Jane Grigson’s Fish Book – Read Now and Download Mobi

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JANE GRIGSON’S FISH BOOK

Jane Grigson was brought up in the north-east of England, where there is a strong tradition of good eating, but it was not until many years later, when she began to spend three months of each year in France, that she became really interested in food. Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery was the result, exploring the wonderful range of cooked-meat products on sale in even the smallest market towns. This book has also been translated into French, a singular honour for an English cookery writer.

After taking an English degree at Cambridge in 1949, Jane Grigson worked in art galleries and publishers’ offices, and then as a translator. In 1966 she shared the John Florio prize (with Father Kenelm Foster) for her translation of Beccaria’s Of Crime and Punishment. It was in 1968 that Jane Grigson began her long association with the Observer Magazine, for whom she wrote right up until her untimely death in 1990; Good Things and Food With The Famous are all based on these highly successful series. In 1973, Fish Cookery was published by the Wine and Food Society, followed by The Mushroom Feast (1975), a collection of recipes for cultivated, woodland, field and dried mushrooms. She received both the Glenfiddich Writer of the Year Award and the André Simon Memorial Fund Book Award for her Vegetable Book (1978) and for her Fruit Book (1982), and was voted Cookery Writer of the Year in 1977 for English Food. A compilation of her best recipes, The Enjoyment of Food, was published in 1992 with an introduction by her daughter, the cookery writer Sophie Grigson. Many of Jane Grigson’s books are published in Penguin.

Jane Grigson died in March 1990. In her obituary for the Independent, Alan Davidson wrote that ‘Jane Grigson left to the English-speaking world a legacy of fine writing on food and cookery for which no exact parallel exists… She won to herself this wide audience because she was above all a friendly writer… the most companionable presence in the kitchen; often catching the imagination with a deftly chosen fragment of history or poetry, but never failing to explain the “why” as well as the “how” of cookery’. Jane Grigson was married to the poet and critic, the late Geoffrey Grigson.

JANE GRIGSON’S

FISH BOOK

Illustrated by Yvonne Skargon

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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This edition first published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph 1993

Published in Penguin Books 1994

11

Original edition copyright © Jane Grigson, 1973

This edition copyright © Sophie Grigson, 1993

Illustrations copyright © Yvonne Skargon, 1993

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Some of the material in this book first appeared in Fish Cookery, published by the International Wine & Food Publishing Company in 1973, and in a Penguin paperback edition in 1975

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-194956-7

CONTENTS

Foreword

Note

Introduction

Choosing, Cleaning & Cooking Fish

Court Bouillons, Batters, Butters & Sauces

Anchovy

Bluefish & Pompano

Brill

Carp

Clams

Cod, Ling, Coley, Pollock, Pollack, etc.

Crabs

Eels & Elvers

Grey Mullet

Haddock

Hake & Silver Hake

Halibut

Herring

John Dory

Lobsters & Crawfish

Mackerel, Spanish Mackerel, Cero & King Mackerel

Monkfish or Angler-fish

Mussels

Oysters

Perch & Yellow Perch, Walleye, Zander & Fogas

Pike & Muskellunge or Pickerel

Prawns & Shrimps

Red Mullet

Salmon & Salmon Trout

Sardines & Pilchards

Scallops, Small & Large

Sea Bass, Sea Perch & Groupers

Sea Bream & Porgy

Sharks – Porbeagle, Mako & Tope

Sole, Dab & Plaice

Squid & Cuttlefish

Swordfish

Trout, Char, Grayling & Whitefish

Tuna or Tunny & Bonito

Turbot

Whitebait

Whiting

A Few Words About Other Fish & Crustaceans

Wind-dried or Wind-blown Fish

Fish Soups & Stews

Caviare & Other Hard Roes

Bibliography

Index

FOREWORD by Caroline Waldegrave

There are two cookery writers that most cooks put in a class of their own: Elizabeth David, sadly whom I never knew, and Jane Grigson, who I wished I’d known better. Jane was the queen of her subject and yet was completely unintimidating. She was clever, interesting and kind. She had a terrific sense of fun, a real love of life and an amazing sense of humour. Her laugh, which was sometimes a rather wicked giggle, was infectious. She always cheered everyone up.

Jane invited my husband and me to lunch with her at Broad Town after I’d only met her once, very briefly. I was nervous: I thought it would be like going to see the Headmistress, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Both William and I loved her on sight and didn’t want to leave.

I have always admired Jane, and am endlessly dipping into her books. Anything that I know that I find riveting about food has usually come from her. However, until I was most flatteringly asked to write the foreword to this book, I’d never sat down and read so much of her at one sweep. One thing I find interesting is that these days we all talk about the need for books to be user-friendly – but Jane invented all that years ago. The fascinating introductions to sections or recipes continually answer half-asked unspoken questions. None of the writing is contrived – so often in books you feel that the publisher has said to the author, can you write a ‘bit of an intro’. Not so with Jane.

The introductions in the Fish Book are a combination of fun and intellect. They are so alive that you can hear Jane telling you about Romesco peppers or the Marquis of Goulaine’s cook, Clémence. The recipes themselves assume a certain amount of basic knowledge but also give encouraging remarks like ‘don’t despair’ should the sauce curdle; she suggests some simple and effective remedies.

This book is filled with fascinating information. It is not written by someone who has simply researched the subject; it is written by someone who for twenty years or so lived the subject and must have kept copious notes. It is a timeless book. I do not believe it could ever be out of date as I doubt it was ever ‘in date’. It is a very generous book. Most of us forget from whose original recipe a new idea has been developed – but not Jane. She knows the history of the classic dishes and, although she has invented many new recipes herself, she constantly credits originators of recipes or stories. She is occasionally sharp with the reader. She remarks, for instance, that in 1826 a Mrs Johnston, writing on behalf of Meg Dods, noted that curried halibut is ‘good as long as you make up your own blend of spices’. Jane says that it ‘is rather daunting to think that, 160 years later, cookery writers are still saying the same thing. Are lazy practices eternal?’

Jane constantly flatters us – she assumes that we know so much more about poetry and history than probably many of us do. She is a great teacher because she gradually leads us in to new topics. And she writes so well that the book becomes almost unputdownable. The introduction to the section on eels makes one of the most charming stories I have read. If that sounds unlikely, read it. It begins with the discovery by the Danish biologist Johannes Schmidt who, after twenty-five years of research back-tracking eel larvae, eventually arrived right over their spawning ground. She recounts the epic journey of the eel to and from the Sargasso Sea. The trouble is that, by the end, you are so moved by the tenacity of the eels that Jane’s clear instructions on their preparation and cooking has a quality of somewhat Roald Dahl-like ruthlessness.

I love the constant, almost throwaway, bits of information. How many cookery books tell you that 18 fathoms is 118 feet, that the Venetians invented double-entry bookkeeping, assume that the reader knows all about the great Brazilian balloonist Alberto Santos Dumont, tell you that akee is properly the name of a tree originally from West Africa, and was introduced to Jamaica from Guinea by Captain Bligh of the Bounty? (You must read on to find out more about its poisonous potential.) Who but Jane would know that Grimod de la Reynière discovered brandade? Do you know why red mullet is sometimes called sea woodcock? Because, like woodcock, the red mullet is cooked with its liver. You must read about the scavenging life of a shrimp and discover that tempura was originally brought to Japan by the Jesuit missionaries with Francis Xavier in the sixteenth century.

Jane destroys myths – John Dory cannot really be St Peter’s fish as John Dory is a salt water fish that could not survive in the Sea of Galilee. St Peter’s fish is more probably a kind of trout that flourishes in Galilee – ‘a pleasant but not outstanding fish’. Unfortunately, it has no finger marks nor a coin in its mouth.

At Leith’s School we divide into two camps – those of us who love coriander and those of us who hate it. Jane explains that to some people it can taste like soap and that this is a chemical effect and cannot be changed. I will now be much more sympathetic to those who loathe a herb I love.

Sole is one of her favourite fish. She writes sadly that its behaviour and lifestyle is not that interesting. ‘The most dramatic episode of its life is when the left eye of the perfectly normal, fish-shaped larva moves up and over the head to the right side, as the sole flattens into its characteristic shape.’ That is how to write about cooking, or anything else: clear, funny, interesting and learned. Don’t let me keep you from reading Jane Grigson’s work for another moment.

Caroline Waldegrave is closely involved with the Jane Grigson Trust, and is Managing Director of Leith’s School of Food and Wine, which she opened with Prue Leith in 1975. In May 1991 the proceeds of a Leith’s School fund-raising dinner were used to set up the Jane Grigson Library at Guildhall Library. Caroline Waldegrave was a member of the Health Education Authority from 1985 to 1988 and, as Chairman of the Guild of Food Writers for two years, until March 1993, she was actively involved in the Guild’s campaign to improve institutional food, specifically in hospitals. She is the author, or co-author with Prue Leith, of numerous cookery books. She is married to William Waldegrave MP; they have four children.

NOTE

The sections of this book that Jane Grigson revised before her death in 1990 are indicated by a dagger next to the chapter title. Although the chapters without a dagger were not revised by her, they have been updated to include material from her books and articles which were published after Fish Cookery first came out in 1973.

Asterisks that appear in the text refer to recipes in the chapter Court Bouillons, Batters, Butters & Sauces at the beginning of the book.

INTRODUCTION

The problem with a book on fish is how to stop writing it. To start with, there are fifty-two species of edible fish (including many different varieties) listed by the White Fish Authority. This does not include either shellfish or freshwater fish. It leaves out the extensive choice of cured fish, as well as fish imported from abroad to be sold to foreigners living and working here.

Think of this when you next visit your fishmonger. Count the choice of fish for sale. And count how many different kinds you have eaten in the last few months. You may then agree with me that fish is one of the great untapped areas of exploration, for curiosity, and for the delight of the cook and her family and friends.

Compare this abundance with the choice of meat. How often do you come across an animal you have never heard of before? At least, heard of in culinary terms. For me, the answer is, ‘once’, and that was when I visited the strange shop of Monsieur Paul Corcellet in Paris – he had ready-prepared elephant’s trunk, python, crocodile and monkey for sale. Yet with fish one never seems to come to the end of perfectly reasonable possibilities.

To begin with, we eat too little of the best fish. We know about them, we may order them in restaurants on occasion, but we buy and cook them rarely. I am talking about sole, lobster, eel, scallops, oysters, clams, trout and salmon trout, monkfish or squid. We think they are too expensive, and go off and buy steak instead, or a large joint. Partly, this is convention. I read a statement one day which struck me as particularly foolish. The writer remarked that fish could not be served as a main course when men were present, as they needed steak or some other good red meat.

Why? The protein content of fish is as high as the protein content of meat. It is more easily digested, too – a point which concerns more men, I suspect, than women. And in the cooking of sole with its sauces, or of lobster, there is far more implied compliment to the guests than in grilling even the finest Scottish steak.

I suppose, too, that most of us grow up with the firm impression that fish means cod and plaice, overcooked and coated with greasy batter or coloured substances of unpleasant flavour. Certainly I was startled, when I first crossed the Channel, to find out that there were far more fish to eat than anyone had allowed me to believe. Later on, as we spent longish periods working in Europe, I discovered that many of the ‘exotic’ fish we had been enjoying swam in quantity and quality around the coasts of Great Britain, as well as in the Mediterranean and the Bay of Biscay, and off the Breton coast. Squid, for instance, and monkfish – two of the great delicacies of Italian and French cookery.

At the weekly stall in our local market at Montoire, forty-four miles north-west of Blois and 150 miles from the sea at Nantes, we can usually count between thirty and thirty-five different kinds of fish to buy. They are stiff-alive, as fishmongers say, with freshness. The owner’s wife, Madame Soarès, took our education in hand, persuaded us into trying new fish, and told us how to cook them. With gestures and vivid phrases, she described the sauces, the flavours, the pleasure we would have at supper that night.

I wish I could take our fishmongers in England to that stall in Montoire, and keep them there for a few months! Some of them have increased their range of fish to sell to our new communities of Chinese and Italians and so on, but few of them can tell a doubtful English customer how to cook these new creatures, or what they taste like. One has the idea that they have never tried them themselves at home. They lack the warm enthusiasm of Madame Soarès – ‘Here’s some parsley for you. Have a lemon, too. And why not buy a handful of shrimps – they’ll make a finish to the sauce! Extrà!’

The main fish authorities could be more help. They are anxious that we should eat more fish, it is true, but only more of the same few kinds. Their interest is in shifting the gluts of plaice and cod. They do not think of pointing out the special virtues of huss, let alone of the rarer John Dory. In the end it is up to the customers who enjoy good food to insist, and complain, and learn about fish, and complain again but more knowledgeably, so that things can be changed a little more rapidly.

Jane Grigson (1973)

CHOOSING, CLEANING & COOKING FISH

CHOOSING FISH

General advice – if you see a fish at the fishmonger’s that is strange to you, buy it, but do not expect much advice on how to cook it. Ask the name and look it up in the index at the back of this book when you get home.

