The Hemingway Cookbook (19 page)

Salt and Pepper

Oil for frying

Prepare the octopus as for
Pulpo a la Vinagreta
(see page
92
), to the point when the tentacles have been cut into pieces.

Combine the eggs, milk, and salt and pepper to taste in a bowl. Add the octopus pieces and stir to coat. Heat the oil in a skillet over high heat. When hot, add the octopus, a few pieces at a time. Fry until lightly browned, turning a few times. Remove the octopus, drain on brown paper or paper towels, and serve immediately.

Paella de Langosta

Hemingway remembered a great many foods at La Pepica that summer. Juanita Balleguer, who still runs La Pepica today in her nineties, remembers Ernest’s fondness for this one dish in particular. I would like to thank Luis and José, as well as Juanita herself, for their generous assistance in developing a written record of this dish. Of course, without the real hardwood charcoal, the paella pans cured over generations, and a certain magic that exists only in the Valencian kitchen, we may only hope to create a respectable facsimile of the genuine article. For the true effect, one must dine, as Hemingway repeatedly did, at La Pepica. It is truly, as Penelope Casas claims, “the paella mecca of the world.”
¹⁶

4
SERVINGS

2 small lobsters, about 1¼ pound each

3 cups clam juice

1 cup water

1 bay leaf

1 cup dry white wine

Large pinch of saffron threads

½ cup olive oil

6 cloves garlic, minced

1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley

1 red bell pepper, coarsely chopped

2 tomatoes, peeled and seeded

1 tablespoon Spanish paprika

2 cups arborio or other short-grain rice

Salt

Lemon wedges, for garnish

To prepare the lobster stock, you must first kill the lobsters. This may be done one of two ways: either insert a knife in the first joint behind the head, which instantly kills them, or place them in boiling water for about 5 minutes. If you choose the latter method, add the lobster pieces to the paella pan just before adding the rice, rather than at the very beginning.

Remove the tail and claws from the lobsters, setting the bodies aside. Crack the claws and knuckles and cut the tail (with the shell still on) into 3 or 4 pieces with kitchen scissors. Place the lobster pieces in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate.

In a medium stockpot, combine the lobster bodies, clam juice, water, and bay leaf. Bring stock to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer for 20 minutes. Strain the stock. There should be about 3½ cups of stock. If there is more, return the stock to the pot and continue to simmer until reduced to 3½ cups. Stir in the wine and saffron.

In a food processor, combine ¼ cup of the olive oil, 2 cloves of garlic, and the parsley. Pulse together quickly and set aside. This mixture is known as
picado
.

Today at age ninety, Juanita Balleguer pictured with Luis and José, still runs the restaurant.

Preheat the oven to 400° F
.

Place a 14-inch paella pan or large cast-iron skillet over high heat. Add remaining ¼ cup oil and the lobster pieces and sauté for a minute or two. Add red pepper and sauté for 1-2 minutes. Add the tomato and remaining 4 cloves of garlic and sauté 1 minute more. Stir in the paprika and
picado
. Then add the rice and stir to coat completely. Stir in the lobster stock and cook, simmering vigorously, for about 15 minutes, or until most of the fluid has been absorbed. Taste the broth and add salt to taste. Place the paella in the oven and cook for 10 to 15 minutes, or until the rice is slightly browned on top. Remove pan, cover, and let stand for 5 to 10 minutes. Garnish with lemon wedges and serve.

5
KEY WEST AND CUBA
Sailing the Stream

“What do you have to eat?” the boy asked.

“A pot of yellow rice with fish. Do you want some?”

“No. I will eat at home. Do you want me to make the fire?”

“No. I will make it later on. Or I may eat the rice cold.”

“May I take the cast net?”

“Of course.”

There was no cast net and the boy remembered when they had sold it. But they went through this fiction every day. There was no pot of yellow rice and fish and the boy knew this too.

“Eighty-five is a lucky number,” the old man said.

—
The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest and Joe Russell raise a toast.

The
Anita
was the model for Harry Morgan’s boat in
To Have and Have Not
.

Key West

Hemingway first discovered Key West, Florida, more by accident than design, in 1928. He and his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, had stopped there briefly en route from Paris to Piggott, Arkansas, and Kansas City where she would give birth to Ernest’s second son, Patrick. Pauline’s wealthy Uncle Gus had arranged for a man from Ford to meet the Hemingways upon their arrival and present them with a new Ford Roadster. There was no man from Ford and no car, and the Hemingways spent most of April and May 1928 in Key West. Ernest was in high spirits. His work on
A Farewell to Arms
was going well, and he was discovering saltwater fishing in the afternoons and the saloons of Key West at night (Prohibition never quite caught on in Key West). His fondness for the charming yet dilapidated little island grew along with the manuscript, and when it came time for Ernest and Pauline to return to Paris they chose instead to spend the winter of 1928 in the warmth and sun of Key West.
¹

Fitzgerald had a theory that Ernest would need a new woman for each new novel. Apparently there would be new homes as well. Ernest lived in Key West, in the house at 907 Whitehead Street that Uncle Gus bought, until he left for Cuba and another wife in April 1939. In the years between, he became (and remained long after his death), Key West’s most famous resident. The Hemingway House, filled with cats, would become its most famous landmark, and Sloppy Joe’s, his favorite old watering hole, would thrive forever on the legacy of his patronage.

