Rare is the creative chef who does not talk about “textures”, as rare is the footballer who does not talk about the importance of the team. The texture It was crowned at the beginning of the two thousand as an inalienable word for any dish that claimed to be original. In addition to combining flavors, the chef had to plate foams, sands, crisps, land, oils, reductions, smoke, spheres and sponges. Voucher. But do you know what a really impressive culinary texture is? So eat one lamp. Few bugs suspend your first bite of amazement if you’ve never tried them: “But what the hell is this in my mouth?”
A lamp, in Spanish, is a limpet, a being-sucker with only a shell and ugly nose that Asturias keeps like gold cloth among its old cookbooks. Limpets have also been eaten since ancient times in the Canary Islands or Euskadi and in the Mediterranean, although with different enthusiasms. “It’s one of those things that, either you sucked at it since you were little, or when you grow up you have a hard time getting used to it,” he says. Peter Martin, one of the most talented Asturian chefs, who also applies to this univalve mollusk an imagination that spreads the tongue. because the lampwhen the chef pampers her, concentrates the sea that not even the Little Mermaid dancing to LCD Soundsystem at dawn
story of a shell
This little animal is born to weather currents and breakers, clinging to the rock with an unyielding fury, only comparable to that of the barnacle, a shellfish that is also horrendous, also dangerously chewy, but whose fame overshadows it as delight. The suction force of a Cantabrian limpet is equivalent to 4,000 times its weight, a grip on life much more stubborn than the memory of a lost love, than any night owl’s remorse or the twin muscles of the Incredible Hulk when he lands from a helicopter in flight. . Probably, from such obstinacy to survive comes the intensity that gives the lamp when he dies in that resurrection coffin we humans call a casserole.
However, the lamp suffers from the same scruple that certain textures arouse, as in the case of pork and cod jellies. Like the taste, the texture responds to the social convention of each era, to the tastes of each culture and, of course, to domestic education. If mom made you calluses, when you grow up you’ll probably love calluses. But if she didn’t cook cocochas, they’ll give you the creeps. The lampLike the holes or sea urchins, belongs to that basket of Jurassic foods that until the 20th century was gobbled up by the Carpantas, the adventurers of the tablecloth, the fishing villages and the drunkards. Those whose gazuza did not understand gingerbreads.
In 2012, the missing Pepe Iglesias, one of the most passionate gastronomes in this country, used to say that “talking about limpets just a decade ago was something like cooking ants or something like that”. “But the purchasing power of the Spaniards has risen so dazzlingly that not only do we eat shrimp from half the world, but we even market these leathery archaeogastropods, because that is what they are, sea snails,” he added. In fact, in Asturias half of the homemade recipes start from the same vegetable and ham sauce that used to accompany the garden gastropods.
In 2022 our purchasing power is not the same, alas, and besides, you will call them or limpets are increasingly difficult to find in restaurants and fishmongers. Your capture requires learn about tides and predrerosand is usually done under license but in a sporty way: not all go through the fish market. Their cooking is bloody like few others, because, with little heat that you offer them, they remain irremediably hard, rigid, causing the teeth to bounce when trying to crush them. The incisors of Mikel Erentxun singing between saltpeter and sweat could well be the result of an excessive fondness for patella vulgata. The broth it distills, however, always turns out to be ambrosia. Use it for a rice and you will see how the grains surf in your mouth, flanked by a hundred seagulls.
Instructions for use
The Canary limpet is larger and is usually grilled or grilled, with a mojo dressing. In Asturias, on the other hand, they are tiny, and until recently they were eaten raw in winches as an accompaniment to cider: with the shell of a lamp you took the meat out of the other, and so on. You can see the gastronomic critic of EL PAÍS, Jose Carlos Capelltrying the maneuver in this video to check the expertise required by such bar custom. Today we are amazed that babies handle a touch screen, but in reality we are more incompetent with our hands as we jump between generations. In short, nor eat sunflower seeds. And the lamp, even cooked, must be enjoyed manually, since there is no cover that makes it possible to suck the peel and the juice with the anxiety of an infant. The same thing happens with snails: the animal that was sucked in life must be sucked dead so that its soul returns from the river Styx.
The one who flanks Capel in the aforementioned YouTube video is Rodrigo Buznego, responsible for Kilo Housea restaurant in Quintes (Villaviciosa) opened in 1942 and dedicated to all things marine with a special love for you will call them, which serve all year. “Now that the cachopo has become fashionable, many people still don’t know about them,” he lamented. It will not be for lack of promotion: the Gastronomic Days of the lamp of Villaviciosa they have 34 editions, since the eighties, and have been declared a Festival of Tourist Interest by the Principality. You will find few better experts than Rodrigo, who tells us the basic notions and instructions.
To begin with, there are two types of lamps: the striped and the common. Their names already indicate their hierarchy. “The tastiest are pink and conical, and the best come out at night, for a very short time.” The common ones are more accessible, especially in the rain, but they are also more complicated to capture, since you have to catch them by surprise to take them off well and not get caught on the ground. pedreru like Raphael, with the force of the seas and the impetus of the wind. And the fundamental thing: they must always be lamps of rock, not of beach, because if the lamp It has caught sand, there is no way to release it. It is useless to soak them in salty water like clams or razor shells to coax them. If it comes with sand, eating it will destroy your tongue.
The best way to cook them is afogaes, that is, in a pot covered with a bit of oil and a sudden, brief blow to the fire, like opening mussels. Anything that prolongs this treatment will turn them into tire pellets that not even a pressure cooker will soften: “Even if you cook them in rice, it’s best to put them at the end, when it’s already done,” Rodrigo recommends. At Casa Kilo they serve them afogaes and also with a stew sauce, and during the last days, for a change, with pasta.
Pedro Martino adds a secret for fans: “When they come with roe, they are delicious raw”. He tells you about it on the phone and you see him salivating. But that requires having suppliers like the ones that supply his restaurant, shellfish gatherers from Candás and Cabo Peñas. Peter has served lamps in a thousand ways, from a rice top with turbot loins, to this recent addition to your letter: the essence of lamps with corn gnocchior a juice that starts from the classic stew, to later grind meat and broth and reduce the result until it is substantiated in Neptune’s marrow.
Actually, any Asturian cook with love for his land ends up cooking lamps sometime. See that fantasy Nacho Manzanoof Martial House, called El Cantábrico, which brings together clams, barnacles, spittle, oysters, lamps and a knife with algae: you almost feel like drowning in that photo. Laugh at Ivan Aivazovsky’s shipwrecks or Percy Shelley’s sailboat exit: if you feel an intimate connection with the sea, there is no better romance than cooking, and eating, its most ingrained animals. And if it gives you the creeps, you throw it off the cliff.
#Lapas #poor #shellfish #delicacy