seppie | Venice: I am not making this up

The slaughter of the innocents — I mean, seppie

April 15, 2013 1 Comment

This is a view of as much of the mass of fishermen as I could fit into my camera frame, as I look toward the Lido. It's like the Milan Central train station out there, but floating. People said that there were even more today. — This is a view of as much of the mass of fishermen as I could fit into my camera frame, as I look toward the Lido. It’s like the Milan Central train station out there, but floating. People said that there were even more today.

The diluvian spring seems to finally have wrung itself out and today we had sun. We’ve had intermittent sun recently but it didn’t give the impression that it was sincere.

But suddenly, the sun was out. Therefore the laundry was out — I mean, out rejoicing, not out wailing and repenting, and begging to be let back in, as it has been for quite a while. Small but delectable milestone today: Bringing in the laundry and smelling that sun-and-fresh-air aroma in its folds for the first time in 2013. (Someone will tell me it’s nothing more than the detergent I’m inhaling, but they would be wrong.)

And more to the truly cosmic point, the seppie are out. “Out” in the way that a solar flare could be called “out.” A few years ago there were only one or two forlorn little seppie in the entire lagoon, and there were scarcely any to be had in the market, not even for ready money. It was a veritable drought of seppie. Now we’re making up for lost time.

The past few days have seen what must be an underwater stampede of the little nimnods, swarming in from the Adriatic to spawn, because out on the water that stretches from San Nicolo’ on the Lido up the wide canal that goes to Murano there has been a daily conglomeration of boats the like of which I’ve never seen, boats full of men fishing for seppie. I have it on several good authorities that virtually every boat has been going home with something like ten kilos (20 pounds) of cuttlefish.

Then there are the insatiable seagulls, who are out there with the rest of the city, looking for chow. You’ll see the gulls pulling their prey to some nearby surface in order to pierce the seppia’s body sufficiently with their beak to allow the extraction of the very hard-to-chew inner bone. These pale-white ovals of various sizes can frequently be seen floating in the canals, and out in the lagoon, the marine version of the ox-bones flung aside by Viking gorgers.

Looking toward the sunset isn't the best moment to reveal the ranks of fishermen lining the Riva dei Sette Martiri, but perhaps this will give you a small idea. — Looking toward the sunset isn’t the best moment to reveal the ranks of fishermen lining the Riva dei Sette Martiri, but perhaps this will give you a small idea.

For the many boatless anglers, there’s plenty of room along the fondamente to strew murder and mayhem in the depths. It’s a virtual chorus line of men and children with fishing rods and buckets, and the stones are wildly bespattered with black stains, the parting shots from the truculent creatures unwilling to admit defeat, but whose sac of ink is impotent against the hooks and nets. Of course, they themselves make no effort to resist the lure of whatever’s on the end of the hook, so no use crying afterward. Lino once attracted scores of seppie merely by snagging a piece of white plastic onto his hook and pulling it through the water. They thought it was a seppia, and they were coming to eat it too. Little cannibals.

So spring doesn’t just mean peach blossoms and the dawn trilling of the blackbirds. This year, at least, it means hecatombs of eight-armed mollusks (technically, that’s what they are). I’ll be kind of glad when it’s over. It’s like the tulip craze or something, and only God knows who’s going to eat them all. Nobody can consume everything that’s being hauled out of the water these days, and eventually all the freezers are going to be full.

Just one more thing to worry about.

First time I've ever seen a girl fishing, but she's doing all right too. I don't assume the ink-stains on the stones are all from her victims, but they show she's picked what's probably a good spot. — First time I’ve ever seen a girl fishing, but she’s doing all right too. I don’t assume the ink-stains on the stones are all from her victims, but they show she’s picked what’s probably a good spot.

And of course there are always plenty of old guys, like this one totally prepared with rod, bucket (some people just use plastic bags), and a very black and experienced volega, or net on a long pole. No wonder he's smiling. — And of course there are always plenty of old guys, like this one totally prepared with rod, bucket (some people just use plastic bags), and a very black and experienced volega, or net on a long pole. No wonder he’s smiling.

I managed to get two shots of this pair of boys before the smaller one very firmly told me "No photos." "Why?" I asked. "Because it makes bad luck," he said. "That's just a story he invented," the older one said, shrugging. But I left anyway. No point risking being thrown into the bucket with the seppie. — I managed to get two shots of this pair of boys before the smaller one very firmly told me “No photos.” “Why?” I asked. “Because it makes bad luck,” he said. “That’s just a story he invented,” the older one said, shrugging. But I left anyway. No point risking being thrown into the bucket with the seppie.

