The Hemingway Cookbook (23 page)

4
SERVINGS, WITH SAUCE LEFT OVER

For the Special Broth

Plenty of olive oil

3 pounds beef and pork bones

3 medium onions, halved

1 cup manzanilla sherry

6 sprigs fresh thyme, or 1 teaspoon dried

6-8 sprigs oregano, or 1 teaspoon dried

1 bay leaf

2 cloves garlic

For the sauce

Olive oil

1 3- to 4-pound chicken, cut into pieces

½ cup country-style ham, cubed

½ cup chorizo, cubed

Generous pinch of paprika

Salt

Pepper

1 pound spaghetti

Pinch of sugar

Preheat the oven to 400°F
.

Coat the bottom of a roasting pan with olive oil. Add the bones and onions and roast, stirring occasionally, until the bones are browned, about 45 minutes. Place the bones and onions in a large stockpot. Deglaze the empty roasting pan by adding the sherry and scraping up any bits that may stick. Pour the contents of the roasting pan into the stockpot with the bones and onions. Add enough water to cover plus 1 inch, bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer. You may skim the stock, if you like, or just let it be. After about 1 hour, bundle the thyme, oregano, bay leaf, and garlic together in a piece of cheesecloth and tie tight with string. Add the herbs to the stockpot. Simmer stock, covered, for at least 4 to 5 hours.

Heat a little olive oil in a large skillet. Add the chicken parts and cook over medium heat until browned. Add enough stock to cover and bring to a boil. (Reserve any remaining stock for future use.) Lower the heat and simmer until done, almost 20 minutes. Remove the chicken and strain the cooking liquid, reserving both the liquid and the crumblike bits that remain in the sieve. When the chicken is cool enough to handle, remove as much meat as possible from the bones. Add a pinch of salt plus the bits in the sieve to the meat and grind in a meat grinder. Grind the ham and chorizo as well. Combine the ground meats in a skillet, add 1 cup of the stock from the cooked chicken, paprika, and salt and pepper to taste. Simmer over low heat until thickened. Transfer the sauce to a bowl.

Break the spaghetti in half and add to a large pot of boiling water. Cook to desired tenderness. Strain the spaghetti and transfer to serving plate. Add a pinch of sugar and serve with the sauce.

Swordfish á la
Pilar

“How did you make this?” asked Señor Ritz.

“Easy,” I answered. “With just a little bit of salt.”
²⁵

In reality, Gregorio’s swordfish recipe involves more than just a bit of salt, but not much more
.

2
TO
4
SERVINGS, DEPENDING ON APPETITES AND SIZE OF STEAKS

2 very fresh swordfish steaks

Juice of 4 limes

4 cloves garlic, crushed

½ pound butter

1 lemon

Salt

Be sure that your fish is as fresh as possible. Place the steaks in a large bowl. Stir together the lime juice and garlic and pour over the fish. Let stand at least 20 minutes, turning steaks occasionally. Melt the butter in a large skillet over low heat. Fry the swordfish for 8-10 minutes. Squeeze the juice from ½ lemon over each steak. Turn and fry on the other side for an additional 8-10 minutes. Cooking time will be slightly longer for thicker steaks. Season with salt to taste.

Dorado Fillet in Damn Good Sauce

Dorado is another name for mahimahi or dolphin fish
.

4
SERVINGS

2 pounds dorado fillets, about ½ inch thick

Juice of 2 limes

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

Olive oil for frying

1 clove garlic, crushed

2 green bell peppers, diced

½ pound asparagus, very finely chopped

1½ cups Gregorio’s Special Broth (see page
133
), or fish broth

½ cup chopped fresh parsley

¼ cup raisins

¼ cup capers

1½ cups dry white wine

Marinate the fillets in the lime juice and salt and pepper to taste for at least 1 hour. In a large skillet, heat the olive oil. Sauté the garlic, peppers, and asparagus for a few minutes. Add the broth, parsley, raisins, and capers and simmer, covered, for 10 minutes. Add the fillets and dry white wine and continue to simmer, covered, for 5-8 minutes, or until the fillets are cooked through.

In addition to these three dishes, Hemingway enjoyed Gregorio’s preparation of octopus in wine sauce, lobster enchilada, crab cooked in lemon, and a marvelous red snapper stew. He eventually relented and shared his recipe for Red Snapper Stew with Mary:

Red Snapper Stew

One of the terribly unfortunate consequences of life aboard the
Pilar
was that the fish was often too fresh. Mary recalled Gregorio’s standards on this matter
:

He never liked fish to be too fresh, he mentioned, because the skin shrinks in the cooking.

“How fresh is too fresh, Gregorio?” We were slupping [sic] up beef-stew juice from our plates on the generator box aft, while Ernest ate, plate in hand, cross-legged on his bunk.

“Oh, under an hour, depending on the size, depending on the fish. Two hours maybe.”

