Lisbon cannily tinned fish

Whilst thinking about a hook for this piece I was reminded of the sardine factories all along the roadside in Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row” and of Lee Chong’s Grocery, where you could buy:

“clothes, food both fresh and canned, liquor, tobacco, fishing equipment, machinery, boats, cordage, caps, pork chops. You could buy at Lee Chong’s a pair of slippers, a silk kimono, a quarter pint of whiskey and a cigar. You could work out combinations to fit almost any mood.”

The range of goods available from the Lisbon-based collective Can The Can (who I’ve talked about in this earlier piece) is less extensive but still offers these two garums, one sardine based (well if I were talking to Dr Grainer (op.cit.), I’d call have to them the more technically accurate “liquamen” but that linguistic battle has been long lost, at least as far as the dumb klutzes in marketing go)…

…as well as muxama (dry-cured tuna loin), pastrami, bottarga, fois gras — made from fish livers — tuna sangacho — a blood dense part of the tuna, close to the spinal cord — chorizo with black pork belly, Espadarte belly bacon, all made using fish from the around the coast of Portugal. Unfortunately, only the bottled items are available for shipping to the UK (yet more Brexit benefits, eh chaps?) so I’m guessing a trip to Lisbon with a large empty travel bag, beckons on the near horizon.

Oh, and as well as their art book — which is a beautiful, heavy piece of work albeit suited more to coffee-table show than practical guide — called, unsurprisingly, “Eat & Art”…

…is a much more useful, bi-lingual canned fish recipe book.

The labels are particularly fun; an expiry date (some years in the future, which isn’t really a surprise) and a description of where the fish was landed from, almost accurate down to the square metre and date/time, missing only for completeness — it would seem — the inside leg measurement of the person who caught the fish.

Lisbon is one of my favourite places; we haven’t visited for far too long and from the sound of it, the tidal-plague of gentrification is a major concern. There’s a great piece from Serious Sandwich called “Eating Merguez Drunk” and you should definitely sign up and read their writings, this one included, which goes on to describe how Marseille is resisting, fighting back against, the forces of neo-liberalism & late-stage capitalism who are, like everywhere, trying desperately to tidy up, monetise and sanitise this city, so far, satisfyingly to far less effect than others such as klep-friendly, oligarch owned London (and others, but see below* for a Gibson vision of how this will all pan out).

I mentioned this one in glowing terms on Twitter but my post…

…got a little — friendly but to the point — push-back from some of those who are mutuals there — and rightly so — as it read as though I was centering men or — again because of the inept phrasing — implying rather that, until Vittles and Jonathan had come along, there’d been no earlier writings to be shown. So, for the record, here’s a big shout-out to people like Helen Graves (& companions) with Pit Magazine and her earlier “London Review of Sandwiches“, and to Anna Sulan Masing who has also written for these same publications and who said

“Sometimes, the work of women who have paved ways, been quietly/gently radical, gets forgotten in the rush of changes and excitement… just wanted to put a lil’ reminder of lots of great work goes into ‘movements’ – if that is what recent food writing can be called.”

• * firstly, is Amazon Prime’s “Peripheral” series which is  a superb adaption of William Gibson’s latest trilogy and one that he’s happy to trumpet as well. If you’ve not read the books, the episodes can take a few re-views to really get what’s happening and how things tie together but will certainly pay-back the attention needed, all backed by a group of excellent actors who inhabit the skins they portray so well and some delightfully imagined future-tech. If you have read the first two (the third due out next year, 2023) then be aware that the story-line diverges quite a lot; but it’s none the worse for these changes. Highly recommended, highly enjoyable. And also, buy the books, you’ll thank me.

• secondly, the loss of author and Marxist activist Mike Davis, whose death from cancer at the age of 76 was announced just this week, leaves a big gap. His writings are and will remain hugely influential and any of his books are worth your time and attention but in particular I’d recommend one of his earliest “City of Quartz” which has also just been made available as a free download by his publisher, Verso, as a tribute to Mike and his more recent “Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World“. But you’ll enjoy any of them; fierce, incisive, humane, despising of those in power who don’t use that power to help others. Praise the barbarians, not the empires.