· Canned Fish That's the Cat's Meow

· Tinned Tuna — Red, White, Blue and Yellow

· An Array of Anchovies

· Time for Tuna and Anchovies Too

You can purchase some of these products online at Zingerman's Mail Order

Mind you, in the moment, the Basque Country has gotten quite well known for the work of culinary superstars of high tech fancy cuisine. While I respect what they do, you're probably already pretty clear that what we do here at Zingerman's is almost the dead-on opposite of that sort of cooking. We're all about going back to discover tradition and full flavor, not foams, deconstruction, trends or new recipe invention. The good news is that there's loads of traditional full-flavored foods to be had and, with due respect, I can really just leave the foams and fancy stuff for others to write about and stick here to what I like — cheese, oil, terrific fish in tins, peppers, vegetables and other things I could eat most every day of the year.

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Canned Fish That's the Cat's Meow
The Basques have a long, prosperous and very positive relationship with fish. In the days when the whale was to the world what petroleum is today, the Basques went around the globe to bring the economic benefits of the fish to their homeland. Later, in pursuit of the bacalao (salt cod) — which became the staple of Basque cooking that it still is today — they tracked the fish across the Atlantic, likely landing in North America well before Columbus. Today, whaling is long over with (will oil go the way of the whale when we finally develop a sound alternative energy source?) and while the Basques still cook and consume salt cod in crazy large quantities, most Basque fishing work is done closer to home. Fresh fish of all sorts comes in to the coastal ports everyday. Eating seafood in the restaurants along the coast was really a fantastic experience. And Basque fishing work remains strong in the area of tinned fish, particularly tuna and anchovies, caught off the coast of the Basque Country, cooked, canned and consumed with great passion.

Fish — both fresh and tinned — is extremely popular. Each is delicious and each is valued in its own right. Fresh tuna is a big deal but so too is tinned; each, seriously, sits near the top of the area's culinary prestige pyramid. To get it into the right context, you have to get out of the canned fish mindset that most all of us were raised with here in the States. Because, while in this country canned tuna and anchovies are at the bottom of the purchasable prepared food list in terms of prestige, in Spain tinned tuna is pretty much the cat's meow. Every good Spanish grocery will have literally an entire aisle of the stuff! Long rows of beautifully packaged tuna, sardines, anchovies, mackerel and more. And, although I can't say I've surveyed them all in person, I'd bet that in most every one of those aisles you'll find the products of the based-in-the-Basque-Country Ortiz family.

While there may be little difference between the actual tins or jars in which high and low quality tuna arrive at the store, there are huge differences in the quality of what comes to us inside them. What makes the difference between buying Ortiz and the standard supermarket stuff that costs so much less? You can start with all the things that make the difference in any seafood you seek out. As with all fish, freshness is a huge factor. American supermarket tunas generally start with fish taken in on huge trawlers that stay out at sea in Asia for weeks. If you think there's no market for so-so fish that aren't yet spoiled but have already started to break down... dream on. That's most of what gets out there. What goes into most canned tuna would be stuff a top-notch chef would never want to touch. It's fish you'd have a hard time selling to use as fresh.

By contrast, when you buy Ortiz fish, you're getting line caught tuna that come off of one day boats, brought in each morning to the docks of the Basque fishing villages. Truthfully the Ortiz buyers are competing for the best fish with chefs from the best restaurants. While they have their head office in the town of Ondarroa, they work with fisherman in small ports all along the Bay of Biscay and beyond. The Ortiz buyers hit the docks early, pick the best fish and have it back at their plants within hours, where it's cooked fresh.

Mass-market tinned tuna, to us here in the States, mostly is made up of small bits and pieces of less-than-great-when-it-started (then often-overcooked) fish. When you open the Ortiz tin you'll see the difference immediately — you'll be looking at bigger pieces of tuna. More importantly, I think, (you can't eat the looks), the flavor and texture are both meatier, the finish far nicer and, although it's great with homemade mayonnaise, you don't need really anything to go with it other than a touch of sea salt, a bit of pepper and, if you like, some olive oil and good bread. Their stuff really is pretty amazing — the flavor is consistently great. And, although you can't eat it, the packaging is about as good as it gets. Check out the designs on some of their tins and boxes — beautiful stuff.