More specifically – choose fresh fish, fish with a bright eye, red gills and no more than a seaweedy smell. Stale fish will look miserable; the eyes will be sunken or opaque, the skin gritty or dry or blobbed with yellow slime, it will smell, and you will be able to push the flesh in easily with your finger. As you may have concluded already, the buyer of fish needs character for all this sniffing and prodding. Getting good fish is easier once you find a fishmonger you can trust, but if he sells you poor fish, go back and tell him so.

The naming of fish is a tricky business. One name may be used for quite different species. Local names abound. There are misleading inducements: certain fish which bear labels saying ‘rock salmon’ and ‘rock turbot’ have nothing in common with ‘salmon’ and ‘turbot’. When you go on holiday, foreign names add to the confusion. Because of this intricately knotted muddle, the United Nations has produced the Multilingual Dictionary of Fish and Fish Products, an international compilation with names from fifteen languages, which attempts to straighten matters out with an elegant system of indexing. Local names are there, as well as the Latin ones. A book to be recommended to anyone who enjoys eating fish. (I can also recommend the Atlas of the Living Resources of the Seas, published by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations in 1972, again with an index but this time in three languages – English, French and Spanish; from her Majesty’s Stationery Office.)

CLEANING FISH

Although the fishmonger should do this for you, it is as well to know what to do. Cut off spiky fins and other extrusions first. Remove scales by pushing them up the wrong way with the blunt edge of a knife – spread newspaper round to catch the scales which fly about. Rinse quickly. Remove innards through the gills, or by slitting up the belly. Retain the livers and roes; they are often good to eat. Rub any stubborn traces of blood with a little salt. Cut off heads or not, as you please.

SKINNING AND BONING FLATFISH If you have to skin the fish yourself, make a cut across, just above the tail. Raise a corner of it and with salted fingers – salt gives a better grip – pull the skin slowly at first and then with a quick tug. Do the same thing with the other side.

I have a preference, with flatfish, for cooking them whole, on the bone, complete with head, but there are times when they must be filleted. This is easy with flatfish. Run a small, sharp knife along the central division of one side. Then scrape gently from the head end of the centre towards the side, keeping the knife close to the bone, until the whole fillet is raised. Repeat on the other side of the central division. Turn the fish over, and remove the last two fillets the same way. Therefore, four fillets come off one flatfish.

BONING WHOLE FISH, HERRING, ETC Cut off the head, slit the belly, and clean. Lay the fish on a board, cut side down, and press along the backbone steadily. Turn it over and pick out the backbone and the other small bones, which will be sticking up.

COOKING FISH

BOILING A method only suitable for soups, when every scrap of flavour is to be extracted from the fish for the benefit of the liquid.

BRAISING, BAKING AND ROASTING This includes all methods of cooking fish in the oven; sometimes on a bed of herbs and vegetables; sometimes with fish stock or wine, as well as butter and oil. Instructions are given with each recipe, as they can vary a great deal.

COOKING IN FOIL For large fish – Few of us have the space to store an enormous fish kettle that may be used only once or twice a year. Foil solves the problem and we can wrap the fish up without the least worry that it will lose flavour to the water or bouillon. And it cannot become too dry either. See the method for cooking salmon in foil on p. 306.

For medium fish – Place the foil on a baking sheet, and the fish on the foil. Pour over 4–6 tablespoons of good dry white wine, or put a lump of butter forked up with herbs into the cavity. Fold the foil round the fish, making a baggy parcel; finally, twist the edges into a firm seal.

For the method of cooking fish in paper, en papillote, see p. 60.

FRYING For finer fish, shallow-fry in clarified butter* or olive oil. Unclarified butter mixed with oil is a second best expedient, but the flavour will not be so good. Unclarified butter on its own burns easily.

Keep deep-frying for fish in batter and for whitebait. The temperature should be gas 5, 185–190°C (365–375 °F).

GRILLING Slash small plump fish, such as herring, mackerel, and mullet diagonally two or three times, brush with clarified butter or olive oil, and grill for 4–8 minutes a side.

Flatfish – Brush with clarified butter and seasoning. Allow 4–6 minutes a side, but timing depends on the thickness of the fish; chicken turbot will take longer than sole, for instance.

Fish steaks – These need not be turned while grilling. Set them in a well-buttered grill pan, brush the tops with clarified butter, season, and cook for up to 15 minutes. They are done when the flesh turns opaque and the central bones can be moved easily.

Boned fish and fillets – Always grill the fleshy, cut side first, brushing with butter and sprinkling with salt and pepper. When it is almost done, the fish can be turned over to give the skin a chance to be become brown and crisp.

POACHING This is the correct way of cooking fish in water or other liquids, which should be kept just below boiling point. For timing and court bouillon recipes, see p. 7.

Even shellfish such as crabs and lobsters should not be boiled hard. See relevant sections.

STEAMING The fish is laid on a buttered plate, or piece of foil, and set over a pan of simmering water until cooked. For success, the fish must be fresh, really fresh, and well seasoned. It is a method much better exploited by Chinese than by European cooks: they add aromatics such as spring onion, ginger and soy sauce. In the West, steamed fish has the dull sound of sick-room cookery, which is unfair as it can be delicious.

TO KNOW WHEN FISH IS COOKED Pierce the thickest part with a larding needle or skewer (not a fork). The flesh should be opaque, and part easily from the bone. Never overcook fish. It is surprising how little time it takes compared with meat. Take into account the fact that it will continue to cook slightly while keeping warm in the oven, and while being dished up and brought to the table.

COURT BOUILLONS, BATTERS, BUTTERS & SAUCES

COURT BOUILLONS

Until the introduction of kitchen foil, whole fish, or large pieces, were always cooked in a flavoured liquid or court bouillon. When the liquid was no more than salted water, the result was frequently a disaster, particularly if the fish had been allowed to boil rapidly. Few dishes are more disgusting than cod cooked in this way (the French call fish boiled in water poisson à l’anglaise). In religious households it cast additional gloom over Good Friday, and many other Fridays as well. I think that it has been the main reason for the general unpopularity of fish.

Now that foil has superseded the fish kettle things are better. Appropriate seasonings and aromatics are parcelled up with the fish, which cooks in its own juices plus a little butter or white wine. The flavour stays where it should, in the fish itself, and in the small amount of essence left in the foil as sauce. (See sauce Bercy*.)

Sometimes though, a court bouillon is essential for fish soup, for a sauce requiring a fair amount of the liquid in which the fish was cooked, for poaching turbot or skate, or for boiling live shellfish. Generally, vegetables and spices are simmered in the liquid for half an hour to extract their maximum flavour. When cool or just tepid the liquid is strained over the fish, which it should just cover. The pan, set over a moderate heat, comes slowly to the boil and is then allowed to do no more than simmer or shake slightly for the appropriate length of time, which is as follows:

If the fish is to be eaten cold, ignore these times. Instead, bring the pan slowly to the boil, give it time for a couple of strong bubblings, then remove it from the heat and allow it to cool. Because larger quantities of bouillon take longer to come to the boil and longer to cool down, this method is successful with large as well as small fish.

When cooking salmon, I combine the foil and bouillon methods. The fish is wrapped up in greased foil (use butter for hot salmon, oil for cold, to avoid congealed fat ruining the flavour and appearance), with a seasoning of salt and pepper. The parcel goes into enough cold water to cover it well. If you want it hot, follow the times given above: I use the second method for cold salmon. This is quicker than baking the salmon in the oven, yet it has the advantages of keeping all the flavour and moistness in the fish itself.

1. GENERAL PURPOSE COURT BOUILLON This makes an excellent start to fish soups.

2 carrots, sliced

16 lightly crushed black peppercorns

1 heaped teaspoon pickling spices

bouquet garni of appropriate herbs

600 ml (1 pt) water

600 ml (1 pt) dry white wine or dry cider

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

Simmer vegetables and spices in the liquid for half an hour. Allow it to cool and cook the fish according to instructions above. If you want to make a fish soup with the bouillon afterwards, tomatoes can be added, with a little sugar; cream and a couple of egg yolks make a final thickening. Fish cooked in the bouillon can be cut up or liquidized to give the soup body – or it can be left whole and served as the next course with bread and butter, or potatoes and butter, in the Breton style. Shellfish such as prawns or mussels can provide a final garnish. In other words a court bouillon can be the start of many good meals, from the homely to the luxurious.

2. SIMPLE COURT BOUILLON For salmon, skate, salt cod.

1 carrot sliced

1 onion, sliced

12 lightly crushed black peppercorns

salt to taste

1¼ litres (2 pt) water

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

3. SALTY COURT BOUILLON For crab and lobster, prawns, shrimps, etc.

seawater, plus salt or plain salted water (an egg should be able to float in it)

4. WHITE COURT BOUILLON For turbot, brill, smoked haddock.

1 thick slice lemon

salt, pepper (for smoked haddock, omit salt)

5. WHITE WINE COURT BOUILLON For marinaded herring, mackerel, jellied trout, Écrevisses à la nage (p. 464).

1 bottle dry white wine

3 medium carrots, sliced

4 onions, sliced or 6 shallots

bouquet garni

1 rounded teaspoon black peppercorns

salt

extra flavourings: chilli, aniseed, celery, tarragon

For whole fish, reduce by rapid boiling to half quantity and leave until tepid. Put in fish, bring to the boil, allow two bubblings, then remove pan from heat and leave to cool. For écrevisses and other small shellfish put into boiling reduced bouillon, cook for 10 to 12 minutes and leave them to drain in a colander: for à la nage dishes, serve a little bouillon with the shellfish.

FISH STOCK (Fumet de poisson)

The delightful name of fumet de poisson means scent or bouquet of fish. In reality, it is no more than fish stock, and the good thing about it is that it is simple and cheap to make. There are now fish stock cubes available and some fish stock ready made up by certain manufacturers, but there is nothing quite like one’s own fumet de poisson.

Most fishmongers will give you the necessary trimmings. Ask especially for turbot and sole bones because they have a high proportion of gelatine which improves the texture of the stock; monkfish, whiting, cod and haddock are all suitable. Avoid oily fish debris – such as mackerel, herring, etc.

Makes 2 litres (3½ pt)

1–1½ kg (2–3 lb) fish bones and heads

l onion, sliced

l carrot, sliced

white part of 1 small leek, sliced

1 stalk celery, sliced

bouquet garni

10 black peppercorns

450 ml (15 fl oz) dry white wine or good dry cider

2 teaspoons white wine vinegar

2 litres (3½ pt) water

Put all the ingredients in a large pan, adding the water last. Bring slowly to the boil, skimming until the liquid is clear. Cover the pan and simmer it – fish stock should never boil – for about 30 minutes. Do not be tempted to cook it longer or the stock will taste gluey. Strain the stock through a double-muslin-lined sieve. Salt is not added, since the stock may well need to be reduced if you are making a sauce.

NOTE Any left over can be stored in two ways: either in conveniently sized pots in the freezer or else in the form of a fish glaze that can be kept for weeks in the refrigerator.

To make fish glaze – Strain the stock into a wide, shallow pan and boil it down to a tenth or even a twentieth of its original volume, depending on how concentrated it was in the first place. When the liquid is thick and syrupy, pour it in a little container and cover it when cold. A teaspoonful will add flavour to many fish sauces without you having to make stock.

Aspic Jelly

Leave the strained fish fumet of the main recipe to cool. You will then be able to see how much extra gelatine it requires to achieve a firm set: this will depend on the bones used, the quantity of skin, etc. Clarify with the shell and white of an egg (see ingredients which follow).

To get the jelly to brushing consistency, stand the bowl of fumet in a bowl of warm water until it begins to melt. Brush it over the fish, which should be placed on a wire tray. When the first coat is dry, put decorations in place with a dab of jelly, then brush over again until the desired thickness is obtained. Left-over jelly can be chopped and placed round the fish.

If you don’t wish to make a fish fumet, an ordinary aspic jelly will do instead. Put into a saucepan:

450 ml (15 fl oz) water

90 ml (3 fl oz) white wine vinegar

½ onion, chopped

½ carrot, chopped

½ stalk celery, chopped

rind and juice of ½ lemon

30 g (1 oz) gelatine

crushed shell and white of 1 egg

Bring all the ingredients slowly to the boil, whisking to dissolve the gelatine. A thick white foam will develop on top. Remove from heat when boiling, leave 10 minutes, then strain through a cloth. When the stock is tepid, add either 120 ml (4 fl oz) dry white wine, or 90 ml (3 fl oz) Madeira, Marsala or sweet sherry – these two amounts may be adjusted to taste: the flavour should be strong, not overpowering.

NOTE For coating cold fish, many people prefer the flavour of jellied mayonnaise*.

SHELLFISH STOCK

This robust stock I find handy to have in the freezer, along with more classic fish stocks, as a spicy base for soups and stews. Adjust the quantity of tomato to what you are likely to need – 1 or 2 ripe tomatoes will just help the sweetness without being too identifiable, whereas a medium can or 4 huge ripe tomatoes will give a more definite accent. You can use wine as part of the stock, or 2 or 3 tablespoons of sherry vinegar: on the whole I stick to water – then add reduced red or white wine or a little sherry vinegar when the stock comes into use.

