Atlantic tuna

Photo by Tamorlan via Wikimedia Commons

Something you don't see every day is two workmen sitting down to split a $2 salad for lunch. But that's what I witnessed at a dockside restaurant in Santander when a heaping platter of tomato, onion and tuna was set in front of two burly workers in blue coveralls.

This was a long time ago, during my Fulbright year in Europe, and I would imagine the salad has gotten smaller and the price has gotten higher in the meantime. But that image has stayed with me and came to mind as I was preparing my Mediterranean light lunch today. I had canned Cento sardines on the side instead of tuna, but farmer's market tomatoes are great right now and lent themselves to a simple salad with red onion and Spanish olive oil.

The tuna in Santander was scooped out of a huge bucket of canned tuna kept in a refrigerator under the counter. The city has a picturesque fishing port on Spain's Atlantic coast (Bay of Biscay) and I had driven up there with friends from St. Louis University during my semester break stay in Madrid. The restaurant -- more of a pub, really -- was a simple bar with wood tables and benches, serving cheap bulk wine and these wonderful fresh salads. There was plenty of doughy Spanish bread to sop up the olive oil left on the plate. Needless to say, I managed to convey to the bartender that I wanted some of what these workmen were having.

I don't remember much else from our brief stop in Santander, except an impression of salty sea air, blue choppy ocean and a down-to-earth city with no resorts or tourists, but fishing boats and workmen in coveralls.

Calamari

It was on my first trip to Spain that I discovered calamari. I went to Madrid for the long semester break during my Fulbright year in Munich, ostensibly to learn Spanish for my studies in Comparative Literature. As I like to say, I've never really managed to learn Spanish, but it has been fun trying.

In Madrid, my friend Cindy, who was spending junior year abroad there, wanted to share her enthusiasm for all things Spanish and took me to a street vendor for a paper cone full of fresh deep-fried calamari. I was only dimly aware that calamari was romance language-speak for squid. For one thing, the batter-coated calamari looked more like onion rings than a sea creature with tentacles. In any case, I've never been shy about trying new foods. Standing in the street, eating the hot, greasy rings of calamari, I immediately took to the salty, fishy, chewy food and became a fan.

Photo by Tamorlan (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

During that first long stay in Madrid, I sampled various dishes with squid. The biggest surprise at the Jesuit residence where I was staying was when they served a lunch consisting of a ring of white rice filled with an inky black sauce and bits of some sort of fish in it. When I asked, I was told that it was "calamares en su tinta" -- squid in its ink. The sauce was inky black because it was ink! I won't say it was my favorite dish, but it won points for being exotic.

I had a chance to eat various calamari dishes during my years in Europe. It always seemed perfectly natural food, bland but interesting for its hint of deep sea and its chewy texture. When I made paella in those years, I used a Spanish cookbook I acquired in Madrid, puzzling through the recipe with a dictionary and always including the calamari (though I've since learned that the real paella valenciana does not include squid).

So it has been something of a surprise to me that most Americans won't eat calamari. When I made a fiesta paella recently, only one venturesome guest was willing to eat the little white rings embedded in the yellow rice. The others weren't taking any chances and pushed them to one side. Fortunately, the Portuguese fish vendor where I go for paella supplies has lots of fresh squid so that I can continue to indulge when I do make paella. Given American squeamishness, however, I'm not likely to try other preparations for calamari.