One Asian man couldn't be bothered to stop to put them in his bag; he just unhooked each one and threw it on the pavement, where they lay there slowly expiring, spewing and sputtering, till he got ready to collect them and take them home. Or wherever they were destined to end up. — One Asian man couldn’t be bothered to stop to put them in his bag; he just unhooked each one and threw it on the pavement, where they lay there slowly expiring, spewing and sputtering, till he got ready to collect them and take them home. Or wherever they were destined to end up.

IMG_0179_1 seppie — This was the first time I ever saw the iridescent dots on the tentacles. This is part of their extremely efficient system of camouflage, going very well with the iridescent stripes of blue-green which I know well from the fresh seppie in the fish market. But I was dazzled by the dots. I’m just sorry they turned out to be so futile.

Venetian Food

Superfresh fish

December 17, 2012 2 Comments

800px-Lithognathus_mormyrus,_Greece_-_20080420 by Rude mormora — This is what a typical mormora looks like at the moment of its apotheosis (fancy way of saying “Attaining its ultimate purpose in life”). One good thing about leaving the head on is that he looks like he’s good with all this. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know that “this” is soon going to close his eyes forever. (Photo by Rude.)

Lino is ruthless when it comes to fish. If they’re not fresh, they don’t deserve to live. Or be dead. Or anyway, be for sale.

He recognizes every symptom; as someone who has spent his life fishing in the lagoon, he knows virtually every creature, its habitat, its life story (pretty much the way he knows people), and he especially knows when the fish on sale in the Pescheria is — as they say — “tired.”

Think about it: The fish is dead, but only then does it begin to tire out. But apart from the philosophical convolutions of the point, even I can recognize fish that’s been on the ice too long. It looks worn, faded, sad; it looks like it’s been waiting in the rain at midnight for a bus that it is slowly realizing is never going to come.

So it was a happy moment at the market the other day when Lino stopped suddenly. If he had little control-panel lights they all would have been flashing “Seppie! Seppie!” And the “Seppie!” lights only flash when they are “Fresh! Fresh!”

Then a separate scary little light begins to flash: “Must Buy! Must Buy!”

So we did. A kilo of demonstrably not-tired critters came home, and Lino began what is one of his most favorite activities in the world: Cleaning fish. Catching them is the best, of course, and eating them is good, but if you want to see a happy man, you need only look at him standing at the sink sending scales flying everywhere, or at the least (as with the seppie) eviscerating them.

005 mormora — These two seppie will be floating forever, far from Lino, on the Roman pavement of the nave of the basilica at Aquileia. The entire floor is a virtual aquarium, designed around the story of Jonah. Some of the fish verge on the fantastical, but the seppie would fit right in at the Pescheria.

The best moment of all, and the reason I’m writing this little announcement, is when he pokes around to see what they’ve been eating. If there’s nothing in there, they almost certainly have been fish-farmed. They’re still fresh, but they’re not wild.

But seppie aren’t farmed, so their stomachs are a little diary of their previous few hours. I won’t list some of the ichthyological beings he has found, but the other day inspired a call from the kitchen. “Hey, look at this!” I went to see what “this” was.

It was a baby mormora (Lithognathus mormyrus). The mormora is one of my favorite fish, and I’ve seen plenty of fingerlings of various species flitting around the shallows, so its smallness wasn’t a novelty.

But I’d never seen one of these. I felt a little sorry for it — it looked a little like it might be blinking slightly and murmuring, “Where am I? Was all that just a bad dream?”

But I never express fraternal feelings toward fish anymore around Lino. Fish were created to be eaten. If the seppia hadn’t swallowed it, something or someone else would have. You might as well feel sorry for an ear of corn.

At least I’ve been able to give the little squirt a decent memorial.

IMG_7976 mormora crop — I might not have felt quite so bad if he hadn’t already begun to develop his — or her — distinctive dark stripes. Oh well. There are about a trillion more still out there.

Food, Nature

First day(s) of spring

March 21, 2012 4 Comments

I’m sorry I didn’t think to check on the exact instant of the equinox in order to give Venice an appropriate little salute. I knew this anniversary was imminent and now I’ve discovered it was two days ago.

In any case, most of the signs have been with us for a while now. I can report that March came in like a lamb, but seeing how screwy the weather has become, I have no idea what sort of animal its departure is going to resemble. Maybe a bumblebee bat or a star-nosed mole. I’ll let you know.

IMG_4318 spring — Despite the polar blitz of February all over Europe, the peach blossoms from Sicily have made their annual appearance at the Rialto market. They've turned out to be more reliable than the blackbirds.

IMG_4550 spring — Little bouquets of carletti making their brief appearance at the market. I'll be honest: They have no flavor. The joy in making risotto of them rests (in my view) entirely on the fact that they are so few and so fleeting.

