Cuttlefish with chards (seppie in zimino)

Spring is the right time to buy cuttlefish, it’s their season. This is clear in my mind when I enter the Genoa covered market (Mercato Orientale) almost breathless, arms already loaded with innumerable bags and a tired son hang up to one of them. A swirling ride through the market benches – overflowing vegetables, scattered boxes, mountains of dried fruit, people, colors, fragrance of bread, strawberries and artichokes – and we come to the curve of the fish counters. There my cuttlefish. Sprawled, placid, between a shimmering two-metres spatula fish and a family of zebra-striped mackerels. We take 4 and run away, this without having being first presented with the giant head of the spatula fish! Someone, in fact, later on in the kitchen, will put on a miners’ torch and bent on the sink will study for hours the anatomy of a fish. Cuttlefish mission, the last of the day, done. The chards that will serve to prepare “seppie in zimino” (cuttlefish with chards), the dish I thought as the fisherman was making my bill, are already in the fridge. And then we come home, we close the door behind us, letting outside the world, we take off our shoes, put down the bags, get into the kitchen and start cooking the meal, together. Quiet, finally.