blog — September 09

Anthony Bourdain on the Provincetown Seafood Cookbook by Howard Mitcham

After you read Anthony Bourdain’s short introduction to Provincetown Seafood Cookbook by Howard Mitcham, scroll down for a few of our favorite recipes from the book.

I was never pals with Howard Mitcham. Howard Mitcham never knew my name. If he knew me by sight, it was because I was always hanging around Spiritus Pizza during the bar rush, waiting for my girlfriend (of whom he was quite fond) to get off work. He’d come in after a few drinks at the Foc’sle or the Old Colony or wherever he was doing his drinking in those days. His face would be flushed and he’d be a little unsteady on his feet, and you could hear him over the crowd, but this was normal. Even then, he was a legend.

I knew Howard through his book. This book. Which was presented to me by a friend pretty much the first day I began working as a cook. In the Flagship restaurant, where I’d only recently started what would turn out to be a long, checkered career in the industry, Howard’s word was law: baseline technique, first principles when dealing with fish. His haddock amandine was famous up and down the Cape—people would drive down from Boston to eat it at Pepe’s (or later, his own eponymous restaurant). We lifted his recipe shamelessly intact.

More important than his recipes, however, and more enduring, was his prose—his attitude toward the humble quahaug, haddock, mackerel, Wellfleet oysters, striped bass, bluefish—the Portuguese fishing families of P’Town and the Cape. He was not a snob—at a time when most cookbooks sounded as if they’d been written by someone in a smoking jacket, while stroking a pet ocelot.

He put his recipes in context. Told you where they came from, what inspired them, convinced you that he loved them and that you should love them too. He was way, way ahead of his time in his embrace of so-called trash fish. And he understood always that the best place to enjoy seafood was on the beach, among friends, in a pretense-free zone, preferably accompanied by many drinks, or at the beloved Cookie’s Tap, whose squid stew he appropriated after much experimentation. That’s a recipe I still cook today—one that I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of over the years.

Like another great food writer, A. J. Leibling, Mitcham understood there is no difference between the joys of a great meal at a three-star Michelin and at a humble fishermen’s bar—as long as it’s made with love and with pride.

His love for Provincetown shines through every page of this book. It’s a true classic, one of the most influential of my life.

I may never have really known Howard Mitcham, but I miss knowing he was out there.

—Anthony Bourdain, 2018

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Provincetown’s best-known and most-admired chef Howard Mitcham combines delectable recipes and delightful folklore to serve up a classic in seafood cookbooks.

Read about the famous (and infamous!) Provincetown fishing fleet, the adventures of the fish and shellfish that roam Cape Cod waters, and the people of Provincetown—like John J. Glaspie, Lord Protector of the Quahaugs.

Then treat yourself to Cape Cod Gumbo, Provincetown Paella, Portuguese Clam Chowder, Lobster Fra Diavolo, Zarzuela, and dozens of other Portuguese, Creole, and Cape Cod favorites. A list of fresh and frozen seafood substitutes for use anywhere in the country is a unique feature of this lively book.

You’ll learn the right way to eat broiled crab and the safe way to open oysters. You’ll even learn how to cook a sea serpent!