Introduction by Anthony Bourdain
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!
Anthony Bourdain on the Provincetown Seafood Cookbook by Howard Mitcham
Provincetown Seafood Cookbook is finally back in stock! To celebrate, we’re excited to share Anthony Bourdain’s introduction to the cult classic cookbook, which coincidentally had a pretty sizable appearance in the new Bourdain biopic Tony, directed by Matthew Johnson. (This is also, coincidentally, why the book immediately fell out of stock as soon as the movie came out in theaters. Thank you everyone for your support!)
Once you’re done reading Anthony Bourdain’s introduction, excerpted below in full, as well as on our Substack, scroll down for a few of our favorite recipes from the cookbook, which Bourdain calls “one of the most influential of my life.”
Provincetown’s best-known and most-admired chef, Howard Mitcham, combines delectable recipes, delightful folklore, and darling illustrations to serve up a cult classic of seafood cookbooks.
INTRODUCTION BY ANTHONY BOURDAIN
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
RECIPES FROM PROVINCETOWN SEAFOOD COOKBOOK
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Howard Mitcham was the legendary author, chef, artist and poet whose three major cookbooks, Provincetown Seafood Cookbook, Creole Gumbo and All That Jazz: A New Orleans Seafood Cookbook, and Clams, Mussels, Oysters, Scallops and Snails have influenced a generation of today's chefs. James Howard Mitcham was born in Winona, Mississippi and graduated from Greenville High School together with his friend the writer Shelby Foote. At the age of 16 Mitcham became deaf from spinal meningitis, but that didn't seem to stop him or even slow him down as he regaled friends with stories in his booming, Southern-accented voice. He earned a degree in art and architecture at Louisiana State University, then moved to New York's Greenwich Village, where he ran the Jane Street Gallery in the 1940s. Many of Mitcham's friends learned sign language to converse with him. For people who didn't know how to sign, Mitcham would carry notebooks and pens so they could write him notes. He co-authored a food column for the Provincetown Advocate with Jan Kelly, who called Mitcham "brilliant [and] never boring." Mitcham died on August 22nd, 1996, at the age of 79.