The following recipe is from Casinto De Gregorio


Basque fishermen invented ways of cooking inexpensive local catch. Ttoro is a dish traditionally prepared by Labourdine fishermen based in towns at the mouth of the Nivelle: St.-Jean-de-Luz, Ciboure, and the village at the harbor entrance, Socoa. It is made from locally available fish, and the recipe varies from cook to cook. The following recipe is from Casinto De Gregorio, a Guipuzcoan who established a cozy little restaurant in St.-Jean-de-Luz in the 1920s. The restaurant, Chez Maya, is still in the family, and the cook, his grandson, Freddy, still uses his ttoro recipe

Ttoro (for six)

 Recipe Requirements

6 hake steaks 2 large onions
6 very small monkfisk   2. leeks
3 rascasse (a local redfish in the same family as ocean perch, which is not a substitute)   1 3/4 pound tomatoes
4 garlic cloves
2 large red gurnard (a bony European fish) 1 1/3poundmussels 6 nice-sized langowtines   1 pint white wine
1 bouquet garni (thyme, bay leaf and parsley) pepper

 Notes and Hints

 Clean the fish. Cut the gurnard in slices. Fillet the rascasse. Keep the bones.

 Saute the chopped onions, minced leek, and chopped garlic in olive oil for 15 minutes; add the heads and bones of the fish and cook slowly. Add the tomatoes, crushed, the wine, a quart of water, the bouquet garni, and pepper.

 Cook 90 minutes. Clean and open the mussels, adding the juice to the pot. Strain the liquid.

 Flour the fish and sauté for 1 minute in olive oil. Combine everything and cook slowly for 10 minutes. Serve in soup bowls with garlic croutons

 Interest Note

 Despite their inventive cooks, the Basques did not stay in their little sea, content with its little creatures. What first drove them out farther than the known world was the pursuit of a deadly but profitable giant: the Basque whale.

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