At seven in the morning in Bodrum the ground in front of the slab is wet. The sound of ice being broken is short and sharp. Scales catch the light; the smell isn’t quite the sea, it’s something keener — salt, ice-water, watermelon rind. When you ask what he has today, the man wipes his hand on a cloth first, then answers. How long the answer runs depends on the season.
In July it runs short.
The sea’s calendar
The real season for fish in the Aegean begins with autumn. As the water cools the fish put on fat and come into their taste; the migrants — bonito, bluefish and the like — move through then. In summer the water warms, the fish go deep, and the catch thins out. On top of that, a long-standing closure on trawling and purse seining runs from mid-May to early September, and most of the fleet waits ashore. So a good part of what you see on a summer slab has been farmed — which isn’t a bad thing, only a different one.
What holds up in summer tends to be small and local: red mullet, picarel, bogue, goby, and now and then a dentex or a grouper. Octopus and squid are good in the heat too. If something in the basket catches your eye, ask about it — though “what came in today?” is a better question than “do you have…?”
Aboard
In the galley, fish is most often ruined by well-meaning excess. Fresh fish asks for very little: salt, a good olive oil, fire, lemon. Small fish are fried, larger ones grilled, the very freshest baked in salt. Most cooks keep fish on top of the ice rather than buried in it, belly down.
And there is this: not insisting on fish in summer. On an August evening, a proper tomato, a dark olive oil and some greens make a better table on deck than a fish someone had to hunt down. Waiting for the season is a kind of seamanship too.
Taking the money, the man behind the slab says one more thing: “Come back in September.” The ice breaks again.
ATLAS by OXYGEN →