It is prudent to ask the fishmonger in advance to save you lobster, crab and other shellfish debris, as well as the heads and bones of the best white fish, otherwise he will fling them into the dustbin as he prepares his display and may have nothing to give you when you turn up at the shop.

Makes about 3¾ litres (6 pt)

2½ kg (5 lb) mixed shellfish and fish debris

5 cloves garlic, in their skins

2 large onions in their skins, each stuck with 1 clove then quartered

2 medium leeks, sliced

2–4 tomatoes or a medium can (see above)

1 medium to large carrot, coarsely grated

2 outer stalks celery, sliced

30 g (1 oz) parsley

2–3 bay leaves

2–3 sprigs of basil or fennel branches

4 sprigs of fresh thyme or 1 teaspoon dried thyme

1 or more hot red chillies

1 good pinch of saffron strands or 1 piece of dried orange peel

salt, freshly ground black pepper

Put the large shellfish and fish debris into a large pot. Crush the garlic with the blade of a knife and add it, with the skin still attached, to the pot. Put in all the other ingredients, plus 4 litres (7 pt) of water. Bring to the boil, then continue to boil steadily but not too vigorously for 30 minutes. Strain through a double layer of muslin. Add seasoning according to your proposed use for the stock.

TWO BATTERS

EGG WHITE BATTER

125 g (4 oz) plain flour

pinch of salt

1 tablespoon olive oil

generous 150 ml (5 fl oz) lukewarm water or beer

white of l large egg

Mix the flour and salt with the oil and the water or beer, beating well together. Cover and leave in the kitchen, not the refrigerator or cold larder, until required. This gives the flour a chance to ferment slightly, which improves the texture of the batter. Just before the batter is required, beat the egg white stiff and fold it in carefully.

WHOLE EGG BATTER

This is a tempura batter from Japan, which is quick and simple to make, and very light; it is particularly good for large prawns.

Break an egg into a measuring jug. Add four times its volume of water, then five times its volume of flour. Whisk well until smooth.

SAVOURY AND OTHER BUTTERS

The underlying principle of northern fish cookery is butter. So long as you have butter and the usual seasonings, you can do without many other things. Butter comes before wine, cream or eggs.

A fresh trout fried in clarified butter is food for the most demanding. So is Dover sole, brushed with melted butter, then grilled and served with maître d’hôtel butter as sauce and seasoning. A cod, salmon or halibut steak baked in well-buttered foil is a delicious thing to eat. And what about the sauces – how many of them begin and end with butter? Can you imagine eating whitebait or smoked salmon without brown bread and butter? What about shrimps potted in mace-flavoured butter? And all the traditional English pastes made from smoked haddock and smoked salmon, bloaters and kippers, pounded up with butter? Think, too, of the things we serve with fish – well-buttered spinach, new potatoes in parsley butter, sorrel or gooseberries melted to a purée in butter, and slices of mushroom stewed in butter. Have you ever tried mussels or oysters baked in garlic butter?

Butter is the flavour one misses most if margarine or some kind of innominate dripping has been used instead, or one of the tasteless oils of modern cookery. The only alternative for frying and grilling is olive oil and occasionally lard or bacon fat. But for all sauces except mayonnaise, vinaigrette and tomato sauce, which do need olive oil, butter is essential.

The best butter to choose is unsalted, preferably from Normandy. Lightly salted butters such as the Danish Lurpak do almost as well, but Normandy butter is best. And the finest comes from Isigny, a small port on the Cherbourg peninsula. This is easy to buy in Britain nowadays; use plenty, and avoid meanness. It is better to buy a cheaper fish than to economize on butter. Our own butters are made from sweet cream (most European butter is prepared from ripened cream), and have a fair amount of salt added to them: for these two reasons they are not as good for savoury butters.

CLARIFIED BUTTER

Small quantities of butter can be clarified and strained into the frying pan for immediate use, but if you cook a lot of vegetable dishes and fish, it is worth making it in quantity. Store it in a covered jar in the refrigerator: it will keep for weeks. The great advantage of clarified butter is that it burns at a higher temperature than unclarified. Any cook will see the advantage of this. It also contributes to a particularly pure butter flavour that enhances the quality of simple dishes.

Cut up two or three packets of butter and bring them to the boil in a heavy pan. Boil for 1 minute, then set aside to cool for 10 minutes. Strain through a damp muslin so that the white salty crust is held back, leaving a clear yellow oil. This will solidify when completely cold.

Concentrated butter is sometimes available. It is a little better for frying than butter, but as it has some milk solids put back in it, it does not fry at such a hot temperature as clarified butter. It is, however, easy to clarify.

BEURRE MANIÉ

This is a kneaded butter – a useful substance for thickening sauces, soups and stews at the end of the cooking time. A tablespoon of butter is mashed together with a tablespoon of flour to form a paste. This is divided into knobs, which are stirred one by one into the almost boiling liquid until it reaches the desired thickness. Allow 5 minutes over a moderate or slow heat. If the sauce begins to boil it will taste floury.

This sounds odd – one simmers a béchamel or velouté sauce for at least 20 minutes to lose the flavour of flour in the roux. But with beurre manié one keeps the sauce below simmering point and cooks it for no longer than 5 minutes with exactly the same purpose.

BEURRE NOISETTE

Butter cooked to a golden-brown, in other words to a nut or noisette colour. Capers, lemon juice and parsley are often added. A last minute sauce, an essential part of Raie au beurre noir, p. 487.

SAVOURY BUTTERS

ANISE BUTTER Mix 1 tablespoon Pernod or pastis with 125 g (4 oz) butter.

BEURRE COLBERT Add 2 teaspoons of finely chopped tarragon to the beurre maître d’hôtel below, plus 2 or 3 tablespoons of meat glaze or rich meat jelly from underneath beef dripping.

BEURRE MAÎTRE D’HÔTEL As far as fish is concerned, this is the most useful of the savoury butters, particularly with grilled sole, salmon, turbot, cod – in fact, with almost any other fish.

250 g (8 oz) lightly salted butter

60–75 g (2–2½ oz) chopped parsley

lemon juice to taste

Soften the butter to a thick cream, then mix in the parsley and lemon juice. Mint, savory, tarragon or chive butter can be made by substituting the herb for all or part of the parsley.

You can form the butter into a roll, wrap it in foil and store it in the refrigerator; then neat round slices can be cut off as required.

GARLIC BUTTER Cream 250 g (8 oz) unsalted butter. Add 3 large cloves of garlic, finely chopped, 30 g (1 oz) chopped shallot, onion or spring onion, 50 g (1½ oz) chopped parsley, 1–2 teaspoons of fine sea salt, and freshly ground black pepper. This butter is especially useful for mussels and shellfish baked in scallop shells or small pots.

LIME BUTTER Lime butter is even nicer with fish than maître d’hôtel. Here is a recipe for it given by Skeffington Ardron in The Guardian.

To 60 g (2 oz) lightly salted butter, add 2 teaspoons fresh lime juice, 2 teaspoons grated peel, 1 teaspoon chopped chives, a pinch of powdered thyme, and a very small pinch of grated ginger.

MONTPELLIER BUTTER (Elizabeth David’s version) Weigh out 125 g (4 oz) of the following, in approximately equal amounts – watercress, spinach and tarragon leaves, parsley, chervil. If you grow salad burnet, the French pimprenelle, add some of that, too. If you have no chervil, double the quantity of parsley.

Pour boiling water over the herbs, leave for 1 minute, then drain and dry as completely as possible. Pound in a mortar, with 6 anchovy fillets, 2 tablespoons capers, 4 miniature gherkins, the yolks of 1 raw and 3 hard-boiled eggs. When all is smooth, mash into 125 g (4 oz) soft butter. Sieve and mix in 5 or 6 tablespoons of olive oil gradually. Finally sharpen with a little lemon juice. Store, covered, in the refrigerator where it will keep for several days, but remove in good time or it will be too hard to spread over the cold salmon, or whatever other fish you are eating it with. It can also be served with hot grilled, fried or poached fish.

I find that this process is much speeded by using a blender. Put the herbs and pickles in together, using the olive oil to keep them moving. When smooth add the eggs and mash into the softened butter by hand, or use an electric beater.

MUSHROOM BUTTER Cream 250 g (8 oz) unsalted butter. Add 3 large cloves of garlic, finely chopped; 75 g (2½ oz) mushrooms, finely chopped; a slice of cooked ham, finely chopped; and 60 g (2 oz) chopped parsley; finally, add salt and freshly ground black pepper.

MUSTARD BUTTER Cream 125 g (4 oz) unsalted butter. Add 1 tablespoon French mustard (or to taste), then season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Use with herring and mackerel.

ORANGE BUTTER Although this butter can be made with sweet oranges quite successfully, it is best made with Seville oranges. To 125 g (4 oz) unsalted butter, add 4 teaspoons orange juice, 4 teaspoons grated peel, 2 teaspoons of tomato concentrate (or to taste), and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

See individual sections for butters based on the following: Anchovy, Lobster, Prawn & Shrimp, Smoked Salmon.

HOT SAUCES

ELIZA ACTON’S RICH MELTED BUTTER

This is a useful basic sauce for fish and comes from Eliza Acton’s Modern Cookery. Many flavourings can be added to it – hard-boiled egg, lobster, oyster, crab, anchovy essence, some pounded anchovy fillets with mace and cayenne, or shrimps.

1 dessertspoon plain flour

½ saltspoonful salt

300 ml (½ pt) cold water

125–175 g (4–6 oz) butter

‘Mix to a very smooth batter a dessertspoonful of flour, a half-saltspoonful of salt, and half a pint of cold water: put these into a delicately clean saucepan, with from four to six ounces of well-flavoured butter, cut into small bits, and shake the sauce strongly round, almost without cessation, until the ingredients are perfectly blended, and it is on the point of boiling; let it simmer for two or three minutes, and it will be ready for use. The best French cooks recommend its not being allowed to boil, as they say it tastes less of flour if served when it is just at the point of simmering.’

BÉCHAMEL SAUCE

This is the most useful sauce of home cookery. If you have a freezer, make it in quantity from time to time and store it in containers of every size from 3 tablespoons up to 600 ml (1 pt). The recipe following gives 600 ml (1 pt) more or less, depending on how far you reduce it.

600 ml (1 pt) milk

1 large shallot or medium onion, stuck with 2 cloves

1 carrot, quartered

5-cm (2-inch) piece celery stalk

bouquet garni

salt, pepper

60 g (2 oz) butter

60 g (2 oz) plain flour

Bring the milk slowly to the boil with the vegetables, bouquet and seasoning. Leave it over a very low heat to infuse for half an hour; it should not boil, just keep it very hot.

Melt the butter in a heavy pan, stir in the flour and cook to a roux for two minutes, without browning it. Gradually stir in the flavoured milk, through a strainer. Do this off the heat and use a balloon whisk. Return it to the heat, stir and bring to simmering point, then leave it to cook down steadily to the consistency of double cream. Stir occasionally. Making this sauce well can take an hour or even longer. Of course you do not need to stand over it all the time, but you should give it a chance to mature.

QUICK METHOD Make a butter and flour roux as above. Meanwhile bring the milk to the boil, then add it to the roux gradually. Put in the vegetables, bouquet and seasoning and simmer steadily, with the occasional stir, for at least 15 minutes, preferably 25. Strain before serving or storing.

ANISE SAUCE Into the béchamel, stir in Pernod, anisette or pastis Ricard, all aniseed-flavoured, until the taste is delicate but noticeable. This sauce should be served immediately.

SAUCE AURORE It is easy to see how this most beautiful of the béchamel variations was given its name. The flush of colour, from the mixture of ivory béchamel and coral tomato purée, has a Homeric tone of early morning rose. Some recipes are content to achieve this effect with a couple of squirts from a tube of tomato concentrate, but this does not give the right texture at all, or the right delicacy of flavour.

In classic French cookery, sauce aurore partners fine white fish – turbot, sole, monkfish – as well as chicken, and eggs and some vegetables of the more watery character.

Instead of béchamel sauce, a mornay or velouté sauce can be used.

300 ml (10 fl oz) béchamel sauce

up to 300 ml (10 fl oz) tomato sauce*

60 g (2 oz) butter

Heat the béchamel sauce to boiling point, then stir in the tomato sauce gradually, stopping when you get to the flavour and colour you prefer. So much depends on the original quality of the tomatoes that one cannot be precise. Bring to the boil again, remove from the heat and whisk in the butter in little bits. Check the seasoning.

Serve with turbot baked in milk, sole, a tailpiece of fresh cod or monkfish – any firm white fish of quality.

SAUCE CHIVRY I like herb sauces. They mean summer when so many fish are at their best – and look their best, served with a pale green sauce. I like walking down the garden – the genius of man having placed the herb patch as far away from the kitchen as possible, on the principle, I suppose, that exercise is good for cooks – past catalpa and hibiscus, to find chives, tarragon, and parsley, which flourish at the foot of a most entangling rose.

