Long Island Larder: Conch Cooking

Adolescent trauma - being sentenced to one year in a Florida high school - seared into me a resolve never to set foot on that dangling appendage to the United States ever again.

Decades passed, and trips were taken to islands all over the Caribbean before that resolve weakened enough to take my child on a school holiday to Siesta Key on the Gulf Coast, where I had friends, to soften the pain of facing Florida again.

A dull time was had by all the adults, but at least there was Barnum & Bailey's winter circus and other attractions to amuse a child and the area was cheap and restful. Parents just have to offer up these excursions - like logging hours at the playground watching kids try to damage each other with coveted toys.

Then, eureka! They all grew up and my husband and I were invited to Key West for a look-see. The fact that this Southernmost City (as it bills itself) is barely in the Sunshine State and is only 90 miles from Cuba, thus dependably warm and horticulturally exotic, enhanced its appeal.

That was seven years ago and now we approach each January with wild anticipation of returning. Key West is truly not Florida! It's the Conch Republic, which, something like Peconic County, keeps trying to secede from the rest of the state, with which it has little patience.

Key West never did recognize Prohibition; its oldest families are descended from wreck-salvagers who emigrated from the Bahamas when too few ships ran aground and pickings got lean around about the 18th century. These British colonists and the numerous Cubans who migrated to Key West after their revolution in 1869 form the native "conch" population.

Conch Cooking

Key West cookery is a lot more "conch" and Southern than is Miami Beach "South Florida" cuisine, which I have actually seen referred to as "Floribbean." Cooking by Key Westers, old and new, is closer akin to the food in Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's "Cross Creek Cookery" and the verities of Spanish-Cuban traditional cuisine.

Whole roast pigs are still turned on spits in large barbecue pits for Nochebuena (Christmas Eve) and there are places that will do the job for you - takeout whole roast suckling pig (lechon asado).

Black beans and yellow rice are commonplace in restaurants that are not Cuban. But you won't see a lot of sliced pineapple, coconut-wrapped shrimp, and other fruit with fish frou-frou in any but the most expensive, touristy restaurants in Key West - these often run by Marriott or some other hotel chain.

Though a few of the chefs try to ape the South Beach "new South Florida cuisine," their eateries have a way of going out of business alarmingly often.

Balance

One of those chefs, Norman Van Aken, has a new joint in South Beach, glowingly described in Sunday's New York Times Travel Section. He used to cook at the Cafe Marquesa here in Key West.

He is indeed a gifted cook, though his fantasies have a little more spin on them than I personally like, and he keeps everything in fairly reasonable "balance" (the new buzzword in foodese, if you haven't already noticed).

Other, less adroit practitioners, would be better advised to let well enough alone. South Florida has a fabulous supply of fruits, vegetables, and seafood and quite adequate supplies of pigs, chickens (too many roosters, in fact), and steers, much of it from within the state.

Timeless Mojo Sauce

"The Taste of Key West" was a recent fund-raiser sponsored by a group of restaurants: I couldn't go but I'm sure that the offerings included the "best" conch fritters, fried dolphin, key lime pie, and conch chowder.

I'm fond of other Cuban conch specialities with a dignified staying power such as mojo, a timeless sauce for just about everything, made from the sour oranges that still grow on trees all over town, tons of garlic, cilantro, and olive oil.

Also bollos, a black-eyed pea fritter, and our household's new favorite, calabaza soup, which I embellish with nontraditional chive-flecked sour cream.

All the ingredients can be found in Northern ethnic markets and on the East End it is not unlikely that you'll find them in the King Kullen, which has a lot of Hispanic foodstuffs and produce. (I will have to admit though, that the fruits never taste as good as they do on their native ground.)

Calabaza Soup

Calabaza is a type of pumpkin that appears in West Indian and South Florida markets and in the ethnic foods sections of many national supermarket chains. Hubbard or butternut or acorn squashes make good substitutes for it, though I think the bright orange calabaza produces a creamier-textured soup (or pureed vegetable).

Our winters in Key West have led me to investigate the possibilities of its many tropical fruits and vegetables. Most of them are bursting with health-giving qualities that the trendy will soon embrace.

Makes about two quarts.

