French Provincial Cooking (68 page)

For this you put 2 oz. of fresh butter into a small frying-pan and heat it over a fast flame until it foams and begins to turn brown. At this precise moment, not sooner nor later, take the pan from the fire, for in a split second the butter will take on the deep hazel-nut colour which is
beurre noir
. (It should be only a little darker than
beurre noisette,
which is light hazel-nut colour.) Pour it instantly over the fish. Into the pan in which the butter has cooked, and which you have replaced on the fire, pour 2 tablespoons of wine vinegar, which will almost instantly boil and bubble. Pour this, too, over the fish, and bring at once to table; for, like all dishes in which
beurre noir
figures, the ideal is only attained when the dish is set before those who are to eat it with the sauce absolutely sizzling.

In one of those noisy, busy, cheerful Lyon bistros renowned for very simple, rather rough but well-cooked food, in copious quantities, I had skate with black butter beautifully served. We were sitting within a yard of the kitchen but even so the
patron
almost ran from the stove to our table with the little covered dish containing the skate and its hissing, bubbling sauce, to which a few capers, cooked with the vinegar, had been added.

Skate with black butter is so good that it seems unnecessary to go looking for other or more recherché methods of cooking it but, if you have some left over, or choose to cook an extra piece to serve next day, or find the black butter method impossible because of the last-minute cooking involved, it is excellent done with a creamy cheese sauce and augmented, if necessary, with a few potatoes, cooked and sliced into rounds.

Line a gratin dish with a layer of your prepared sauce, put in the skate, freed of all skin and bone, and put a ring of sliced potatoes round the edge. Pour the rest of the sauce over the top, covering the potatoes as well as the fish. Strew with breadcrumbs and a few little nuts of butter and bake in a fairly hot oven, Gas No. 7, 420 deg. F., for about 15 minutes. Finish for a minute under the grill.

 

Heat 1 oz. of butter; stir in one good tablespoon of flour. When it is smooth add a scant
pint each of the strained cooking liquid from the fish and creamy milk; the stock should go in first, and both should be warmed. Stir until the sauce is creamy, season lightly with freshly-milled pepper, salt and nutmeg. Leave to simmer very gently with a mat under the saucepan for 15 minutes, stirring at frequent intervals. Stir in 2 tablespoons of grated Parmesan or Gruyère.

These quantities are enough for a good large cup of cooked skate.

By name, sole or other fish fried
à /a meunière
are known to everyone who frequents restaurants either here or in France. In fact, it is rare to get it in precisely the correct condition because it is essentially a frying-pan-to-plate dish. The butter poured over the fried fish immediately it is cooked should still be foaming as it comes to table. Once the butter has cooled the dish is no longer the same; it has started to become greasy. The supposition that French cooking is greasy is largely due to dishes such as these being not so much imperfectly cooked as served in the wrong condition.

I give the recipe here in quantities for two people only. For 2 moderate-sized red mullet weighing, say, about
lb. each, first clarify a minimum of 2 oz. of butter. (Butter for frying fish is always best clarified—that is, gently melted over hot water, then filtered through a damp muslin; the risk of the fish sticking to the pan is then greatly diminished.) While this clarified butter is heating in the frying-pan, coat your fish very lightly in seasoned flour. Do not do this in advance, or the coating will turn soggy.

When the butter is hot, but not too hot, put in your fish and let it get quite crisp on one side before you lower the heat and gently turn the fish over: 10 minutes altogether of quite slow cooking, the fish having been turned once more during this time, will be sufficient. Remove the fish to a very hot dish. Quickly pour off the used butter (not down the sink, it will make a spluttering and a smell), wipe the pan clean, and into it put 2 oz. of fresh butter—not clarified this time—and when it is foaming pour it over the mullet, sprinkling a dusting of fine parsley over it and adding a squeeze of lemon as you bring it to table.

‘Scale a red mullet, make an incision just by the liver, season with salt and freshly-milled pepper, and leave to marinate in a little olive oil for about an hour. Cook it a minute or two, until it has stiffened, in the oil from the marinade. Drain it, sprinkle it while still hot, with fennel (the leaves) and
serpolet
(wild thyme), without overdoing it. Wrap it in 1 or 2 vine leaves, according to its size, tie it up not too tightly and finish cooking slowly on the grill, basting frequently with olive oil. Take care that it does not catch. Untie carefully, without damaging the vine leaves, and serve with a bowl of butter, melted but not clarified.’

Recipe from La Bonne Auberge at Saint-Étienne-les-Orgues

It is probably not so often in England that one can get either the vine leaves with which to cook mullet as in the foregoing recipe, or the dried fennel branches for the one on page 286, and then, when one or other of these ingredients is to hand, where is the mullet? So here is another and very simple way of grilling this delicious fish which, in England, you buy when you see it, for it is rarely to be had when you are counting on it.