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Tinned Tuna — Red, White, Blue and Yellow
Well, the fish doesn't really come in all those colors, but the colors are in fact in correlated with the names of Ortiz' tunas. The fishing, the selection, the cleaning, the cooking, the packing and the entire operation are done with high attention to detail and very flavorful results. All are line caught. All are excellent. Here's the rundown:

1. Bonito (Albacore)
Bonito is the top pick of almost every Basque I've ever asked. Here we call it albacore. White in color, mellow in flavor, Spaniards eat this all the time — on tapas, for sandwiches, on its own, stuffed into peppers or just about anything else. I know that probably hard to imagine given that it costs five times more than per tin than what we've come to think of as normal for tuna, but this really is what tuna is about in Spain. As you read on, you'll see that this really good bonito is actually just the base of the Basque tuna pyramid. They don't go down from here but they most definitely do go up.

2. Atun Clara (Yellowfin)
Although it's less highly prized in Spain, I actually like the yellowfin better because the flavor is fuller. Known in Spain as atun claro, the yellowfin comes from further west in the Cantabrian Sea. For me, this is my every day tuna. It's a touch darker in color and a bit bigger flavor with a longer, meatier finish. I like it in salads, in rice dishes, with eggs... pretty much, I just like it. A big slice of Bakehouse bread and a sprinkle of sea salt and olive oil, along with most any vegetables I've got on hand, makes it a meal.

3. Red and Blue — Vintage Tonno Rosso
This is a special, one-time only, Ortiz-family offering of bluefin tuna, which is known in Italian as tonno rosso (or literally "red tuna"). So, the "red" and the "blue" from my subtitle are actually one and the same. Although it's huge in Japan and Italy, bluefin is almost completely unknown in Spanish tuna tinning. Yes, I know that bluefin tuna are in short supply, so it's not like we went out looking for these. The truth is no one really went out looking for it — this stuff is available really only because three years ago this past summer a couple big bluefins seem to have wandered out of the Mediterranean into the Cantabrian Sea. Local fisherman caught one, brought it in to the docks and the folks at Ortiz smartly snapped it up. If you like tuna, you'll definitely want to check this one out, because it's in short supply and because it's already aged and exceptionally good. Tonno rosso is the top of the top of tinned tunas, the one that you want to eat when you want to eat something superbly special. It's richer, meatier, marvelouser. It's particularly good because it's actually been aged for thirty-six months now, meaning it's even richer and better now than when it was first released.

4. Vintage Bonito
Speaking of aging, we've also got hold of a specially-aged bonito as well. To be clear, although very few folks realize it, tuna (and sardines, but not anchovies) actually gets better as it sits in tins or jars — the oil gradually penetrates the flesh of the fish further and further as it ages making for ever richer, more tuna inside. We got the first batch in last winter and it's already excellent. It will continue to improve in flavor for 14 or 15 years, so if you like it, buy it now and set it aside for special occasions down the road. (And hey, with the banking situation what it is, maybe you want to put some of your savings into fish and not rely so much on the FDIC).

5. Ventresca Bonito
Lastly, but definitely not least, we also have ventresca, which is a cut, not a kind, of tuna. In fact it's the richest part of the fish, the belly, a big delicacy in Spain, something most American have no idea even exists. But it does and it's good and... put it on toast, skip the celery and the mayo. This one is best by far on its own. I like it with a sprinkle of good sea salt, maybe a little olive oil. It's much richer than the already good standard-cut tunas I've been talking about. The best seller in Spain is the belly from the bonito.

6. Ventresca Atun Claro
Not surprisingly, given what I just said about bonito and yellowfin, I actually like the yellowfin ventresca better. That said, I like both a lot. They're really rich, and they're more expensive so they're not my everyday tunas. But that said, they're not hugely more expensive.

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An Array of Anchovies
As with tuna, there is of course a really big difference between good and bad anchovies, a great deal of which is, again (as with the above) not shockingly, about the quality of the raw fish. You don't have to be an expert to figure out that if you start with not very good South American anchovies (rather than the far more highly prized ones from Cantabria or the Mediterranean), pay less than top of the market prices to get something subpar (because "no one will notice"), and aren't fanatical about freshness, the resulting anchovy just ain't gonna taste too good. Period.

Northern Spain, by contrast is one of the anchovy capitals of the world. I ate more good anchovies in a week when I was there 18 months ago than I probably have in any month (total!) of my anchovy-eating life. They just were really, really good, and really plentiful, and served in most every spot I sat down (or in the case of the tapas bars, stood up) to eat in.

