My friends in Motovun know that I would never let anyone cook meat in my house, let alone fish. The smell would be too much for me to bear. They were really surprised when I told them last night that I let Jože Dekleva—an old friend from Ljubljana who came to visit me this weekend with his wife and daughter—grill five large fish in my fireplace. A passionate cook, all he asked for was the coal from the fire, but I could not even imagine asking him to take it out of the house. Such was his passion.