Recipes for herb sauces and butters usually glide over the main pitfall. They state 1 tablespoon, or 3 sprigs, with authority. What this apparently firm direction means is ‘a handful, more or less, as opposed to a sackful’. Reflect on this: last year we split a bushy tarragon plant in two, half for Wiltshire, half for our tiny garden in the Bas-Vendômois. In France eight or nine leaves will permeate a chicken: here I use three times as many and still don’t quite achieve the same result. There is a veil between us and the sun in England, a lack of clarity of light. To be fair, I should remark that a Vendômois friend grows basil in a successful quantity, but it hasn’t the flavour of Ligurian or Provençal basil – again the sun. So be guided by the season, and by your own taste and climate. Be prepared to use far more than I – or anyone else – suggest.

tarragon, chives, chervil, parsley, watercress

1 glass dry white wine

450 ml (15 fl oz) béchamel sauce

150 ml (5 fl oz) cream

90 g (3 oz) spinach (1 handful)

60 g (2 oz) butter

Chop equal quantities of the first four herbs, with half the amount of watercress (which has a strong flavour, so must not be allowed to be too dominant). Put half into a small pan with the wine, and boil down until there is about a tablespoon or two of liquid left. Add to the béchamel sauce with the cream, and leave to simmer. Cook the spinach with the remaining herbs. Press out all liquid, and combine this greenery with the butter. When you are ready to serve the sauce, stir in the spinach butter gradually until the flavour seems right to you: don’t let the sauce boil while you do this, or the flavour of the butter will be spoilt.

A good sauce with poached salmon or bass, or with any really fresh fish of a non-oily kind.

NOTE Keep this sauce for summer. Don’t be tempted to try it with dried herbs.

CREAM SAUCE This expression is sometimes used as a polite way of saying béchamel, but it should be béchamel sauce with a generous amount of cream added. If this makes the sauce too thin, boil it down. Add a final knob of butter before serving and a squeeze of lemon juice if you like.

CURRY SAUCE When making the béchamel, cook a medium-sized chopped onion slowly in the butter, and add 2 teaspoons of curry powder with the flour. Finish in the usual way. It is much improved by the addition of 150 ml (5 fl oz) cream, beaten with an egg yolk, particularly if it is being served with scallops. Remember not to let the sauce boil once the cream and egg yolk have been added. This is a true French sauce, with the curry powder being used as a spicing ingredient; it has no real relationship to Indian cooking.

MORNAY AND MUSTARD SAUCES See the velouté variations on p. 22 and apply the same seasoning to a béchamel base.

MUSHROOM SAUCE Either cook 175 g (6 oz) mushrooms in 60 g (2 oz) butter and add them to a béchamel sauce; or cook the mushrooms in the butter for the sauce with a tiny chopped clove of garlic. Add flour, then the hot milk in the usual way. Flavour with plenty of black pepper and a little lemon juice; cream does not come amiss. However, see Anchovy and mushroom sauce, p. 50.

PARSLEY SAUCE To the béchamel, add up to 150 ml (5 fl oz) double cream and reduce slightly. Finish with about 60 g (2 oz) chopped fresh parsley, a few drops of lemon juice and a knob of butter. This is a good sauce, if rich and made with plenty of parsley.

SAUCE SOUBISE The Hôtel Soubise in the Marais district of Paris, that once belonged to the great Soubise family, now houses the French archives. It is a building of elegance, beautiful statues and colonnade but not an onion dome in sight.

The sauce was invented by Marin, chef to Charles de Rohan, Marquis de Soubise, at the beginning of the eighteenth century. It has a particularly delicate flavour. Chop a large onion. Put it into a pan and cover it with boiling water. Cook for 3 minutes, then drain and return it to the pan with a tablespoon of butter. Cover the pan and stew the onion, without colouring it, until soft. Pour in 300 ml (10 fl oz) béchamel sauce and simmer for 15 minutes. Sieve or blend to make a smooth sauce. Stir in 4 or 5 tablespoons of double cream – the better the cream, the better the flavour – and heat through. Add salt.

See individual sections for other sauces, i.e. Anchovy sauce, Anchovy and mushroom sauce, Crayfish sauce (Sauce Nantua), Lobster sauce, Mussel sauce, Prawn sauce, Shrimp sauce.

VELOUTÉ DE POISSON

The success of a velouté sauce depends on a good stock – the same recipe can be used with meat and poultry stocks instead of fish fumet – and on the gentle reduction that matures the flavour and makes the texture as velvety as possible. The sauce can be served on its own, or used as the base for further complexities. It is fine, for instance, to add mussel or oyster liquor and then reduce again, perhaps with some cream (see sauce Normande below).

Makes about 600 ml (1 pt)

60 g (2 oz) butter

4 tablespoons plain flour

1 litre (1¾ pt) fumet de poisson*

about 100 g (3½ oz) chopped mushroom stalks (optional)

crème fraîche or double cream, to taste

salt, pepper

Melt the butter, stir in the flour and cook it for 1 minute, stirring most of the time. Meanwhile heat the fumet to boiling point. Pour it on to the roux gradually, off the heat, using a whisk to make the sauce as smooth as possible.

Now add the mushroom stalks, if you have them. Bring the sauce back to boiling point, stirring. Lower the heat, or put the pan over another pan of simmering water and leave the sauce to reduce by almost half. Allow at least 45 minutes: it will take longer to reduce over water than if it is directly on the stove (in which case I would recommend that you use a heat-diffuser to make sure it cannot catch). If a skin forms, whisk it in.

Finally add as much crème fraîche or cream as consistency, flavour and your taste demand. Strain out the mushroom stalks if used and season it according to the end you have in mind for the sauce. Serve it very hot.

SAUCE ALLEMANDE Make the velouté sauce. Beat up 2 egg yolks with 60 ml (2 fl oz) of single and 60 ml (2 fl oz) of double cream. Pour in a little of the sauce, return to the pan and stir steadily over a low heat (don’t boil) until the sauce is very rich. Use with the finest white fish, poached or baked in white wine or fish stock; the stock is used in making the basic velouté sauce.

SAUCE ANDALOUSE Make the velouté. Peel and chop 2 very large tomatoes. Cook them in a little olive oil, with a clove of garlic, crushed. When they are reduced to a purée, add to the sauce, plus 2 canned peppers, chopped small. (Fresh peppers can be used but they must first be seeded, then boiled, peeled and chopped.) Last of all stir in some chopped parsley. A good sauce for mullet of all kinds, and any firm fish such as tuna.

MORNAY SAUCE Add 2 heaped tablespoons grated Parmesan, 2 tablespoons grated Gruyère and some grated nutmeg. Dry Cheddar can be substituted for Gruyère but you will need more of it for a good flavour. Do not allow the sauce to boil once the cheese is added.

NOTE This sauce can also be made with béchamel.

MUSTARD SAUCE To the velouté sauce, made with half milk and half fumet de poisson, add a teaspoonful of French mustard – or more, according to taste – just before serving. More successful than mustard added to béchamel.

SAUCE NORMANDE Today’s version of a very grand sauce is subtly different every time you make it because the juices from cooking the varying garnishes are added to it. Should you be using prawns or shrimps, boil up their shells with some water or fish stock, whizz the whole thing in the processor and strain off the liquid through a cloth: it can go into the sauce as well.

Makes 600 ml (1 pt)

600 ml (1 pt) velouté de poisson

up to 500 ml (18 fl oz) fish fumet*

oyster, mussel and prawn or shrimp cooking liquor

liquor from cooking a mushroom garnish (optional)

4 egg yolks

125 ml (4 fl oz) crème fraîche or double cream

60 g (2 oz) unsalted Normandy butter, cut up

salt, pepper, chilli powder (cayenne pepper), lemon juice

Heat the velouté in a wide pan with the fumet and shellfish liquors and the mushroom liquor if you have it, and reduce it to 600 ml (1 pt).

Beat the egg yolks with half the crème fraîche or cream, stir in a little sauce and then stir this back into the pan, keeping the heat low. Keep stirring, without boiling, until the sauce is thick.

Off the heat, stir in the butter and the rest of the cream. Season to taste. A few drops of lemon juice will improve the flavour if double cream is used.

SAUCE NORMANDE (a simpler version) Use when a creamy sauce is needed for a gratin, or to go with a fish pie, or with some poached fish of a firm texture.

60 g (2 oz) butter

3 tablespoons plain flour

150 ml (5 fl oz) fish stock or liquor from shellfish or light meat stock

300 ml (10 fl oz) double cream or single and double mixed

salt, pepper

dash of wine vinegar

Make the sauce in the usual way, adding the vinegar just before serving, when the pan is off the heat. Sherry or Madeira can be used instead; or dry white wine or vermouth, in which the fish has been cooked. Reduce it to a few tablespoons after removing the fish.

POULETTE SAUCE Make the velouté sauce with a few more mushrooms than usual – about 125 g (4 oz) in all. Beat up 2 egg yolks with 2 tablespoons double cream, and incorporate this with the hot sauce, which should not be allowed to boil. Season with lemon juice and chopped parsley. An excellent sauce for mussels or eel, and the liquid from cooking that fish is used to make the velouté sauce.

SAUCE AU CIDRE

This is a Normandy sauce, like the white wine sauce which follows.

1 onion or 2 shallots, chopped

trimmings of the fish, plus its bones

150 g (5 oz) butter

about 600 ml (1 pt) cider

bouquet garni

salt, pepper

3 tablespoons plain flour

2 egg yolks

60 ml (2 fl oz) double cream

lemon juice

Fry the onion or shallot, and the trimmings of the fish, very gently, in 30 g (1 oz) of butter. When the onion begins to soften, pour in the cider, plus 150 ml (5 fl oz) water. Add the fish bones, bouquet and a seasoning of salt and pepper. Simmer steadily for half an hour, with the lid off the pan; there should then be between 450 and 600 ml (¾–1 pt) of stock.

Make a roux with 60 g (2 oz) of butter and the flour, add the strained stock, and complete the sauce as if it were a velouté, thickening it with the egg yolks beaten into the cream. Just before serving, whisk in the last 60 g (2 oz) of butter and season with salt, pepper and lemon juice.

SAUCE AU VIN BLANC

This is one of many similar recipes (see sauce Bercy*) which makes a good general sauce for many fish.

300 ml (10 fl oz) white wine

1 litre (1½ pt) water

1 kg (2 lb) fish bones

bouquet garni

1 carrot, sliced

1 onion, sliced

60 g (2 oz) butter

3 tablespoons plain flour

salt, pepper

Put the first six ingredients into a large pan and boil steadily for half an hour. Strain off and measure the liquid. If necessary boil down again to 450 ml (15 fl oz). Use this stock, and the cream, to make a velouté sauce in the usual way. Let it mature and thicken by slow simmering.

CREAM SAUCES MADE WITH CREAM AND BUTTER

Twenty or so years ago, one used to come across people who would throw up their hands in horror at the thought of cream and butter sauces. Nowadays, crème fraîche has changed all that – although one would wish it were a little more readily available. Otherwise, you can use half soured, half double cream.

SAUCE À LA CRÈME NORMANDE

This wonderful sauce is the simplest I know. Once it was made on both sides of the Channel (there are recipes for it in eighteenth-century English cookery books); now you find it nowhere but in Normandy or under Norman influence. Serve it with salmon and salmon trout, or with wild river trout if you can get it. Use it as a binding sauce for mushroom fricassee – or to reheat a little left-over cooked turbot or salmon.

A chopping of fines herbes is the usual flavouring, but nutmeg could be used instead. If you confine yourself to tarragon, with a little chervil, it makes an admirable sauce for braised or poached chicken.

For about 300 ml (10 fl oz) cut up 175 g (6 oz) unsalted butter and melt it gently in a 21-cm (8½-inch), heavy frying pan, preferably a non-stick one. Pour in 200 ml (7 fl oz) crème fraîche or half soured and half double cream. Stir all the time with a wooden spoon as the sauce bubbles down to a rich thickness. Do not let it gallop but bubble it steadily to the consistency you need, which will be thicker for a binding sauce than for pouring.

Should the sauce show a tendency to oiliness, which can happen if you work too fast or, I suspect, if the cream is not the freshest and best, rapidly stir in a tablespoon of very cold water, off the heat. Season to taste.

SAUCE VERTE DE CHAUSEY

The Îles Chausey, several miles out from Granville in Normandy, once provided granite for the quays and cathedrals and monasteries of that coast, including Mont St Michel. Whether this sauce was made there, I have not been able to discover. Perhaps it was named for its dark, speckled-green colour, rather the effect of granite. The mustard makes it a good sauce for gurnard, garfish, herring, mackerel, saithe or huss. If you cut down the mustard, or increase the cream and butter, it goes well with salmon. It is a great improver of the cod family.