“Not a universal dilemma,” murmured Ernest.
²⁶

4
SERVINGS

1 large whole red snapper (or 2 small fish), cleaned and gutted Salt

2 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped and 1 clove, halved

1 medium onion, coarsely chopped

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 red bell pepper, chopped

½ cup tomato sauce

1 bay leaf

1 teaspoon crushed dried oregano

¼ cup finely chopped pimiento 2 tablespoons capers

¼ cup raisins

¼ cup sliced green olives

½ cup manzanilla sherry

One hour before beginning to cook, score the fish diagonally on both sides and rub inside and out with salt. In a pan large enough to hold the entire fish, saute the garlic and onion in the olive oil until the onion is translucent. Add the red pepper, tomato sauce, bay leaf, and oregano. Simmer over low heat, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes. Add the pimiento, capers, raisins, olives, sherry, and salt to taste. Stir. Place the fish in the stew and simmer slowly for about 20 minutes, or until the flesh turns from opalescent to white.

Mary’s Kitchen

Except for his writing, Ernest never finds any sort of work so important that it cannot be abandoned in an instant in favor of making or having fun. Of course, as he well knows, it is that kind of fun which impels me to try every day to make our food more interesting and better-tasting. A while ago he came into my room and, peering under my desk and into corners, busily put on a show of hunting for something. When I asked him what, he said, “An accolade. For you. Because lunch was the best meal I’ve ever eaten, ever.”
²⁷

Mary Hemingway, Ernest’s fourth wife, may have been honored to receive Gregorio’s recipe for Red Snapper Stew, but she also created a masterpiece or two of her own during her years in Cuba. Mary met Ernest in London in 1944, after he followed Martha Gellhorn to war yet again. After the war, Ernest returned to Finca Vigia alone, his marriage to Martha finished. Mary later joined him there, and they were married in March 1946. Mary loved their Cuban lifestyle, replete with an endless stream of guests, a house filled with cats, and innumerable stunning sunsets. She became the kindly and generous matron of the Finca, a role that she enjoyed and Ernest needed: “It is a manner of living about as formal and regulated as the wag of a dog’s tail, and Ernest seems to thrive in it and our friends to revel in it. I find it instructive, stimulating and busy.”
²⁸

Originally, the Hemingways hired a cook at the Finca. But “after a certain amount of experimentation—and an otherwise tranquil luncheon during which our then butler rushed into the dining room brandishing a cocked pistol ready to kill the Chinese cook because he didn’t like the food—[Mary] decided that it was not worth the bother to hunt a cook who could do or was willing to learn such an assortment of cooking.”
²⁹
So she took over the cooking, a responsibility she did not take lightly. With the international guest list and Ernest’s taste for variety, she was constantly expanding her repertoire, including Chinese, Mexican, and Indian cuisine as well as local Cuban specialties.

Mary first began experimenting with Chinese cuisine in 1948, shortly before she and Ernest left Cuba for a long trip to Italy. Upon their return, she prepared a festive Chinese lunch for Ernest’s 50th birthday that included slippery chicken with almonds in champagne sauce, melon soup, and a “miniature feast of stir-fry dishes.”
³⁰
In 1959, after Ernest and Mary had moved to Ketchum, Idaho, Mary shared her very thorough and comprehensive Chinese sweet-sour stir-fry recipe with friend and occasional cooking partner Forrest “Duke” MacMullen. Thanks to Duke for sharing Mary’s letter which included the following recipe.

FOR CHINESE SWEET-SOUR DISHES

The Chinese use whole, small fish, lobster, crab, shrimp, chicken, spare-ribs of crisp-fried chunks (bite-size) of loin of port for their sweet-sour dishes. Rarely they do sweet-sour eggs, never beef. (Sweet-sour belongs to the large category of Chinese Stir-fry dishes which are all prepared in advance and then cooked quickly when ready to eat.)

Sweet-Sour Sauce for a Dish for Six People

2-3 tablespoons cornstarch

2-3 tablespoons white sugar (except brown when doing spareribs or pork loin)

2 tablespoons white vinegar

2 tablespoons white wine

2 tablespoons soy sauce

½ teaspoon salt

Juice, if any, from the vegetables or the principal ingredient, or a little chicken broth—to make about 1½ cups altogether

Stir all this together cold and have ready to dump on the Stir-Fry things 3 minutes before serving. There should be enough juice so that when the dish is served it is plenty wet but not sloppy or like soup.

THE STIR-FRY PART

The Chinese always use sliced fresh ginger, thin and square like postage stamps in some dishes (pork loin, eggs, lobster), long thin-like toothpicks for the others. In Classic Chinese cookery, the way a thing is sliced is very important—they think it affects the flavor
.

For most sweet-sour you use about half as much ginger, measured sliced, as you do for the next constant ingredient—onion. For something for 6 people, about one-third cup of ginger to two-thirds cup sliced onion
.

Besides ginger and onion, you add two more, seldom more than four more, things, besides the principal ingredient. With fish, add the delicate flavored things—celery, bean sprouts, and/or water-chestnuts. If possible, always put in something crunchy—and never cook the vegetables until they are soft
.

With lobster or crab or shrimp, add mushrooms, green pepper, maybe—for fancy meals—blanched almonds
.

The classic Chinese sweet-sour chicken has ginger, onion, celery, sliced pineapple and almonds—and you go easy—1 tablespoon only—on the soy sauce since this is White-meat (breast only) Stir-Fry dish. (This is a party dish, the chicken breast being sliced, square and
inch thick while raw and stir-fried at the last moment
.)

With pork loin chunks, you use ginger, onion, celery, red and green pepper (cut square, ginger cut square too) and blanched almonds
.

It is permissible to use garlic in the pork sweet-sour, but the Chinese don’t use it in the other dishes
.