Introduction
Shrimp, Sophia Loren and craftsmanship
My first big shellfish experience occurred when I was 9 or 10 years old. I blew a week's worth of allowance on shrimp and sat down with them on some steps in the Helsingborg docks. I ate them with reverence, sucking the last drop of goodness out of each and every one of them. And in those days two-and-a-half crowns would buy you a fair number!
At 15 I had my first introduction to making real lobster soup. The cook split the lobsters while they were still living, which I thought was rather grisly. "Shouldn't you boil it first?" I asked. "No," came the reply, "you can't boil a pig before you butcher it!" We used the green coral of the female lobsters for a soup made with butter and cognac. When the soup boils, its color changes from green to red. That was a thrilling sight -- shellfish are marvelous to work with! My job was to pour on the cognac and Madeira after the cook had sampled them -- well, that's the way things were in those days.
One of the first places I worked at was the Maritime restaurant in the Strand Hotel in Nybroviken, Stockholm; in its day it was the finest shellfish restaurant of all. I was put in charge of the shellfish counter, which I made up every day -- a wonderfully enjoyable task for a boy. My passion for shellfish was compounded one day when I was told to arrange a shellfish platter for Sophia Loren, who was staying at the hotel. She was the dream woman at that time!
I put so much love and hard labor into that platter that when the chef saw it he told me to go in and serve it myself. She was so delighted, she held the dish aloft, creating a golden photo opportunity; the dining room was lit up by the popping flashbulbs. The pictures were published everywhere, and a tremendous fuss was made when people noticed that Sophia Loren hadn't shaved her armpits.
I already knew at a tender age that this was my vocation, and I was only 23 when I became chef at the Henriksberg restaurant, where I was the youngest person in the kitchen. Restaurant kitchens were a tough proposition in those days: eat or be eaten -- it was that kind of hierarchy!
Sjömagasinet is the biggest fish and shellfish restaurant in Sweden. Given that we serve fresh shellfish, offerings are very much dependent on wind and weather. It is a point of honor to let a customer know that a certain raw material may not be obtainable on a certain day.
People often moan about shellfish prices, but anyone who has been out in a fishing boat, pulling up lobster pots in the rain and gale-force winds only to harvest perhaps four lobsters in 30 pots, will know what heavy work it is. Who would be prepared to work for that kind of money? No, that sort of fishing is a craft that deserves our full respect! There's an old joke that says there was once a fisherman from Fjällbacka, near Göteborg, who went out fishing in really stormy weather. Turning to his friend, he said, "You know Larry, I wouldn't want to be ashore in dirty weather like this." Ha!
I have innumerable memories and could go on telling stories indefinitely, but this book isn't really about me. Instead the leading characters of the play between the covers are the shrimp, the lobsters, the crayfish, the Norway lobsters, the mussels, the oysters and the crabs! My own tales and anecdotes from a long life at the stove will one day be collected in my memoirs, at present code-named A Scullion Remembers.
Remember that no recipe is sacred; you do not have to follow it implicitly. You can, in which case it will turn out as if I had made it. But a recipe can also be thought of as inspiration, or why not as hands-on poetry? You have to be inquisitive when cooking, ready to experiment. Crayfish are a raw material offering numerous possibilities. And just think of all the exciting things to be created with shellfish that can be bought live.
Or else you can just boil them and eat them with lemon. Or maybe an aïoli ...
Or perhaps, as the old saying goes, the tastiest results are achieved by doing as little as possible with the very best ingredients.
Göteborg, August 2008
Leif Mannerström