We get great anchovies from Ortiz in the form of filets. We opt for what they call their "old-style" — skin left on and packed with parsley. And we also get the traditional whole anchovies still in coarse salt. While both are excellent the latter are still, to my taste, the best if you take a few minutes to filet them (it's very easy!). They're bigger fish and those tend to taste better.

The bad news of the moment is that the renowned and much relished Cantabrian anchovies for which Ortiz is most famous haven't been available for the last few years. The stocks are very low and the government has banned their fishing 'til next year. To their credit the Ortiz family very actively supports the ban, working as they have for so long to do the right thing for the long term. To keep their supplies going — and to keep supplying those of us who need our anchovy fix — they went to the Mediterranean coast town of L'Escala (the other big area for anchovies in Spain), and bought an old anchovy plant which they restored and put into operation to cure fish there. The L'Escala anchovies are different, as is the cure. The Cantabrian fish are a bit firmer and the cure is longer in Cantabria. Together these factors combine to make the traditional Cantabrian anchovies a bit firmer and drier, the L'Escala-style Catalan fish slightly softer in texture and flavor. Both are very good (and of course, consumers on the respective coasts will argue with you adamantly about why "their" fish is better). Personally, I've continued my high consumption, eating them as is with a bit of bread and some olives before the meal, on salads and pasta, or with fresh mozzarella.

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Time for Tuna and Anchovies Too
If you're up for stretching the bounds of your tinned fish eating experience, the tuna (and anchovies too, for that matter) would be a good place to start. Erin Champieux who worked at the Roadhouse for a long time, is a big tuna eater. Apparently she eats tuna for lunch three or four times a week. Like so many of us, she's very conscious of the quality of what she consumes and was concerned about both the quality of the tuna she was buying at the grocery store and also about the mercury levels, so she asked me for suggestions. I asked her if she was familiar with Ortiz since it's been such a staple on our shelves for so long. But working at the Roadhouse, which focuses on traditional American foods, and not at the Deli, it turns out she really didn't know anything about it. I was sorry that she didn't know it, but I decided to take that as opportunity to do a bit of a good deed since Ortiz tuna tastes ten times better, is certified to be very low in mercury, and, because it's line caught by one-day boats based on small fishing villages, is essentially pretty environmentally friendly. So, because she's great to work with, I bought Erin a jar of the Ortiz tuna as a little "extra mile" gift.

Since she told me she ate tuna for lunch all the time, I waited a day or two and then asked how she liked it. She said she hadn't tried it yet. So I waited 'til the next week and then asked again. She still hadn't opened the jar. Concerned that I'd somehow done something wrong, I asked her what was holding her back. She said, quite simply, she was waiting for a special occasion and didn't want to waste it by eating it at just an 'ordinary' meal.

I could only smile because, unintentionally, she'd summed up the difference between the American and the Spanish sensibilities about tinned tuna. For Erin (and for most of us) any tin of tuna that costs over a buck twenty-nine would naturally be considered a luxury. She wanted to find a special occasion on at which opening it would be appropriate. A normal thought here but not in Spain. To put this in perspective, I'm guessing most tuna eaters in the Basque Country probably buy it four or five tins at a time. In fact, I think Ortiz actually sells it in six packs. While I'm sure they know that they could find something in the tinned fish section that sells for a quarter of the cost of their beloved bonito they probably never really even consider it as an option. In Spain this is what tuna is about and this is what they eat; those in the know would no sooner skimp on tinned tuna or anchovies than a Parisian would opt for a Hershey bar over artisan chocolates just to save a couple Euros.

The same goes for the anchovies — the idea is to eat them and enjoy them! There are bad ones everywhere and here in the States they are, sadly, the standard of the marketplace. But for those who eat a lot of them — as they do in Spain — buying the radically better ones that Ortiz prepares is just the way it is.

Both the tuna and the anchovies are kind of the ultimate in convenience foods. And since they both go with so many things, it's kind of hard for me not to have something on hand that will accompany them with style and make one of those late evening, last minute, "Damn, what am I gonna make for dinner?" moments into an easy-to-answer question and an enjoyable, not hard to do, eating experience. I use 'em all the time really. I was reading something on line the other day that said a jar might last you a month. I must eat a lot of anchovies cuz when I open a jar it's usually gone in about a quarter of that. They're pretty darned easy to use so... They're great with fresh mozzarella, fantastic on pasta with ricotta and arugula, excellent on potatoes with olive oil and crumbled feta. I'll stop now — I'm sure you get the idea.

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