is still a big part of city life. I have yet to see a drive-up window here and I hope that this never catches on—anything that keeps people inside their cars is a bad thing in my book. I'm sure that a walk-up bar window would be breaking about nine million laws in the U.S., although I have bought a cocktail at a drive-thru window in Montana years ago and even then it seemed like a disastrous idea. On the other hand, anything that caters to pedestrians is OK by me. What kind of culture are you looking for, walk-up or drive-thru?