Hemingway arrived in Key West working on
A Farewell to Arms
, and some say he left while starting
For Whom the Bell Tolls
. The Key West years were the most productive in his career, also including
Death in the Afternoon, The Green Hills of Africa
, and the short stories “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.”

Cuba

When you do something which people do not consider a serious occupation and yet you know, truly, that it is as important and has always been as important as all the things that are in fashion, and when, on the sea, you are alone with it and know that this Gulf Stream you are living with, knowing, learning about, and loving, has moved, as it moves, since before man, and that it has gone by the
shoreline of that long, beautiful, unhappy island since before Columbus sighted it and that the things you find out about it, and those that have always lived in it are permanent and of value because that stream will flow, as it has flowed, after the Indians, after the Spaniards, after the British, after the Americans and after all the Cubans and all the systems of governments, the richness, the poverty, the martyrdom, the sacrifice and the venality and the cruelty are all gone.
²

Upon settling in Key West, Ernest immediately took full advantage of Cuba’s proximity, fishing in the Gulf Stream and taking writing retreats to the Ambos Mundos Hotel in Havana. In April 1939, when his marriage to Pauline was all but over and his marriage to journalist Martha Gell-horn only awaited the divorce papers, he moved to Cuba to live with Martha. His fame and need for privacy had outgrown his hotel room, and Martha soon rented an old estate called the Finca Vigia in the hills of San Francisco de Paula outside Havana, for $100 a month. For Christmas 1940, Hemingway purchased the estate, whose name means “Lookout Farm,” an appropriate title given the clear view of San Francisco de Paula and Havana it commands from its hillside perch.

It was there that the celebrity and legend of Ernest Hemingway grew to its full stature. He wrote little fiction in the first years in Cuba, spending his time on correspondence and fishing. He had purchased the
Pilar
, a 38-foot Playmate cabin cruiser, in 1934 while living in Key West. The
Pilar
had the range to take him on 100-mile cruises to fish for giant marlin in the warm Cuban waters. Now that he lived in Cuba, with the
Pilar
moored in Cojimar or Havana Harbor, the lure of the big fish was as strong as that of the bullfights or the wild game. It became one of his greatest passions, and his happy years fishing the Gulf Stream aboard the
Pilar
and its rented predecessor, the
Anita
out of Key West, inspired such works as
To Have and Have Not, Islands in the Stream
, and
The Old Man and the Sea
.

Hemingway brought to both Key West and Cuba his appetites for food and drink. Aboard the
Pilar
he was treated to native dishes by his mate and cook, Gregorio Fuentes, whom Hemingway would pit against the chef of the Ritz in Paris in their own culinary
mano a manos
.

Closer to home, the Finca Vigía’s kitchen was eventually ruled by Mary, another journalist who Ernest met while in Europe during World War II. In 1946 Mary became Hemingway’s fourth wife. She was the only one of his wives to take a genuine interest in cooking, and she enjoyed the experimentation and challenge of overseeing the meals prepared for her husband and the endless stream of visitors to the resort that their home had become. The diversity of notables who visited was only surpassed by the variety of cuisine. Mary recalled one dish and one visitor in particular: “I baked a wahoo roast, basting it in Brut champagne, lime juice and chicken broth, for Jean-Paul Sartre when he was here, and he liked it.”
³

Our culinary tour of Key West and Cuba begins with the first of Ernest’s novels to feature a Cuban setting:
To Have and Have Not
. Throughout our tropical sojourn, we will experience the splendor of Cuban cuisine, the dangerous watering holes of Prohibitionera Key West, and the characters and anecdotes that surrounded a man whose appetite for food, drink, and life only seemed to grow (often despite doctor’s orders) as the years went by.

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

Considered by Socialists to be Hemingway’s “coming out” novel,
To Have and Have Not
is more likely a product of his gut reaction to the social and financial polarization of Depressionera Key West. It is a story of one man’s desperate struggle to simply survive, and no amount of political interpretation can mask the stark humanity of Harry Morgan’s failure to do so. The story opens violently in a café in Havana, La Perla de San Francisco, and in the aftermath the food mingles with the fear:

I went in the Perla and sat down at a table. They had a new pane of glass in the window that had been shot up and the showcase was all fixed up. There were a lot of gallegos drinking at the bar, and some eating. One table was playing dominoes already. I had black bean soup and a beef stew with boiled potatoes for fifteen cents. A bottle of Hatuey beer brought it up to a quarter. When I spoke to the waiter about the shooting he wouldn’t say anything. They were all plenty scared.
⁴