A cold block, compact, translucent at the edges, with pieces of fish held together by a jelly of its own. It sits on a film of oil, a dark dusting on top. It looks like something rural that ended up by mistake on a plate of the sea.
At the bite it's springy, chewy, the kind of texture that resists a moment and then gives all at once, like the jelly of the old days. The flavour is full, long, and it carries me straight back to pork zuzzu, the cold one eaten with lemon and pepper, the poor dish of winter. Except here there's no pork, it's all fish.
Zuzzu is fifth quarter: the parts that aren't thrown away, the gelatine, what's left once everything else has been made. With pork it's an old tradition, of the sea almost no one does it, and here instead they take the same idea and move it onto the water. I eat something with the taste and the mind of a peasant dish, made though with what the sea gives. The cold, the jelly, the pepper on top: the body recognises something the mind didn't expect to find in a fish.