Having gutted the mullets but left the liver intact in the fish, score them across twice on both sides, and marinate them for an hour or so in a little olive oil and 2 or 3 tablespoons of wine (either red or white, for mullet is one of the few fish which can be successfully cooked in red wine) and sprinkle the fish with salt, wild thyme and some chopped fennel leaves if you have them.

A large red mullet weighing 1 to 1
lb. will take about 10 to 15 minutes to grill, being started off close to the heat. Turn over once and, when the second side is crackling and crisp, move the grilling pan farther away from the heat.

When the fish is cooked, remove it carefully to the serving dish, put the pan with the juices and a dozen or so stoned black olives over a fast flame for a few seconds, pour over the fish and garnish with slices of orange or lemon.

This dish is also good cold.

St. Pierre is the large fierce-headed fish which we call John Dory. Like the haddock, it has the ‛thumb-marks of St. Peter’ on its back and its flesh is firm, white and with an excellent flavour, not unlike that of the turbot.

It is preferable to have the fish filleted; off each fish you get 2 rather large thick triangular fillets. Poach the fillets, allowing about 15 minutes, and finish them with the onion sauce as described for
sole à la deauvillaise,
(page 296) Madame Seignobos, in an interesting book of pre-1914 cookery, called
Comment on Forme une Cuisinière,
says that in some parts of France the St. Pierre is known as
l’horrible,
which seems rather unfair to the poor St. Pierre, for, while certainly no beauty, it has an expression of melancholy about its great head rather than anything savage or horrible.

‘During the stroll along the streets and the quays, the aroma of Dieppe makes itself remarked for its diversity and richness. All ports have a compounded smell of fish and tar and seaweed and alcohol and all the ordinary odours of closely-packed humanity, but that of Dieppe is peculiar to itself. I always feel that it is due to a lingering memory of the more exotic smells of Africa, ghostly scents from the days when the seafarers of Dieppe opened up the trade with West Africa and held for long a practical monopoly of ivory carving in Europe. (If you do visit the castle, there is a fine collection of ivories in its museum.)

‘But richest of all the constituents will be the appetising whiff of your own
sole dieppoise
as you approach your chosen restaurant, where your dish should now be ready.

‘This is what will have been going on in your absence. The chef will have taken a large sole, prepared it, placed it in a fireproof dish with salt, pepper, butter and a glass of white wine; he will then have placed it in the oven to poach. He will have prepared prawns and mussels, separately; the water in which they were cooked, together with the wine and butter used for the sole, will have been reduced and then mixed with more butter, flour and fresh cream. The sauce will have been cooked slowly until reaching the consistency of cream, and then sieved over the sole through a muslin. The prawns and mussels will have been added at the last moment, and no king will ever have had a finer dish set before him. And now you know why you have to order it an hour or more before your meal time.

‘This magnificent dish is not to be ruined by drinking cider with it. Every traveller, every guide-book, will tell you that cider is the drink of Normandy; that when in Rome you should do as the Romans, that you should always drink the drink of the country you are in. In a sense, cider is the drink of Normandy, but there is never traveller or guide-book to tell you when it is to be drunk. Certainly it is not to be drunk with fine dishes; honest wine is cheap all over France, and Normandy is no exception to that rule, even though the vine does not flourish there.

‘No, cider is to be drunk when you are thirsty, after a long walk or ride along a dusty road. Its pleasant sharpness drives away thirst, its deceptively imperceptible strength overcomes fatigue, the natural virtue of the fruit restores the elasticity of tired muscles. It is a splendid refresher between meals, but makes a deplorable
mésalliance
with delicate foods. It is sold in two forms, corked
(bouché)
or uncorked; the only difference I have ever been able to find between the two, save for a slight variation in price in favour of the latter, is that the uncorked has its sediment at top and bottom, and the corked, if any, at the bottom only.

‘You will meet, as I have done, the Englishman who turns up his nose at Norman cider as thin sour stuff not worth the trouble of drinking, then you will know that he has been brought up on the fabricated, gassy stuff, all but tasteless and non-alcoholic, which all too often goes by the name of cider in England and which appeals to the palates of those who have never passed beyond a teen-age appreciation of sugared and aerated liquids prepared by commercial laboratories. Be tactful with him, for he errs from ignorance. Do not laugh him to scorn or hold him up to contempt, but rather lead him quietly to a more mature appreciation. By doing so, you will probably add years to his life and greatly increase the pleasure he derives from it.’