Makes about 250 ml (8 fl oz)

30 g (1 oz) finely chopped shallots

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

2 tablespoons chopped parsley, plus extra, to taste

125 g (4 oz) unsalted butter

1 scant tablespoon Dijon mustard

dash of white wine vinegar

125 ml (4 fl oz) crème fraîche or half soured, half double cream

1 tablespoon chopped tarragon

salt, pepper

Cook the shallots and garlic with the parsley very slowly in half the butter in a smallish non-stick frying pan or sauté pan. When they are tender add the rest of the butter and then the mustard and vinegar. Stir until the mixture bubbles again, and pour in the crème fraîche or cream. Keep stirring and let the sauce thicken a little. Off the heat, add the chopped tarragon, extra parsley, salt and pepper.

You can serve the sauce as it is, but I prefer to smooth it further in the blender. A few short bursts is enough, leaving plenty of speckled interest. Reheat the sauce gently. This sauce is served warm rather than boiling-hot.

EGG AND BUTTER SAUCES

SAUCE HOLLANDAISE AND DERIVATIVES

I can never decide which gives me greater pleasure – making a hollandaise sauce, which is in effect a hot mayonnaise, or eating it. Its origins are elusive but one thing is certain: it is not Dutch at all, but French. Sometimes it is called sauce Isigny, a genuflection to the hometown of France’s best butter.

3 tablespoons white wine vinegar

3 tablespoons water

12 white peppercorns

3 large egg yolks

250 g (8 oz) unsalted or lightly salted butter

salt, lemon juice

Boil the first three ingredients down to a tablespoon of liquid. Strain into either a pudding basin or the top pan of a double boiler. When cool, beat in the yolks. Stand the basin, or top pan, over a pan of barely simmering water. Keep the heat steady, being careful not to overheat. Now add the butter in chips, beating them in with a wooden spoon gradually. Or, and this works well, melt the butter and beat it in as if you were making mayonnaise; you can do this off the heat if you like, so long as both egg yolks and butter are warm.

When the sauce is very thick, add a final seasoning of salt and lemon juice. If you have to keep it waiting, turn it into a tepid bowl or jug or sauceboat and stand it in a pan of tepid water. Overheating at this point can curdle the best hollandaise. If at any moment you think the hollandaise is overheating, plunge the base of the bowl or pan into cold water.

Should the sauce curdle, try whisking in a tablespoon of ice cold water. If this doesn’t work, break a fresh egg, put the yolk into a clean basin and beat in the curdled sauce gradually. It doesn’t take long, so don’t give way to despair.

CAVIARE SAUCE Fold 3–4 tablespoons of pressed caviare into the finished mousseline sauce, see below. Adjust the seasoning. For the finest fish – sole, turbot, trout, really fresh bass, John Dory.

CUCUMBER HOLLANDAISE See Grilled pompano with cucumber hollandaise, p. 62.

MALTESE SAUCE Stir in the grated rind of a blood orange, and use the orange juice instead of lemon for the final seasoning. A Seville orange makes an even better flavour. Delicious with firm white fish.

MOUSSELINE SAUCE Whip up 125 ml (4 fl oz) double cream. Fold into the sauce just before serving, and readjust the seasoning. Good with a solid fish like salmon.

SAUCE TRIANON Use lemon juice (1 tablespoon) and sherry medium-dry (2 tablespoons) instead of vinegar.

SAUCE BÉARNAISE

This is a nineteenth-century sauce, invented by a chef at the Pavilion Henri IV at St Germain-en-Laye, and named for that great French king, who came from Béarn, close to the Basque country, on the Spanish border. This chef had the idea of spicing the egg and butter innocence of hollandaise with a reduction of wine, tarragon, shallot and wine vinegar, seasoned with plenty of coarsely ground black pepper, a simple addition, perhaps, but it quite changes the character of the sauce. Serve with grilled fish of fine flavour and substance – salmon, sunfish, tuna, pompano, large mackerel.

1 heaped tablespoon chopped shallot

2 tablespoons chopped tarragon and chervil

4 tablespoons tarragon vinegar

4 tablespoons white wine

good grating of black pepper

egg yolks and butter, as for hollandaise*

1 tablespoon chopped tarragon and chervil for finishing

pinch of salt

pinch of cayenne pepper

Put the shallot, tarragon and chervil, vinegar, wine and black pepper into a small pan. Boil down until about 2 tablespoons of liquid is left. Put into a large pudding basin, and when cool add the egg yolks. Continue as for hollandaise sauce. Strain, and whisk in about a tablespoon of chopped tarragon and chervil. Add salt and cayenne. Serve in a warmed sauceboat.

SAUCE CHORON This is the most famous variation of the béarnaise sauce, and is called after a Normandy chef, Choron, who came from Caen. It is usually served with grilled meat or poultry, but goes very well with fish; see Bar en croûte, p. 353.

Make a béarnaise, above. Then flavour the sauce to taste with seasoning and about 3 tablespoons of tomato purée (preferably home-made), adding it gradually. If you feel at this point that the consistency could be improved, add 2 good tablespoons of whipped cream which will make the sauce bulkier and lighter.

OTHER HOT SAUCES

SAUCE À L’AMÉRICAINE

This sauce comes, in spite of its name, from southern France. So it is important to use olive oil and garlic, and to liven the tomatoes up with sugar and black pepper, should you happen to be cooking in a less sunny climate. There is no substitute for cognac, apart from the other grape brandies.

In its classic version, this sauce is cooked with the dish in the style of a stew (see Lobster à l’américaine, p. 213.) But if you can only buy ready-boiled lobster, or if you serve the sauce with a fish that can’t stand the fierce reduction, for instance huss or hake or quenelles of whiting, here is a recipe allowing for this:

750 g (1½ lb) tomatoes, peeled and roughly chopped

150 ml (5 fl oz) olive oil

500 g (1 lb) cheap white fish

seasoned flour

125 g (4 oz) chopped shallot or mild onion

125 g (4 oz) chopped carrot

1 large clove garlic, crushed

75 ml (2½ fl oz) cognac

shell of lobster, crab or prawn

300 ml (10 fl oz) dry white wine

150 ml (5 fl oz) strong beef stock

salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, sugar

tarragon and chervil or parsley

1 good tablespoon butter

Cook the tomatoes to a thick purée in half the olive oil. Cut the white fish into large cubes, turn them in seasoned flour and fry in the rest of the olive oil with the shallot, carrot and garlic. When the fish is lightly browned, add the warmest cognac and set it alight. Turn the mixture, so that the flames last as long as possible. Add lobster, crab or prawn shell, the wine, stock and tomatoes. Season with plenty of black pepper and ½ teaspoon of salt. Cook vigorously for half an hour, or until the sauce looks thick rather than watery. Remove as much shell as possible, then briefly liquidize. Correct the seasoning, add herbs, and reheat. Stir in the tablespoon of butter, pour over the cooked fish and serve.

If you are using ready-boiled lobster, reheat it in the sauce before adding the butter.

NOTE As with sauce aurore*, the important thing is to use real tomatoes. By all means help the flavour with a little tomato concentrate, if it seems necessary, but never make tomato concentrate a substitute for tomatoes.

SAUCE BERCY

This intense concentration of onions, wine and meat essence usually accompanies plainly-cooked food such as grilled steak or liver. But if the juices from a foil-baked fish are substituted for meat essence, it goes equally well with bass, bream or salmon.

1 heaped tablespoon chopped shallot or onion

1 level tablespoon butter

150 ml (5 fl oz) white wine

salt, pepper, lemon juice

chopped parsley

About 25 minutes before the fish is cooked, put the shallot or onion and the butter into a small heavy pan. Cook gently until golden and transparent. Add the wine and boil hard until there is about a couple of tablespoons of liquid left. Remove from the heat. Transfer the cooked fish to a warm serving plate. Pour the juices from the foil, about 300 ml (10 fl oz) of fish fumet, into the onion and wine mixture. Reheat, and correct the seasoning with salt, pepper and lemon juice to taste. The amount required is bound to vary according to the type and quantity of seasoning put into the foil package with the fish. Add some chopped parsley and serve very hot in a separate sauceboat.

Remember that this is intended to be a concentrated sauce, to be eaten in small quantities. If the juices in the foil were too abundant and watery – though this is unlikely – the sauce must be reduced a second time before the final seasoning.

NOTE A more copious amount of sauce can be provided by adding up to 150 ml (5 fl oz) of double cream or thicken with beurre manié*.

BEURRE BLANC

The château of La Goulaine, south of Nantes, has a reputation for Muscadet, the wine of the district. It also has a reputation for being the birthplace of beurre blanc, one of the best of fish sauces. The first reputation is well-bestowed; I am not quite so sure about the second. A love of good food is often garnished with undeclared fairy tales. But this one has plausibility.

One day towards the turn of the century, so the story goes, the Marquis of Goulaine’s cook, Clémence, was preparing a dinner party. She asked a helper to get on with the béarnaise, while she attended to other things. When everything was dished up, Clémence glanced at the béarnaise and realized that the egg yolks had been forgotten. No time to make a fresh sauce; the mistake – which tasted surprisingly good – was sent up. After dinner Clémence was summoned to the dining-room. She arrived red-faced and ashamed, expecting trouble. Instead, the ‘new sauce’ was praised. She was asked to repeat the mistake many times, and when she left the château to open a restaurant at la Chébuette, a mile or two away on the banks of the Loire, her beurre blanc soon became a speciality of the region, from Nantes to Angers and Tours.

As you would expect, beurre blanc is served with shad, brochet and salmon from the Loire. Try it, too, with saltwater fish such as turbot, sole, John Dory, brill and whiting. The fish should be poached in a half-wine, half-water court bouillon*, baked in foil, or braised. Not a sauce for fried fish.

The trick consists in not overheating the sauce, which is very much a last-minute sauce. The first time you make it, have a bowl of ice cubes handy for quickly cooling the base of the pan. Make a reduction of wine vinegar and shallots as for the béarnaise sauce*. Cut up 250 g (8 oz) butter, chilled until firm, into cubes. Whisk in the butter, bit by bit, keeping the heat very low; it should melt to a cream – raise the pan from the stove to make sure it does not get too hot. Season to taste.

If you have a total collapse, don’t despair. Beat a couple of egg yolks in a basin over a pan of simmering water, and add the butter/ shallot mixture gradually until you have the thicker and yellower sauce more usually known as hollandaise*.

SAUCE À LA CRÉOLE

A tomato sauce made sweeter, and a little hotter, by the addition of peppers and a discreet seasoning of chillis.

250 g (½ lb) chopped onion

2 large stalks celery, chopped

3 fresh red peppers, seeded, chopped or 4 canned peppers

1 small green chilli or ½ teaspoon crushed hot chilli flakes

60 g (2 oz) butter

1 kg (2 lb 3 oz) can of tomatoes

thyme

salt, pepper

basil

Fry the onion, celery, peppers and chilli in the butter, gently at first until they begin to soften, then a little more strongly until they brown lightly. Pour in the contents of the can of tomatoes, add a sprig or two of thyme, plenty of freshly ground black pepper and only a little salt (because the sauce is to be reduced). Leave the lid off the pan so that the liquid has a chance to evaporate, and cook until the sauce becomes a stew.

Remove the sprigs of thyme, check the seasoning and add more salt or chilli flakes if required. Add a final chopping of fresh basil.

Like the marinara sauce*, sauce à la créole makes an excellent basis for fish stews. When the flavour is to your liking, add some lightly-browned fish such as turbot, brill, hake, shark, monkfish, or squid, and cook for another 5 or 10 minutes. (See Sunfish à la créole p. 474.) If using mussels or clams, open them in a large saucepan and remove the shells, before adding them to the sauce – stir in the strained shellfish liquor too.

THREE GOOSEBERRY SAUCES

These gooseberry sauces and the sorrel ones below have a remarkably similar taste, as Elizabeth David remarks in French Provincial Cooking. The two acidites are interchangeable. I must confess, though, to never having eaten gooseberry sauce with salmon, because when the fruit is at its small, acid-green best, salmon is unpleasantly expensive. Mackerel, at their finest, arrive with the first gooseberries; nobody can complain at the price of either, though Parson Woodforde, the greediest of Norfolk parsons in the eighteenth century, did complain, in his diary, when the spring was late and he had to eat the first mackerel of the season without gooseberry sauce.

In spite of this, it is the French and not the English who christened this hardy, fruit groseille à maquereau – which is odd, at first sight, because the gooseberry grows super-abundantly in the British Isles (and indeed as far north as the Arctic Circle), and gooseberry sauces are more common in our old cookery books than in French ones. Perhaps the reason is that we use gooseberries in so many ways, for pies or tarts, for boiled puddings and for jam, whereas in France it is largely a question of gooseberries with mackerel.

1. The first sauce is made by substituting 250 g (8 oz) gooseberries for the sorrel leaves in the recipe for sorrel sauce (see p. 35). Strain the purée through a sieve and add the boiled cream and the fish stock or juice.

2. The second sauce requires:

500 g (1 lb) gooseberries

30 g (1 oz) butter

1 egg or 3 tablespoons béchamel sauce*

1 teaspoon sugar

ground ginger or freshly grated nutmeg

Top and tail the gooseberries (it is easiest to use scissors for this). Cook over a low heat with the butter, until soft enough to put through a sieve or mouli-légumes. Beat in either the egg or the sauce. Reheat without boiling, and season with the sugar, and the ginger or nutmeg, to taste.

