Preservation of American Hellenic History
Preservation of American Hellenic History
by Jason C. Mavrovitis
Theo Costa was the celebrant of two periodic events in our home.
Every six or seven years he painted the rooms of our three-story brownstone on Ovington Avenue. Sometimes I helped, or at least I thought I did. The job seemed to take forever. He was slow, methodical, and meticulous. I remember the smell of the lead-based paints thinned with oil that took days to dry.
He worked always with a cigarette, a Camel, between his lips. The ritual lighting of the cigarette included his tapping down the tobacco to one end, twisting the paper of the less full end before lighting it, and moistening the paper on the end that was held delicately between his lips. As the smoke rose, his hand moved the brush gracefully, in the way of a conductor leading an orchestra in an adagio. I liked helping him clean the brushes, which were his treasured tools. They were of all sizes, some very fine and soft.
I liked best helping Theo Costa make lakerda (salted tunny).
From the beginning of recorded history, excess Greek populations of Ionia, Attica, Boetia, and the Greek city-states colonized coastal villages in Thrace on the Black Sea. They grew grapes and made wine, mined minerals, grew corn, captured and sold Skythian slaves, and caught and preserved fish for themselves and for export to cities dependent on imported food. Tsiri (dried, salted mackerel), rengha (dried, smoked herring), sardeles (salted large sardines or anchovies in olive oil), tarama (carp or red mullet roe which when whipped with olive oil, bread crumbs, and lemon juice form a delicious, creamy dip), and lakerda were among the staple fish.
As a child, Theo Costa watched the men of Sozopolis as they preserved their catch from the Black Sea. He learned how to clean, salt, and smoke fish and brought those skills to America and to Brooklyn.
Every fall, Mom put up preserves, made loukanika (dried sausage); jarred tomatoes, and packed brine-filled crocks with green tomatoes, carrots, celery, and heads of cabbage (toursi). Then, after Leonardo stored newly-fermented grape juice into barrels for a second fermentation or aging, as the purpose required, and put the residual grape mash into the shiny copper still and made raki or, since he was from Monteleone, Italy, grappa ~ the time came to make lakerda.
Theo Costa would arrive early one October morning in time for a cup of coffee with my mother before beginning the work. He lugged huge bags over his shoulders, having gone at dawn directly from CBS in mid-town to the Fulton Fish Market on the lower east side of Manhattan to select as many two-foot-long, deep-blue, torpedo-like tuna fish as he could carry. These he deposited in the entry vestibule while he sat and rested, and had his coffee and a Camel cigarette. I waited anxiously for my instructions ~ which every year were the same. Mom would give me one or two dollars and tell me to go to Mr. Kramer's Hardware Store on Third Avenue to buy ten, five-pound bags of Kosher salt (rock salt). Mr. Kramer kept these in stock for his customers to rid their outdoor steps and sidewalks of ice and snow, and for the Jew or Greek or Scandinavian who needed it to prepare an ethnic specialty.
By the time I made the three or four trips necessary for me to carry that much salt, Theo Costa was ready to start work. We carried the tunny and salt down the wooden steps to the basement. The smells were those of the West Side delicatessens on Eighth and Tenth Avenues in mid-town Manhattan. Theo Costa retrieved two, twenty-four-inch deep ceramic crocks, a flat cutting stone, and butcher knives from under the storage tables. Slowly, too agonizingly slowly for the patience of a boy, he carried the crocks to the other end of the basement where there was a water spigot and drain. While he spread newspapers on the floor, set the cutting stone across two stools, and sharpened the knives, I washed out the crocks and dried them.
Cigarette between his lips and a razor-sharp knife in his hand, Theo Costa removed the heads, fins, and tails from the tunny. We washed each body carefully, removing any loose tissue. Finally, to the cutting stone, and with long, strong motions, he sliced the tunny into one-inch steaks. We set one layer of these in the crocks on top of a two-inch bed of salt. Then, we added another layer of salt and another layer of tunny until finally the crocks were filled, the top layer being salt. After wooden lids were placed on top of the crocks, he moved them to a dark corner under the storage tables. I washed the heavy cutting stone thoroughly, brushing it under hot water brought from the sink in the small basement kitchen, dried it, and carried it with difficulty to Theo Costa for him to store away.
Now we waited.
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