French Provincial Cooking (67 page)

It is not often that one comes across smelts at the fishmonger’s, but the easiest way to cook them when they are available is to dredge flour over them and fry them in deep oil in the usual way, draining them on kitchen paper and serving them with halves of lemon. Alternatively, they can be shallow-fried in butter.

There are two or three slightly varying versions in the presentation of this dish, but the main elements are red mullet or sea-bass (the Mediterranean
loup de mer
, sometimes translated as sea-perch, the ordinary French name for sea-bass being
bar
) and dried fennel stalks.

Get the fishmonger to clean the fish, but in the case of red. mullet leave in the liver, which is considered a delicacy. Make two deep crosswise incisions on each side of the fish. Stick two or three short pieces of fennel in the incision through which the intestines of the fish were removed. Paint the fish all over with oil, and grill on each side for about 7 minutes, turning them over once only. On a long fireproof serving-dish arrange a bed of dried fennel stalks, remove the grid with the fish on it from under the grill and place it over the fennel. In a soup ladle or small saucepan warm a small glass of Armagnac or brandy; set light to it; pour it flaming into the dish. The fennel catches alight and burns, giving out a strong scent which flavours the dish.

The fennel-burning performance can either be carried out in the kitchen or at the table under the noses of the guests. In either case it is advisable to have a second hot dish in readiness to receive the fish and its strained juices, for when it comes to serving the fish nobody wants little pieces of burnt fennel on his plate.

The red gurnet or gurnard (also sometimes called
rouget-grondin
in French, but not to be confused with the
rouget
proper, which is red mullet), is a rather ugly fish with a large head, which is likely to be a bargain when it appears on the fishmonger’s slab.

Poach a whole gurnard in cold water to cover, with a sliced onion, a bouquet, 2 tablespoons of vinegar and salt. When it is cooked, remove the skin and all bones. Put the fillets in a buttered fireproof dish.

Prepare a sauce exactly as for
raie gratinée au fromage,
page 291, and then bake the fillets of gurnard in the same way. The flesh of gurnard has some resemblance to that of the turbot.

‘Put your cleaned herrings into a china dish and pour a little oil over them. Sprinkle them with a little salt, add some sprigs of parsley, and turn them round in this seasoning. A quarter of an hour before they are to be served, grill the herrings; when they are done arrange them in the serving dish and pour over them a white butter sauce, into which you have stirred a tablespoon of mustard, and take care not to let the sauce boil.’

This recipe comes from the
Dictionnaire Général de la Cuisine Française,
1866. The following is a simple method of making a butter and mustard sauce; there is no risk of it boiling, for it is not cooked over the fire.

 

Put 2 teaspoons of yellow Dijon mustard into a sauce-boat or bowl. Stir in a tablespoon of chopped parsley, then 3 oz. of just barely melted butter. Stir gently until it is smooth and add a good squeeze of lemon juice. This makes enough sauce for four people.

Bake some very large potatoes in their jackets. Cut them in half lengthways, scoop out the centres, replace each with 2 soft herring roes previously cooked
minute in butter; add seasoning, melted butter, and breadcrumbs, and return to the hot oven for 2 or 3 minutes until browned. Serve with more melted butter. A quarter-pound of roes will be sufficient for 2 large potatoes.

The fish dishes of the Breton coast have the charm of very good quality ingredients very simply cooked.
Maquereaux à la façon de Quimper
are notable for the excellence of the sauce, which is so easy and quick to make that it is a most useful one to know, for it can be used for many other fish, for hard-boiled eggs, even for steak instead of
béarnaise
when one happens to be in a hurry.

Break the yolks of 2 eggs into a bowl, stir in a large teaspoon of yellow Dijon mustard, salt, freshly-ground pepper, a few drops of vinegar. Add a good tablespoon of chopped parsley and any other herbs which may be available, such as chervil, chives, tarragon or fennel. Now pour in slowly 2 oz. of just barely melted butter, stirring all the time. The sauce is ready and should be of the consistency of a thin mayonnaise. As it is not a very solid sauce and is inclined to sink into the fish or whatever it is poured over, it is best either to add it at the last minute or serve it separately in a bowl.

Mackerel in the Quimper way are poached in a highly seasoned
court-bouillon,
skinned and filleted when cool, arranged in a circle in a flat dish, garnished with a sprinkling of parsley and slices of lemon, with the sauce in the centre of the dish.