3. The third sauce includes fennel:

500 g (1 lb) gooseberries

30 g (1 oz) butter

3 tablespoons béchamel sauce*

1 heaped dessertspoon of fennel leaves, chopped

nutmeg, salt, pepper, lemon juice, sugar

Prepare and cook gooseberries as described above until one taken from the pan will give between the fingers without collapsing completely. Drain, and set aside while you make a béchamel sauce in the usual way. Let the sauce reduce, simmering, up to the consistency of thick cream. Mix in the gooseberries and the chopped fennel, and add the seasonings to taste: the sugar should not be added unless the gooseberries are very young and tart. Reheat gently.

The gooseberries may be sieved into the sauce, instead of being left whole.

MARINARA OR ITALIAN TOMATO SAUCE

This is the basis for fish stews and soups, and for pasta sauces. One of the girls in our family once worked in Rome. The first time she came home on holiday, she pushed me affably from the stove. ‘I’m going to show you how to make a proper tomato sauce,’ she announced. ‘First, you must put in some chopped carrot – and second, you mustn’t keep stirring it once it comes to the boil.’

1 medium onion, chopped

1 medium carrot, chopped

1 generous tablespoon olive oil

1 clove garlic, crushed

1 kg (2 lb) tomatoes, peeled and chopped or 1 kg (2 lb 3 oz) can of Italian tomatoes

salt, pepper

Brown the onion and carrot lightly in the oil. Add the remaining ingredients and bring to the boil, stirring. Leave to simmer, uncovered, until the sauce reduces to a fairly thick stew – at least 30 minutes. Sieve or not, as you please.

A glass of red wine may be added to the ingredients above. And the sauce may be finished by the addition of a nice lump of butter and some cayenne or chilli flakes, but be careful not to overdo them.

This is one of the most useful of all fish sauces. Small fish, squid, shrimps or prawns, clams and mussels can all be added to it, or cooked in it, to make the most satisfactory fish stews. Dilute with fish stock, add some shellfish, and you have a delicious soup.

ROMESCO SAUCE

One of the most famous sauces of Spanish cookery, from the province of Tarragona where the small hot Romesco peppers are grown. In this country I would recommend you buy fresh red chillis and hang them up to dry in your kitchen. The other essential ingredient – except of course for tomatoes – is hazelnuts, which add texture and their oil to the sauce.

2 huge tomatoes, Marmande or Eshkol type

3 fine fat cloves garlic

24 hazelnuts, blanched or 12 each almonds and hazelnuts

2 large red home-dried chillis, seeded

salt, pepper

250 ml (8 fl oz) olive oil

2 tablespoons sherry vinegar or 1 each wine vinegar and dry sherry

chopped parsley

Bake the whole tomatoes and whole, peeled garlic in a moderate oven for about 15 minutes. After 10 minutes add the nuts and chillis. Transfer to the blender, scraping the tomato pulp free of its skin, and blend to a purée, adding the seasoning and the olive oil – gradually – to make a smooth sauce. Finally stir in the vinegar or vinegar and sherry, and correct the seasoning.

SAMPHIRE SAUCE

This recipe comes from Alan Davidson’s North Atlantic Seafood;

For 500 g (1 lb) fish, take 375 g (12 oz) prepared samphire, well washed and with the hard bits of stalk near the roots cut off, and cook it for 10 minutes in a covered pot of 4 tablespoons water. Drain it and use an electric blender to turn it into a purée, incorporating 90 g (3 oz) butter in it. The purée is then heated and poured over the fish as a sauce. It has a marvellously bright green colour – any other so-called green sauce would go even greener with envy – and a delicious flavour. But it is quite salty, so on no account add salt.

TWO SORREL SAUCES

There was a time, twenty or so years ago, that the French were leaving their countryside in large numbers, leaving behind them houses they could not sell. Many a time I remember walking along a lane, and seeing a cluster of farm buildings over a hedge. There would be no barks to greet one’s arrival, no flutter and squawk of fowls on the dung heap. One would see nothing hanging from the nails by the kitchen door. Passing by the house, one would come to the kitchen garden, overgrown perhaps but undeniably there. Pushing the gate open, freeing it from the overhanging rose, one would stumble over a lusty patch of sorrel, placed where it was easy to grab a handful to flavour the evening’s soup, or to make a sauce for the fish brought home from the market. How grateful that clear flavour is in the spring, sharp as lemon juice to one’s tired winter taste.

This recipe comes from Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking.

1 large handful sorrel leaves (approx. 125 g/4 oz)

30 g (1 oz) butter

125 ml (4 fl oz) each single and double cream (250 ml/8 fl oz in all)

stock or juice from cooking the fish

salt, pepper

Remove the toughest stems from the sorrel. Wash and melt it to a purée in the butter. This takes no more than three or four minutes. In a saucepan, bring the cream to the boil, stir in the sorrel and 3 or 4 tablespoons of stock from cooking the fish. If the fish has been fried or grilled, add some water to the pan juices, boil up well and use them instead of stock. Season to taste. Serve with mackerel, salmon, white fish, shad, pike.

The next recipe came from Mrs Stevenson when she was at the Horn of Plenty near Tavistock in Devon. She served it with the delicious Tamar salmon.

about 30 leaves of sorrel, 1 large handful

30 g (1 oz) butter

500 g (1 lb) unsalted butter

4 egg yolks

2 tablespoons water

salt, lemon juice

Make a sorrel purée as above. Put the unsalted butter into a saucepan, cut in chunks, and bring to the boil over a gentle heat. Meanwhile, beat the egg yolks and water in a large pudding basin. Set the basin over a pan of barely simmering water. Keep stirring the yolks, and as the butter comes to a frothing boil, pour a little of it on to the yolks. Go on beating – a wooden spoon is best for this – and add the butter slowly: the mayonnaise process. As the sauce thickens the butter may be added more rapidly. Watch the water underneath – it should not boil.

When the sauce coats the spoon, take the basin from the pan and stir in the sorrel purée to taste. Add salt and lemon juice if required.

NOTE Of course there is no reason why the sorrel purée shouldn’t be added to the conventionally made hollandaise sauce*. This method, though, is quicker.

FRESH TOMATO SAUCE

Skin, seed and chop 2 large tomatoes or 500 g (1 lb) of well-flavoured smaller tomatoes. Cook a small chopped onion and 2 chopped cloves of garlic in a little olive oil. Stir in the tomato, raise the heat. If you want a Latin-American accent, add a chopped, seeded chilli and a final seasoning of coriander. If you prefer the Italian style, omit the chilli and use basil as the final herb. Salt, pepper, sugar as necessary. Cook as briefly as possible so that you concentrate the flavour without losing freshness and texture.

GOLD SAUCES

MAYONNAISE

I believe that the best mayonnaise, in particular if it is to go with cold fish, should be made with olive oil. A light-flavoured oil – mayonnaise emphasizes the fruity flavour – but an oil tasting of olives. When strong flavourings such as curry powder are to be added, corn or groundnut oils may be substituted. Never spoil mayonnaise with malt vinegar. Red and white wine vinegar, tarragon vinegar or, most usually, lemon juice are the sharpeners to use.

Mayonnaise is a sauce that rarely fails if you take reasonable precautions beforehand – the ingredients should be at least at room temperature.

1 large or 2 standard egg yolks

wine vinegar or lemon juice

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard (optional)

150 ml (5 fl oz) light olive oil

salt, pepper, herbs, etc.

HAND OR ELECTRIC BEATER METHOD Warm the bowl and spoon or beater with hot water, then dry. Quickly put in the egg yolk with a teaspoon of vinegar or lemon juice, and mustard if appropriate to the dish. Beat thoroughly together, then add the oil, drop by drop at first, then more steadily as the mixture thickens. When the oil is absorbed, add vinegar or lemon juice to taste, seasonings and herbs.

BLENDER METHOD Use two yolks or one whole large egg. Put the egg into a warmed blender with the vinegar or lemon juice and mustard. Turn to top speed, having covered the blender. After 10 seconds, remove the central cover of the lid and gradually pour in the oil and seasonings. On account of the very high speed, you can put in the oil more rapidly from the start, though it is prudent to go gently at first.

REMEDIES FOR CURDLED MAYONNAISE

(1) The moment you suspect curdling, whisk in a tablespoon of boiling water. This is often enough to bring the sauce back.

(2) Put another egg yolk into a clean bowl and add the curdled mixture drop by drop at first, then the remainder of the oil, plus extra to bring the quantity up to 250 ml (8 fl oz).

(3) Put a tablespoon of Dijon mustard into a clean, warmed bowl, instead of another egg yolk, then continue with method 2. This is handy to know if you are out of eggs, and the dish will stand the extra mustard flavour.

AILLOLI AND AILLADE Ailloli, the garlic mayonnaise from Provence, gives its name to the great spread of cold food for which that part of France is so famous. Salt cod and other fish provide the centrepiece (see p. 100). The sauce can quite well accompany the salt fish in simpler combinations or even alone; though I think a modifying salad of some kind is a good idea.

up to 8 cloves garlic

salt

2 egg yolks

300 ml (10 fl oz) Provençal olive oil

pepper

lemon juice

Crush the garlic with a little salt in a mortar, or blender. (The first time you make the recipe start with 4 cloves of garlic; when everyone has got used to the idea, work up gradually to 8.) Add the egg yolks and finish the mayonnaise with the rest of the ingredients.

The unexpected ingredients of aillade, another garlic mayonnaise, are hazelnuts and walnuts. To me, this is the ideal sauce for a simpler arrangement of cold fish:

8 large shelled hazelnuts

8 shelled walnuts

3–6 cloves garlic

salt

2 egg yolks

300 ml (10 fl oz) Provençal olive oil

pepper

lemon juice

Grill the hazelnuts lightly, until the skins can easily be rubbed off; pour boiling water over the walnuts, and remove their skins. Crush the nuts with the garlic and a little salt in a mortar or blender, and continue with the mayonnaise in the usual way.

AVOCADO SAUCE Avocado makes a good sauce for salmon and salmon trout in particular, though it also goes well with crab and lobster.

2 ripe avocados

juice of 1 small lemon

1 large garlic clove, crushed

300 ml (10 fl oz) soured cream

salt, pepper

2 spring onions, chopped (see recipe)

Peel, stone and mash the avocados with the lemon juice and garlic. Mix in the cream gradually. Taste and season with salt and pepper. Finally mix in the onion, if the sauce is to be served with cold fish. If the sauce is for hot fish, omit the onion and warm the basin over a pan of simmering water until the sauce is reasonably hot, but nowhere near boiling point.

CURRY MAYONNAISE This sauce, which is simple to make, goes well with the strong flavours of fish like pickled herrings. Add 1 teaspoon of finely grated onion and 1 teaspoon of curry powder or paste to the 2 egg yolks of the basic mayonnaise ingredients (which, in this case, may be made with corn or groundnut oil) and finish in the usual way.

In Scandinavia, a curry mayonnaise made with curry powder and an equal amount of chopped chutney is served with prawn dishes.

GASTRONOME MAYONNAISE Mix 150 ml (5 fl oz) mayonnaise with 100 ml (3½ fl oz) soured cream, 1 level tablespoon each of tomato paste and chopped tarragon, plus 1 teaspoonful tarragon vinegar. Serve this with cold fish, especially turbot and sole. This recipe comes from Bengt Petersen’s Delicious Fish Dishes.

GREEN MAYONNAISE Every cookery book gives sauce rémoulade, sauce tartare, sauce ravigote – all versions of mayonnaise. These sauces use herbs and sharp pickles, such as gherkins, anchovies or capers, with the occasional spice of some raw, chopped onion or shallot; the kind of sauce that each cook can alter to her own taste.

Here is a less commonly encountered herb mayonnaise, a green sauce of distinction. As a rule it is served with salmon, salmon trout and shellfish, but it goes with cold white fish too, turbot or John Dory, for instance.

According to the resources of your garden or neighbourhood, assemble one or other of these herb mixtures:

either

15 g (½ oz) each parsley, chervil, tarragon, chives, sorrel, salad burnet

30 g (1 oz) spinach and watercress leaves

or

30 g (1 oz) each parsley, tarragon, chervil, chives

45 g (1½ oz) each spinach and watercress leaves

Make your basic mayonnaise. Blanch the herbs for 2 minutes in boiling water. Pour out into a sieve and run under the cold tap. Leave to drain. Press the last moisture out, and pound to a paste either with pestle and mortar, or in a liquidizer with a little of the mayonnaise. Mix into the mayonnaise just before serving.

JELLIED MAYONNAISE FOR CHAUDFROID Instead of coating a cold, poached fish with aspic jelly*, jellied mayonnaise may be used instead. The mayonnaise is made in the usual way, using 300 ml (10 fl oz) of oil and 2–3 egg yolks. Fold in gently 150 ml (5 fl oz) of firm aspic jelly, or 150 ml (5 fl oz) water in which 8 g (¼ oz) gelatine has been dissolved, while the gelatine is on the point of setting but still liquid. Use at once.

