Spanish food - Mojama
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Leaving the sexy sophistication of Seville by the autovia towards
Huelva, smart urban soon gives way to poor rural. EU regeneration
grants have helped stabilise unemployment, and enterprising firms
are investing in polytunnels to provide northern Europe with supermarket-friendly
winter strawberries and asparagus. Tractors stranded in the middle
of these polythene lakes that shimmer in the sunlight make farmers
seem amphibious. Neglected farmhouses and for sale signs testify
that the local youth is taking its chances in the cities. Huelva
is the capital of Columbus territory - it was from here that local
hero Christopher left in search of the land of opportunity.
The coast road loops around
lagoons - perfect for hiding corsairs and kings' navies - taking
us closer to Portugal and along the Atlantic Costa del Luz, the
Coast of Light. This little-visited area of Spain is beautiful,
with nature reserves that smell of pine and wild thyme. Whereas
Sevillians summer in this area, tourists of other nationalities
are few, preferring the Watneys Red Barrel and warmer sea of Torremolinos.
The Costa del Luz deserves its name - the light is startling -
but the main impression is one of 'otherness'. The region is too
Atlantic to feel Mediterranean, Moorish rather than European,
more maritime, less landlocked. Even our destination, Isla Cristina,
turned out to be a surprise. It is not an island but a whitewashed,
low-rise town with a grid of narrow streets.
That Isla Cristina makes its
living from fishing is immediately apparent. Following our noses,
we stopped on the quayside and alighted into an oily puddle alongside
the Barberi Nunez family mojama factory. The oldest brothers,
Rafael and Salvador, are charming men, built like brick ship houses
but with ready smiles. They'd been working since six o'clock that
morning, when they'd bought 800 kilos of Atlantic tuna off the
trawlers for processing into what the Spanish call "gold
of the sea".
The making of mojama - dried,
salted tuna - was taught to the Iberian tribes by the Phoenicians,
history's original cash'n'carry traders. First came the manufacture
of salt, made by flooding low-lying fields, then evaporating the
briny water in the blistering sun. The same salt fields are still
used today, although the bulldozer now employed for harvesting
was introduced later, perhaps by the Romans. Next came the preserving
of fish. Rafael gave us a demonstration: to us he was a gentle
giant, to the tuna he was Vlad the Impaler. Fish after fish was
thrown to the floor to be quartered lengthwise by a grunting Salvador.
Tuna faces frowned disapproval and useless fins sailed nowhere
at crazy angles as the floor was sluiced with blood. Strangely
(for such a talkative country), not a word was spoken. With a
matador's flick of the wrist, Rafael cut two beautiful fillets
from either side of the tuna, leaving the rest to be processed
for canning or Kit-e-Kat. Choice cuts were reserved for the locals
who (sensibly wearing wellies) queued for tidbits for lunch.
As fast as Rafael filleted,
Juan worked faster. A teenage cousin in blue fatigues and a red
football scarf, Juan was the company salter. He made neat stacks
of Rafael's work - 60 fillets to a layer lengthwise, then 60 across
and so on for eight layers. Then he'd shovel salt over it from
a pile big enough to make a gritter grin. The effect was arrestingly
beautiful - very contemporary art - with the symmetrical stacks
of sea-dark tuna fillets peeking from their blanket of cracked
salt crystals. We were tempted to commission one for a new trendy
fish restaurant called Stomach: Fillet, only to realise that Damien
Hirst had already thought of it.
Juan was also responsible for
the soaking tanks. After two days in salt, the fillets have to
be washed in running water for 12 hours. Damien would fancy this
bit, too. The fillets were drowned in deep bins through which
fresh water was piped, creating an eerie installation he might
entitle Do Dead Fish Drink? Suitably soaked, the fillets are then
tied into wire clamps for air-drying. In the old days, every house
in town would have had a hooked metal arrangement on its flat
roof, where the soaked fillets of mojama would be left to dry
in the breeze, and Lord only knows what the town must have smelt
like then. Nowadays, the brothers have large cold-storage rooms
where they hang forests of fillets through which they blow air
at a constant 14°C. After three weeks in the drying rooms,
the mojama will have lost half its weight, its colour will have
deepened to darkest garnet and its flavour will be an intense
memory of the Atlantic.
The Spanish love mojama as
tapas, thinly sliced like serrano ham and served with a drizzle
of oil and some chopped tomato. We weren't too sure - the concentrated
taste overwhelmed everything and made our beer taste of tuna.
But back home, we realised its true potential: finely grated over
a plate of lightly oiled spaghetti, with a chopping of parsley
and a glass of red, mojama has become our great savoury standby,
a curious survivor of an ancient art.