Yesterday we rowed to Sant’ Erasmo to forage for some carletti. Unhappily, we didn’t find any at all, which is slightly disturbing (check one “sign of spring” off the life list). So we brought home a big bag full of dandelion greens instead. Lino’s happy because he says it’s good for “purifying the blood.” My grandfather did the same, he said, by dosing himself with blackstrap molasses. That’ll wake you up, no matter what it may do to your blood. I intuit that this instinct is somehow related to the rousing-from-winter-lethargy/hibernation process we watch on the Discovery Channel.

IMG_4551 spring — Bruscandoli, or wild hops, deliver more flavor, but at a price: 4 euros per "etto," or hectogram. This works out to about $25 per pound -- not that you'd buy a pound. You might as well buy a hectogram of red diamonds.

Speaking of rousing, though, I am still awaiting one fundamental sign of spring, which is the blackbirds singing at dawn. Every year I have heard one — evidently assigned to our neighborhood by the Chief Herald — which began to sing exactly at 4:00 AM. It was uncanny. I’m not saying I’ve been getting up at that hour specifically to hear it, though it would certainly be worth it. But considering that I’m up anyway, its solitary cadenzas always made the morning beautiful even while it was still dark.

So far, I’ve heard one (1) blackbird singing at 6:30 PM. Of course it can sing whenever it wants to, but I cannot fathom why I’m not hearing any before then. Frankly, I don’t understand how the sun — or me, for that matter — has managed to rise without it.

IMG_4546 spring — For those who may be craving an animal announcing spring, look for some seppie. This is a beautifully fresh one. If it could sing, I wouldn't be missing the blackbirds so much.

At any rate, my favorite phase of spring is already past. Anybody can love spring when the flowers begin to bloom (I’ve already seen early blossoms sneaking out of their buds on a few plum and almond trees, and of course there will be a deluge of jasmine and wisteria before long). But I love spring when the weather is still cold and unfriendly but you can just begin to detect tiny wisps of earlier sunlight and see even tinier buds on the trees just beginning to expand with their extremely tiny leaves, awaiting some signal I’ll never detect.

Once the daffodils come out, spring is so obvious that I consider it to be essentially over.

IMG_4526 spring — You can set your "Now It's Spring" watch by the Easter eggs in the window at Mascari, which displays the handmade Ur-egg each year. This phenomenon is roughly the size of an egg laid by the Great Elephant Bird of Madagascar (not made up), though it probably tastes better.

Venetian Events

The ramps return to Capistrano — I mean Venice

October 7, 2011 No Comments

Seasonal migrations (is that redundant? Sorry) are an excellent way to keep track of the year’s divisions, especially here, where you need a keen eye to discern that there is anything more than one season anymore, which is Tourists.

But at this moment, if you’re paying attention (and if you know, and if you care) you can detect a few important signs of autumn. I don’t mean the drying, yellowing, falling leaves — anybody can notice them, and besides, the drought began drying them before their normal time to drop. So leaves are out.

Torbolino — the first draw-off of the new wine. That’s an excellent indicator, though again, this year it’s somewhat early due to the unusually early harvest (see: “drought,” above).

Ducks are also useful heralds of the season — I saw my first one paddling around two weeks ago, This always makes me happy, except that I had seen my first duck hunter even earlier: The ducks began hitting the water on September 3. So much for enjoying their winter haven.

Seppioline — sepoine (seh-poh-EE-neh) in Venetian — are baby seppie, or cuttlefish. If “baby” anything on your plate upsets you, skip this paragraph. We are now in the period of the fraima, which is the annual passage of the fish which have spent all summer fooling around in the lagoon moving out into the Adriatic (or beyond) for the winter. The cuttlefish spawned months ago, and their small offspring are now in the process of making their first trip out into the world where they will become big, grown-up cuttlefish. Unless they get snagged before they reach the exit, in which case they will be sold at an outrageous price (there I go, being redundant again), grilled and eaten. Short migration.

IMG_1870 ramp — The ramps are used by thundering racers for a few hours, and by countless humbler folk dragging suitcases, shopping carts, or strollers laden with small heavy tired cranky children for six months. I would bet that the shleppers appreciate the ramps just as much as any Ethiopian champion. Probably more.

But the ramps are back. I saw my first one two days ago and it was like hearing a small, clear trumpet announcing autumn, winter, and early spring. The ramps are set up for the Venice Marathon (this year scheduled for October 23), and they stay up till the end of March. That’s practically half the year. Then they migrate back to hibernate in whatever warehouse keeps them till next October.

They’re only installed on the race route — logically — which conveniently passes the Piazza San Marco and other heavily traveled tourist routes. I bet the people up in Cannaregio and along the northern edge of the city really envy us. I know they don’t envy us the tourists, but we get the ramps.