2 lb. piece of calabaza or other hard, orange-fleshed squash

2 Tbsp. peanut or canola oil

1 medium onion, sliced

1 or 2 carrots, peeled and sliced

2 ribs celery, peeled and sliced

3 or 4 cloves fresh garlic, sliced

1 tsp. Ras Al Hanout or 1 tsp. ground cumin plus 1/8 tsp. cayenne, pinch of ground clove, cinnamon, and cardamom. (Ras Al Hanout is a scintillating spice mixture often used in couscous and other North African dishes, especially Moroccan ones. It can be found in some food specialty shops, or by mail from Kalustyan Orient Export Trading Corp., 123 Lexington Avenue, New York 10016. Though it is racily hot, a tiny bit of it does great things for all sorts of dishes, Moroccan or not.)

4 cups degreased chicken bouillon

1 medium bay leaf

4 sprigs fresh thyme

Salt and freshly milled black pepper to taste

Garnish:

1 Tbsp. light sour cream, room temperature, and a sprinkling of fresh-snipped chives for each serving (important, do not omit)

Preparation

Cut the calabaza into manageable pieces and whittle off the rind with a good sharp vegetable peeler. Scrape out any seeds or pith and cut the squash into one-inch chunks. Heat the oil to very hot in a deep soup pot or pressure cooker and saute the onion, carrot, celery, and garlic until limp.

Add the Ras Al Hanout or other spices and cook briefly, stirring. Add the calabaza, chicken stock, bay leaf, and thyme sprigs tied together with string (for easy removal). Simmer, covered, for about 35 minutes, when the vegetables should be very soft. If you have a pressure cooker, the time can be shortened to 12 minutes at full pressure and immediate pressure reduction (this method retains the most nutrients).

Remove the herbs, then puree the soup in blender or processor. Fill a big, deep, soup bowl and top the serving with lightly beaten sour cream floated on top and a sprinkling of chopped chives.

This soup is also delicious served chilled.

Bollos

These are a delicious idea for summer cocktail snacks. They are street food, like falafel, and utterly irresistible.

The batter can be made up in advance and deep-fried or even shallow-fried in an electric skillet heated to 350 F. Bollos should be served hot, hot, hot and well drained, with some kind of hot sauce (like the mojo that follows).

Thanks go to Steven Raichlen, a Miami food writer, for this terrific recipe.

Makes about 40.

1 cup dried black-eyed peas

10 cloves fresh garlic

1/2 medium onion, peeled and cut coarsely

1 Scotch Bonnet (hellfire) chili or a slightly less hot Habanero, seeds removed (handle with gloves)

3 Tbsp. fresh cilantro or Italian parsley, minced

2 eggs

1 egg-white, whipped

2 tsp. kosher salt

1 tsp. freshly milled black pepper

1 tsp. baking powder

About 2 cups vegetable oil for frying

Soak the peas overnight in cold water and drain. Remove any damaged ones. Put them along with the garlic, onion, and chili into a food processor and pulse away until you have a fairly smooth mixture. Add the cilantro and two eggs, the salt, pepper, and baking powder. Scrape into a bowl and fold in the beaten eggwhite. Drop by soupspoonsful into the hot oil and turn after one minute with a wire skimmer (or whatever you have). Don't crowd the oil.

I find a wok useful for this type of frying, as it produces the largest frying surface with the least depth of oil. An electric fryer is, of course, the most reliable and easiest of all. Most small crockpots do an excellent job of deep frying, too.

Drain the fritters well and serve on a bed of crushed napkins in a basket, along with some kind of dipping sauce. The sauce is not traditional, but a good one would be light mayonnaise thinned with lime juice and some kind of hot sauce, if you like spicy things.

Cubans don't really go in for a lot of heat, but "conchs" do and the gourmet market here stocks a zillion of them. Matouk's (if you can find it) makes one of the best.

Mojo

This acidic sauce (pronounced mo-ho) is omnipresent on Cuban tables and can be approximated using regular limes for the sour oranges (naranja agria) you can't buy anywhere that I know of. Splash it on fritters, seafood, roast pork, use it as a marinade, dab a bit behind your ears . . . you'll love it.

Makes one pint.

15 cloves fresh garlic

1 tsp. ground cumin

2 tsp. kosher salt

2 tsp. fresh black pepper, coarsely milled

1 Scotch Bonnet or habanero chili, seeded (optional)

1 cup good olive oil

1 cup fresh lime juice plus 2 Tbsp. orange juice

Put the ingredients into a food processor in the order given and pulse until thoroughly amalgamated. To use immediately, you might add some fresh cilantro, chopped in some of the sauce, but it turns an unattractive green if it sits around too long.

Mojo is pretty indestructible kept in the fridge.