My summer holiday in the Mediterranean has just ended, and like many others, I am thinking hard about how to extend the serenity that vacation brings and not jump straight back into the daily business of work and domestic duties.
In full disclosure, writing this column was itself an item at the top of my to-do list for my return. That list was a cloud that occasionally crept into view while I was away and now threatens to overshadow my idle bliss.
But looking at my recipe for smoky shrimp saganaki, I realize that I have a clear way of returning. Setting aside the risk of romanticizing a Mediterranean break, I genuinely feel that I have come back with some life and food lessons that can show me how to relax a little this fall.
Recipe: Smoky Shrimp Saganaki
The first is as old as human history: It’s all about the gathering. I spent much of my time off on the Spanish island Ibiza, sitting around food-laden tables, connecting with people — some friends, some strangers — and rediscovering how a meal can be both a setting for social interaction and the social connection itself.
I was there not just to relax but to host a pop-up meal for a hotel based around a farm, part of a larger movement to reintroduce substantial and sustainable agriculture to an island that now produces only a tiny percentage of the food it consumes. The feast I created, using the hotel’s summer bounty, was a long night affair, accompanied by flamenco dance and emotive, rhythmic music.
On the table were Padrón peppers, picked just hours before, fried and served with smoked almond dukkah and rose vinegar. There were also warm confit tomatoes from the garden, spread over cool lemon yogurt. We used beets from the farm, eggplant, fresh thyme and plenty of oranges from the hotel’s extensive grove.
Sitting there, with my sleeping son who hadn’t yet been initiated into the ways of Spanish mealtimes in my arm, I watched the evening come to life: one dish followed by another, served family style to about 200 diners, all eager to taste and drink, eager to rub elbows as they helped themselves to the food and very eager to chat about it all.
The joy of total immersion in a meal — much aspired to but not often practiced with such visceral vigor — brought a big, satisfied smile to my face. As Laurie Colwin writes in “Home Cooking,” my very late bedtime read while on vacation: “One of the delights of life is eating with friends; second to that is talking about eating. And, for an unsurpassed double whammy, there is talking about food while you are eating with friends.”
A simple dish that feels like vacation,
even long after it’s over.
Holding onto the memory of this night, I know that, this fall, my extended holiday sensation will come in the form of gatherings around and about food, well-considered opportunities to take a break from the noise and daily troubles in favor of something elemental and soothing.
That “something” will be a prolonging of my summer bliss as I am determined to cook my holiday food as long as the season allows. Tomatoes, garlic, cheese, herbs (fresh or dried), bread and plenty of olive oil are the fundamental ingredients of my time in the Mediterranean, whether in Spain, where I was this year, or Greece, where I am most summers.
Fish or seafood are often added, and this year we were lucky to have my sons’ best friend, Bobby, with us, a maverick fisherman, age 11, who cooked his catch for us in his grandmother’s garden, using a barbecue fashioned out of a toy wheelbarrow and an old fireguard for a grill.
It is the simplicity of the Mediterranean’s basic ingredients, the need for very little cooking to enjoy their full effect, that I find seductive. Familiar, delicious examples like a traditional Greek salad, accompanied with bread, or a Spanish pan con tomate, toasted bread with olive oil, garlic and grated tomato, can be put together in just minutes. Both also feature what is undeniably the best thing the world has to offer: bread soaked in tomato juices and olive oil.
My version of saganaki keeps the different ingredients intact and, of course, features bread dipped in a pool of olive oil, flavored with garlic, tomatoes and feta. The prawns are not strictly essential, I suppose, but cooking them like this, in tomato sauce, is a permanent feature of my Greek summers. I also wouldn’t want to disappoint Bobby, definitely a guest of honor at our Mediterranean table this fall.
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