LIGHT MAYONNAISE Add 60–90 ml (2–3 fl oz) soured cream to mayonnaise at the end of making it. Chopped green herbs, especially chives, are a good addition.

MALTESE MAYONNAISE Grate the rind of an orange, preferably a blood orange, into the bowl, before putting in the egg yolks with 1 tablespoon of lemon juice. Flavour at the end with the juice from the orange, and a little more lemon juice instead of vinegar, if extra sharpness is required. Good with cold white fish.

MUSTARD AND DILL MAYONNAISE The proportions for this superb Scandinavian sauce can be varied to suit your taste. The egg yolk may be omitted, in which case the sauce is a variant of vinaigrette. Serve with pickled salmon, trout or herring, boiled crab or lobster.

2 tablespoons French or German mustard

1 tablespoon white sugar

1 large egg yolk

150 ml (5 fl oz) corn or groundnut oil

2 tablespoons wine vinegar

1 generous teaspoon dill weed

salt, white pepper

Beat the first three ingredients together, and finish the mayonnaise in the usual way.

PAPRIKA MAYONNAISE Flavour a basic mayonnaise with 1 level tablespoon of tomato concentrate, 1 tablespoon chilli sauce and a finely shredded red pepper.

PERNOD REMOULADE A piquant sauce good with many of the round fish – grilled grey mullet, sea bass, John Dory, sea bream – and with mackerel.

basic mayonnaise

1 dessertspoon chopped sweet-sour pickled cucumber

1 dessertspoon each chopped parsley and tarragon

about 1 tablespoon Pernod

Fold the other ingredients into the basic mayonnaise, using the above measurements as a guide only.

SAUCE RAVIGOTE Chop a handful of parsley, tarragon, watercress, chives, chervil and a thick slice of onion. Mix with a heaped teaspoon of Dijon mustard, a dessertspoon of drained capers and a chopped hard-boiled egg. Gradually mix in 3 or 4 tablespoons of olive oil, then wine vinegar to taste. Chopped anchovies and gherkins are often added as well as capers.

SAUCE TARTARE This is either a mayonnaise or a vinaigrette seasoned with shallots or spring onions, and fines herbes, plus capers and gherkins to taste. The sauce should be thick and speckled with these ingredients.

See individual sections for other kinds of mayonnaise, i.e. Anchoiade (Anchovy mayonnaise), Crab mayonnaise, Lobster mayonnaise.

HORSERADISH SAUCE WITH FRESH WALNUTS

One November at the turn of the century, the great chef Escoffier was invited to a shooting weekend in the Haute-Savoie. Saturday lunch began with a dish of ombles-chevalier (a speciality of the lac du Bourget, in nearby Savoie) which had been cooked, and left to cool, in white wine from his host’s own vineyard. The surprising thing was the sauce which accompanied the fish; it was made from horseradish, and the juicy fresh walnuts which are so delicious an item of French meals at that time of year.

Now omble-chevalier, or arctic char, isn’t likely to come our way very often, but there is no reason why the exquisite sauce shouldn’t be served with trout of various kinds (including salmon trout), other char, and grayling, which have been poached in a white wine court bouillon.

150 g (5 oz) shelled walnuts

1 dessertspoon caster sugar

2 tablespoons white breadcrumbs

300 ml (10 fl oz) double cream

pinch of salt

1 dessertspoon lemon juice or wine vinegar

150 g (5 oz) grated horseradish

If you have been able to buy fresh walnuts, you will find that the pale skin is easily removed; older walnuts need to have boiling water poured over them before the darkened skins can be rubbed off. This sounds a fiddly business, but it is worth doing because the sauce will taste much more delicate without the slight bitterness one can get from walnuts. Chop them finely, and mix with the sugar, breadcrumbs, cream, salt and part of the lemon juice or wine vinegar. Now add the horseradish slowly, to taste (if you have no fresh horseradish, use one of the prepared brands – again to taste), and the rest of the lemon juice or vinegar, as necessary. The sauce can be made in the blender. For ways of using horseradish with hot fish, see Poached turbot with horseradish, p. 435, and Carpe au bleu with horseradish sauce, p. 70.

ROUILLE

A fiery sauce of Mediterranean origin, which is served with Bouillabaisse fish soups and stews, or with fish in a large mixture such as ailloli garni. Here are two recipes:

1. Pound in a mortar 2 cloves of garlic and the flesh of 2 small red chilli peppers. Add the liver of bream or red mullet, if they are appearing in the final dish.

Squeeze out a thick, crustless slice of white bread in a little fish stock. Add to the garlic and pepper. Stir in gradually, as if you were making a mayonnaise, 3 tablespoons of olive oil and a little fish stock, or the juices from cooking the fish in foil.

2. If a richer sauce is required, pound 3 cloves of garlic with the 2 red peppers. Beat in 2 egg yolks, then gradually add 250 ml (8 fl oz) olive oil, and season with French mustard, salt and pepper. This is excellent with salt cod or cod fritters.

SAFFRON SAUCE

This beautiful sauce for fish was given to me by Tom Hearne when he was at the Hole in the Wall restaurant in Bath. It is for steaks of pike, hake, turbot, halibut or bass, baked in the oven with a little fish stock.

Serves 4

generous pinch of saffron

600 ml (1 pt) fish stock*, heated

125 g (4 oz) butter

60 g (2 oz) plain flour

1 small red and 1 small green pepper, seeded and cut into strips

1 clove garlic, crushed and chopped

150 ml (5 fl oz) cream

2 tablespoons Madeira

lemon juice

Dissolve the saffron in the stock (this should be made with some dry white wine and a splash of vinegar). Make a roux with half the butter and the flour: moisten it with stock. Cook down to the consistency of double cream.

Meanwhile, soften the peppers with the garlic in the remaining butter over a low heat. When they are soft, add this mixture to the sauce and simmer for 10 minutes. Pour in the cream, Madeira and lemon juice to taste. Add the juices, much reduced, from the fish.

Arrange the fish on a serving plate or individual plates. Carefully pour the sauce round it, and arrange the pepper strips on top.

SKORDALIA

This is the Greek equivalent to the Provençal ailloli, made without egg yolks as it is a sauce eaten by tradition in Lent, with slices of aubergine and courgette, dusted with flour and fried, and with boiled beetroot and potatoes. On Clean Monday in Greece, the Monday after the last day of the Carnival, when everyone ate themselves to a stupor, it was served with salt cod soaked and deep fried in batter. Nowadays, skordalia often appears on Greek menus with all kinds of fish fried in batter. It is an improver of white fish in general, served hot or cold.

See p. 232 for recipes.

TAHINA CREAM SALADS

In cooking, as in much else, one homes continually on the Middle East as the central knot of our world. So in Claudia Roden’s A Book of Middle Eastern Food, one finds the ancestors of Escoffier’s walnut and horseradish sauce in the tarator sauce below, or in these sesame meal salads. I give her proportions.

1–3 cloves garlic

salt, about ½ teaspoon

150 ml (5 fl oz) lemon juice or juice of at least 2½ lemons

150 ml (5 fl oz) tahina (sesame seed) paste

½ teaspoon ground cumin (optional)

6 tablespoons chopped parsley or 2 only, to garnish

sliced hard-boiled eggs, to garnish

Mix first five ingredients in an electric blender or with a beater. Parsley in quantity can be mixed into the salad, or else the smaller amount can be used as a garnish with the egg.

Serve with baked fish or cold fish. Or serve on its own as an hors d’oeuvre, mixed with a tin of chopped, well-drained anchovies.

1 clove garlic

salt, about ½ teaspoon

150 ml (5 fl oz) lemon juice or juice of at least 2½ lemons

150 ml (5 fl oz) tahina paste

5 tablespoons ground almonds

5 blanched almonds to garnish

Mix first five ingredients in a blender or with a beater, using a little water to soften the mixture if necessary for creaminess. Turn into a bowl, and decorate with a daisy of whole almonds.

Serve with cold fish: John Dory, turbot, sole, cod.

125 g (4 oz) walnuts

2 cloves garlic

salt, about ½ teaspoon

3–4 tablespoons tahina paste

juice of 2 lemons

a little water if necessary

4 tablespoons chopped parsley

Mix as above, folding parsley in at the end.

Serve with fried mussels, baked fish or cold fish.

TARATOR SAUCE FROM THE MIDDLE EAST

I usually make this recipe – from Claudia Roden’s book – with walnuts, in the Turkish style. This is because we bring them home by the kilo, every autumn, from our neighbour’s tree in France. After the hard work of the vintage is over, he finds walnut picking a pleasant job. The tree grows at the foot of a steep slope, and one suddenly sees his head, and the heads of nephews, cousins, and friends, popping out of the leaves like Jacks in the Green. Down below wife and children bash at the branches with sticks, and the nuts come raining to the ground. We munch steadily for days, walnuts with the new wine, walnuts with new bread, walnuts fried with apples to go with boudins noirs. And when I get back to England and electricity, we drink walnut soup and enjoy this sauce with fish; with the bass, bream or John Dory, mussels, or cod steaks to liven them up.

If your abundance happens to be hazelnuts, almonds or pine kernels, they can be used instead of walnuts.

2 slices white bread, crusts removed

125 g (4 oz) nuts

150 ml (5 fl oz) olive oil

3–4 tablespoons wine vinegar

1–2 cloves garlic, crushed

salt, pepper

Dip the bread in water and squeeze it dry. Crumble roughly and add to the nuts, which should have been finely ground. Mix in the olive oil gradually, beating all the time, then the vinegar and garlic. Season with salt and pepper.

The simplest way is to put all the ingredients, except salt and pepper, into the liquidizer, and whirl at top speed until you have a smooth sauce. Finally season to taste.

VINAIGRETTE OR FRENCH DRESSING

Basic cookery books give the ingredients for this sauce as three tablespoons of oil to one tablespoon of wine vinegar, but I find this far too strong. Five to one is a better proportion, at least to start with, although the final quantities will depend on the oil and vinegar used and the opinion of the person who is making it.

The usual seasonings, beyond salt and pepper, are garlic, a hint of sugar, perhaps mustard, and plenty of chopped green herbs such as parsley and chives, with tarragon and basil to add a different note from time to time.

For a plain green salad, or a salad of one vegetable (cooked or raw), olive oil is the best choice. Olive oils vary as much in flavour as wines, but as there is only a limited variety on sale in this country choice is not too bewildering. My own preferences are for the green oils of Tuscany, Umbria and Greece (Minerva brand usually), and for the golden oils of Beaumes-de-Venise in Provence. Walnut oil I use for certain salads, on special occasions. A tasteless oil is good for mixed salads.

Take care with wine vinegar. The best is made in Orléans still. I go for Martin-Pouret brands as I have seen the way they are matured in casks in the old-fashioned manner which give their virtues a chance to develop.

Malt vinegar is not suitable for a sauce deriving from wine-growing countries.

For a green salad, mix the dressing in the bowl; cross the salad servers over it to make a platform for the rinsed and dried salad green. Chill if you like, but do not turn the salad until you are ready to eat it or the softer greenery will collapse unpleasantly.

ABALONE see A FEW WORDS ABOUT… ABALONE

ALLIS SHAD see A FEW WORDS ABOUT… SHAD

AMERICAN SHAD see A FEW WORDS ABOUT… SHAD

† ANCHOVY

Engraulis encrasicholus

The other day, the fishmonger gave me a handful of fresh anchovies, a rare occurrence in England (and in the States, too; although there are plenty of them, no one bothers to catch them. The Mediterranean is the place where the art of the anchovy is practised). They had come, muddled into a load of sprats, from Brixham – which quite often happens in winter months – and were the same length. The heads have a more pointed appearance: the bodies are slimmer, and rounded. We grilled them and ate them with rye bread and butter, and a seasoning of lemon juice. They were not so fat as sprats, nor so finely flavoured as herrings or the fresh sardines we buy in France.

I suspect that they should be eaten straight from the sea as they are in Italy. On Ischia, they are boned and baked in olive oil, flavoured with oregano; lemon juice is squeezed over them just before serving. Sometimes they are laid on a bed of breadcrumbs, covered with a ‘piecrust’ of crumbs and cheese bound together with olive oil, and seasoned with garlic, capers and olives. Rather like some of the baked sardine recipes (p. 330).

It seems, too, that absolute freshness is necessary for good anchovy preserving, because they disappear quickly from the docks after a catch is landed, presumably carried straight off to be processed. There are small businesses in the various ports, each with its own ‘secret’ variation of the recipe. If you are on holiday in the Mediterranean, in Spain, Italy and France particularly, it is worth seeking out the local anchovies. One of the best presents I have ever had was a large tin of whole, salted anchovies which my sister brought back from Collioure near Perpignan. The small picturesque port – don’t trip over the easels – is mainly devoted to anchovy, sardine and tuna fishing. Similar anchovies in salt sometimes may be bought from Italian delicatessen stores (the best ones come from Gorgona, an island off the Tuscan coast at Leghorn) and some Greek-Cypriot grocers. Before use, they have to be filleted and soaked for several hours, but the flavour is delicious. The oblong tins of anchovies on sale here are more convenient, but tiny; it is pleasing to have a bottomless pit of anchovies in the larder for a change. (Incidentally, ‘Norwegian anchovies’ are really sprats, put down in salt and bay leaves.)

