Of course, if one desire to learn various methods of preparing food, it is necessary to keep both eyes open and to ask many questions, seeking the information that sometimes comes from unlooked for sources. Even at that it is not always a good idea to take everything for granted or to accept every suggestion, for you may meet with the Italian vegetable dealer who is so eager to please his customers that he pretends a knowledge he does not possess. We discovered him one day when he had on display a vegetable that was strange to us.
"How do you cook it?" was our question.
"Fry it."
Then his partner shouted his laughter and derision.
"Oh, he's one fine cook. All the time he say 'fry it.' One day a lady she come into da store an' she see da big bucket of ripe olives. Da lady she from the East and she never see olives like dat before. 'How you cook it?' say da lady. 'Fry it,' say my partner. Everything he say fry it."
In another vegetable stand we found an Italian girl, whose soft lisping accent pronounced her a Genoese, and she, diffidently suggested "a fine Italian dessert."
A Fine Desert
"You take macaroons and strawberries. Put a layer of macaroons in a dish and then a layer of strawberries, cover these with sugar, and then another layer of macaroons and strawberries and sugar until you have all you want. Over these pour some rum and set fire to it. After it is burned out you have a fine dessert."
We bought the macaroons and strawberries on the way home and did not even wait for dinner time to try it. We pronounce it good.
It was made the right way and we advise you to try it, for it is simple and leaves a most delicious memory.
Where Fish Come In
It was very early one morning. So early that one of us strenuously pretended sleep while the other gave urgent reminder that this was the day we were to go to Fishermen's Wharf. Daylight came early and it was just four o'clock when we began preparations. A cup of hot coffee while dressing served to get us wide-awake, and we were off to see the fish come in.
Fishermen's Wharf lies over at North Beach, at the end of Meiggs's Wharf, where the Customs Officers have their station, and to reach it one takes either the Powell and North Beach cars, or the Kearny and North Beach cars, and at the end of either walks two blocks. When you get that far anybody you see can tell you where to go.
Fog mist was stealing along the Marin shore, and hiding Golden Gate when we arrived, and the rays of the sun took some time to make a clear path out to sea. Out of the bank of white came gliding the heavy power boats of the Sicilian and Corsican fishermen, while from off shore were the ghostly lateen rigged boats of those who had been fishing up the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, their yards aslant to catch the faint morning breeze. As they slipped through the leaden water to their mooring at the wharf we could see the decks and holds piled with fish and crabs.
Roosting on piles, and lining the water's edge on everything that served to give foothold, were countless seagulls, all waiting for the breakfast they knew was coming from the discarded fish, and fit companions were the women with shawls over their heads irreverently called mud hens, and old men in dilapidated clothing, who sat along the stringers of the wharf, some with baskets, some with buckets and others with little paper bags, in which to put the fish which they could get so cheaply it meant a meal for them when otherwise they would have to go without. The earlier boats were moored and on the decks fires were burning in charcoal braziers, on which the fishermen cooked their breakfasts of fish and coffee, with the heavy black loaves of bread for which they seem to have special fancy. As the odor of the cooking fish came up from the water the waiting gulls and men and women moved a little closer.
Breakfast over the fishermen turned to the expectant crowd and began taking notice of the pitiful offerings of coin. Tin buckets, newspapers, bags, rags and even scooped hands were held down, each containing such coin as the owner possessed, and in return came bountiful supply of fish.