Coat the fillets of mackerel lightly with flour. Fry them in olive oil or in clarified butter. On the serving dish arrange a circle of hot sliced potatoes, seasoned with olive oil, pepper, salt and a little vinegar. In the centre put the fried mackerel fillets. Serve separately a freshly made
coulis
of tomatoes as described on pages 126 and 242.

When a respectable quantity of a baked or poached fish is left from one meal, about the two best ways to use it up are either cold with a mayonnaise or hot with a creamy cheese sauce, as described for
rate gratinée au fromage.
To make a fish mayonnaise with, say, a large breakfast cup of cold salmon, turbot, bass or other white fish meticulously freed of skin, and flaked, make a mayonnaise with one or two egg yolks and about
pint of olive oil. Season it with lemon juice rather than vinegar. Separate it into two equal parts. Into one mix the flaked fish. Arrange this in a mound on an oval or round dish, leaving a space all round to put some diced fresh or pickled cucumber, stoned green olives, a few slices of hard-boiled egg, strips of sweet pepper, a few capers, some peeled prawns—not all these things, of course: just two or three, enough to make a fresh and interesting looking dish. Cover the fish only with the reserved half of the mayonnaise and sprinkle chopped parsley or other fresh herbs lightly over the whole dish.

‘Cut a large whiting into good slices 2 centimetres thick. Roll them in flour, put them into a frying-pan in which you have heated a few tablespoons of olive oil. Cook them briskly, and when they are golden on one side, turn them and fry the other side. Drain them, and then let them simmer gently for 8 to 10 minutes in a sauce made exactly as explained for the
morue en rayte
(page 306), only in smaller quantities. Add also a few capers, and serve in the same way.’

REBOUL:
La Cuisinière Provençale

A very simple and effective recipe which can be applied to many sorts of fish, including red mullet, sea-bream, sea-bass, whiting and mackerel; I have chosen grey mullet as an example because for some reason it is sold in this country at prices far below its true value, and represents something of a bargain.

For 2 medium-sized fish, each weighing approximately 1 lb. gross weight, the other ingredients are a coffee-cupful (after-dinner size) of olive oil, 2 or 3 tablespoons of white wine, a dozen stoned black olives, some slices of orange or lemon, and, if possible, a little piece of fennel—otherwise a sprig of thyme or a bayleaf.

Put the cleaned fish into a shallow oval fireproof dish, pour the oil over them, add your herbs, a sprinkling of salt and pepper and the white wine. Bake, uncovered, for 15 to 20 minutes in a medium oven, Gas No. 4, 350 deg. F.

Now add the stoned black olives and cook another 5 minutes. The mullet can be served in the dish in which they have cooked, or be transferred to a flat serving dish, in either case with their own juice and slices of orange or lemon arranged along each fish. May be served hot or cold.

Skate, that spectacular fish which looks like some fantastic kite, has, when cooked in ideal conditions, a very fine flavour. It is one of the rare fish which is better kept for an interval of two to three days after it has been caught rather than eaten fresh from the sea but, since the circumstance of having too fresh a skate is scarcely likely to arise in most people’s lives, it is more important to know that the creature should reach the kitchen as soon as possible after the requisite wait of two or three days, for stale skate can be disastrous, and because of the powerful ammoniac smell which it gives out some fishmongers do not care to buy it. In England a good deal is sold to the fried fish shops, but poached and served with browned foaming butter according to the well-known French recipe, it can be a real treat.

The common skate,
raie batis,
and the thornback,
raie bouclée,
are the two varieties of skate most often to be found in French markets and here, and these fish are extraordinarily voracious. M. Donies, author of a manual called
Les Poissons de Mer
, asserts that in the stomach of one monster specimen of the common skate were found two large plaice, a lobster, two mackerel, a thornback nearly half a metre long and a salmon. A well-nourished fish, in short.

Supposing that you have a piece of wing of skate, weighing 1
to 1
lb., the other ingredients are an onion, a few sprigs of parsley, vinegar and butter. You also need a pan sufficiently wide for the piece of skate to lie flat while cooking. Into this pan you put the skate, cover it completely with cold water, add a sliced onion, a couple of sprigs of parsley, a little salt and 2 tablespoons of vinegar. Bring gently to the boil, with the pan uncovered. Thereafter let it barely simmer for 15 to 20 minutes. Lift it out and put it on a dish or board so that you can remove the skin and the large cartilaginous pieces of bone and divide the fish into 2 or 3 portions. This has to be done with some care, or the appearance of the fish will be spoiled. Transfer it to a fireproof serving dish, sprinkle it with chopped parsley, and keep it hot over a low flame while the black butter is prepared.