The antiquity of the trade pleases me. It goes back to the ancient Greeks and Romans who relied heavily on a sauce called garum or liquamen (garon is Greek for shrimp, but many other fish were used, including the anchovy). The intestines, liver and blood were pickled in salt, the superb Mediterranean sea salt which still makes a moon landscape of shining white on many parts of the coast. After weeks in the hot sun, a dark rich essence was produced and sold in trademarked bottles. I read recently that a similar product was used in Turkey, for marinading fish, until the last century.

Anyone who has looked at Rosemary Brissenden’s or Sri Owen’s or Jennifer Brennan’s books of South-East Asian cookery will notice the ubiquity of fish sauce in Thai cooking. It seems the precise equivalent of garum. So does the Nuoc Mam of Vietnam and the blachan and trasi used all over South-East Asia, made from prawns or shrimps, salted, dried, pounded and rotten, then formed into cakes. Right back to fifth century Athens. All these fishy sauces were and are used to enhance meat dishes, rather as the Chinese use soy sauce.

I trust this will encourage you to believe me when I suggest that anchovies and anchovy essence can enrich our own meat cookery. If you have ever eaten pork pies from the Melton Mowbray area, you were not I expect aware that they were probably seasoned with anchovy essence. Try it to flavour a steak and kidney stew or pie. (Substitute it for oysters, which are now too expensive to be used recklessly as a seasoning, as they once were.) If you have no wine, anchovy essence wonderfully improves a shin of beef stew. Anchovy mayonnaise (p. 54) goes well with cold beef and baked potatoes. In the past legs of lamb were stuck with slivers of anchovy as well as garlic.

With vegetables, less persuasion is needed. Most people know and like cauliflower boiled in the usual way, then dressed with anchovies, melted butter and breadcrumbs (or chicory, or Florentine fennel, or celery). The finest of such dishes comes from Piedmont.

ANCHOVY BUTTER

Add 6–8 anchovy fillets, well mashed, to 125 g (4 oz) unsalted butter.

ANCHOVY, GARLIC AND CAPER SAUCE

An eighteenth-century sauce that goes beautifully with hard-boiled eggs – halve them across, spread the sauce on a dish and put the eggs, cut side down in neat rows on top. Allow 6–9 eggs. Serve it with cooked haricot beans, salt cod and grilled white fish, or tuna.

Serves 6

10–12 large cloves garlic, in their skins

8–10 anchovy fillets

2 tablespoons small capers

dash of wine vinegar

salt, pepper

about 12 tablespoons olive oil

Simmer the garlic in water to cover for 7 minutes. Cool under the tap, remove their skins and put them into a blender (better than a processor for this kind of sauce) with the anchovies, capers, vinegar and a little seasoning. Whizz to a purée, then slowly add the oil to make a sauce of mayonnaise consistency. Taste and adjust seasonings.

This is a strong sauce – you could use half sunflower or safflower oil and half olive oil to make it blander.

ANCHOVY SAUCE

Liquidize 6 anchovy fillets with 3 tablespoons of unsalted butter. Reheat this mixture and stir into the béchamel sauce* just before serving.

NOTE I much prefer a simpler anchovy sauce for fish, particularly for white fish of the cod type which can do with a little assistance. Melt 125 g (4 oz) unsalted butter and add a finely chopped clove of garlic; simmer slowly for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, crush 6 to 8 fillets of anchovy. Stir them into the melted butter, keeping on a low heat until the anchovies have disintegrated into the sauce. Check the seasoning, and add some freshly ground black pepper. This is excellent with Crostini alla provatura, p. 53.

ANCHOVY AND MUSHROOM SAUCE

Sliced mushrooms, both cultivated and wild, fried in butter, go well with many fish. I’m not so sure about mushroom sauce. The béchamel seems to dull the savour. One day, though, I found a Swedish recipe in which anchovies were used to season mushrooms, and I took the hint. A surprising combination, but it works well. The flavour of each ingredient, clear and piquant, raises béchamel sauce to the most interesting deliciousness.

450 ml (15 fl oz) béchamel sauce*

175 g (6 oz) mushrooms, chopped

½ clove garlic, crushed

3 tablespoons butter

½ tin (4–5 fillets) anchovies

150 ml (5fl oz) double cream

salt, black pepper

chopped dill weed or parsley

As the béchamel sauce simmers, fry mushrooms and garlic gently in the butter. After about 10 minutes, add the roughly chopped anchovy fillets. Stir well, and add the cream, which should bubble down to make a thickish sauce. Tip the mushroom mixture into the béchamel, season and leave to simmer together for 10 minutes or so until you are ready to serve the fish. Add the chopped herbs at the last minute.

Excellent with all the firm white fish, and with mullet, huss, snapper, and so on.

BAGNA CAUDA

One late November, we were invited to join a truffle hunt in Piedmont. White truffles, in those parts. The hotel smelled of them since the owner was also a truffle dealer. We ate them for dinner, went to bed in a haze of truffled air, woke up to them, ate breakfast in their pervading presence. As the splendid meals arrived, truffles were shaved fast and furious on to our plates, priceless morsels showering off in all directions in a fine spray to the floor from the edge of the special graters while the large flakes fell generously over the pasta or game before us. In the snowy morning, we were taken off to watch the dogs of Alba working in the woods. They leapt on the leash, thin and ravenous, like medieval hounds on a tapestry, finding truffles with such ease that we felt they had been planted there in advance for our benefit.

At midday we were taken off to a vast barn, out of the way of truffles, to a great spread of vegetables encircling a pot of gently bubbling anchovy sauce, a bagna cauda. We dug in with stalks of celery and cardoon, slices of Florentine fennel, chicory, peppers, carrots and Calabrese, stirring up the garlicky salt brew.

Next night we had bagna cauda again, this time in special little pots with nightlights underneath. It was served at the Belvedere restaurant at La Morra, and to honour the occasion truffles were sliced into the sauce. This is the recipe they gave us, and I have used it ever since – though minus truffles, I am afraid.

Serves 6

18 plump cloves garlic, skinned, sliced

milk

18 large salted anchovies, soaked, filleted, chopped or 3 × 50 g (1¾ oz) tins anchovy fillets in oil

60 g (2 oz) unsalted butter

250 ml (8 fl oz) olive oil

6 eggs (optional)

1–2 white truffles (optional)

a variety of raw vegetables, cut in handy pieces

grissini or bread sticks or long bread ‘soldiers’

In a small pan, simmer the garlic in enough milk just to cover it. The milk should gradually reduce in the 7–10 minutes it takes for the garlic to become tender – watch it, or the pan will catch. Put in the anchovies, cut in pieces, with their oil if they are tinned. Crush them down over a very low heat, using a pestle or potato masher. Work in the butter, then the oil gradually. The sauce will become thick and brown, with the oil separating out. This can be done in advance.

Put the eggs and truffles, if used, into a basket. Prepare the vegetables and arrange them in another shallow basket, or put pieces on individual plates which will eventually hold small pots of sauce. Put the bread into a jar.

Just before the meal, bring the anchovy sauce back to simmering point. Pour it into six warm pots, preferably the special kind for bagna cauda with little lights beneath them. Put a pot on each plate to serve. At table, grate a little truffle into the sauce and then each person dips pieces of vegetable into their pot, stirring up the piquant sediment into the oil. When the sauce is almost gone, break an egg into the remains and stir it round fast so that it scrambles in the warmth. Eat the egg with the sticks of bread.

If you don’t have the appropriate pots, you might do better to have one central fondue pot over a nightlight, with everyone dipping into it. It is more difficult, then, to manage the eggs, but they are hardly necessary if the bagna cauda is providing the first course of a meal, rather than the meal itself.

PAUL BAILEY’S ANCHOVY SALAD

This anchovy salad of Paul Bailey’s has a dark rich appearance, and a clean savoury taste, that make it an ideal start to a meal. Guests look furtively round the table, serving spoon in hand, as they count heads, trying to work out just how much they can decently help themselves to. Mainly Paul uses dried tomatoes put up in olive oil by the Italian firm of Carapelli: they are particularly soft and luscious. Dried tomatoes, sold by weight, can also be used: if they are very dry, soak them in a little very hot water before putting them into the salad.

Serves 6–8

4 large red peppers, roasted or grilled and skinned

5 small tins anchovy fillets in olive oil, 50 g (1¾ oz) size

about ⅓ jar dried tomatoes

pepper, basil leaves, olive oil

Make this salad several hours before the meal, if possible. This gives everything a chance to settle down well together.

Cut the peppers into strips, discarding the seeds. Split the anchovy fillets longways. Arrange both in a shallow bowl with the tomatoes, add pepper to each layer and display the various pieces to make an appetizing streaky effect of colour. Scatter in some torn up basil leaves. Pour in the oil out of the anchovy tins, plus enough extra olive oil to come almost to the top. Just before serving, scatter the top with torn basil leaves and extra coarsely-ground pepper.

Serve with a coarse country bread without too positive a flavour.

CANAPÉS À LA CRÈME

Serves 1

1 round of bread

butter

3–4 anchovy fillets

1 tablespoon clotted cream

Take the round of bread from a slice 1¼ cm (½ inch) thick, with a large scone cutter. Fry it pale brown in butter (clarified is best). Quickly arrange anchovies on top and place on a very very hot dish. Cover with clotted cream and serve immediately. The contrast between hot crisp bread, sharp anchovy, and cold grainy cream is excellent – whipped cream does not give the same result at all.

CROSTINI ALLA PROVATURA

An Italian rarebit, improved by anchovies – spectacularly improved.

Provatura was a cheese made from buffalo’s milk which has, according to Elizabeth David’s Italian Food, almost disappeared from the market. Even in Rome, this dish is now usually made with mozzarella cheese. Other substitutes are bel paese, Gruyère, and provolone – originally another buffalo milk cheese, though in fact it is now usually made from cow’s milk, like mozzarella, and is much less tasty in consequence.

The general point of the recipe is to improve cheese-on-toast with a sauce of anchovies melted in butter. Mrs David’s recipe suggests putting slices of cheese – nice thick slices – on rounds of French bread. These are then arranged, slightly overlapping each other, in an ovenproof dish, and put into a fairly hot oven until the bread is crisp and the cheese melted but not runny. For the sauce for 6 to 8 crostini, soak 4 or 5 fillets of anchovies in warm water for 10 minutes. Heat them in 60 g (2 oz) of butter, having chopped them up first. Pour over the crostini and serve immediately.

Ada Boni, this century’s Mrs Beeton of Italian cookery, has alternating chunks of cheese and bread on skewers, cooked over a wood fire or in a fairly hot oven (gas 6, 200°C/400°F). The sauce is similar, but the proportion of butter to anchovies is higher.

Incidentally, this sauce is excellent with veal or pork tenderloin escalopes, or on vegetables, or slightly dull white fish. Remember that leg of veal to be boiled for vitello tonnato is often larded with anchovy fillets. This was common practice in the past, in England, with beef, too.

HARICOTS À L’ANCHOIADE

This is an example of the agreeable southern French habit of eating garlicky mayonnaise sauces with hot food, such as soup, vegetables and fish. Anchoiade is often served with boiled salt cod and boiled potatoes. It can also be stirred into fish and tomato soup or fish and saffron soup, instead of a peppery rouille*. Try it with hard-boiled eggs, instead of the usual mayonnaise. Delicious. Or with baked potatoes and cold beef.

Serves 6

500 g (1 lb) haricot beans

salt

9–10 anchovy fillets

2–3 cloves garlic

1 large egg yolk

150 ml (5 fl oz) olive oil

chopped parsley

Soak and boil the beans in unsalted water in the usual way. Add salt when the beans are just cooked, and give them another 5 minutes.

In the meantime pound anchovies, garlic, and the egg yolk to a paste. Add the oil (which must be olive oil) gradually, as if you were making a mayonnaise*. If you use a blender, include some of the egg white when the anchovies, garlic and yolk are being whirled to a paste.

When everyone is ready for the meal, drain the beans and fold in the anchoiade. Sprinkle with parsley. Serve immediately. The dish can be eaten cold, but the flavours are clearer and lighter when hot.

ANCHOIADE DE CROZE A splendid elaboration of the simple anchoiade of Provence, which was given – in Les Plats régionaux de France – by Count Austin de Croze. In the twenties, he was one of the leaders, with Curnonsky, of the new interest in the food of France outside Paris, and the grand restaurants of the haute cuisine.

Serves 12

60 g (2 oz) finely chopped parsley, chives, tarragon

2 good sprigs green fennel leaves, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 small onion, finely chopped

3 dried figs, finely chopped

1 small dried red pepper

12 blanched almonds

12 anchovies in oil or 12 anchovies in brine, washed

4 or more tablespoons olive oil

lemon juice

1 tablespoon orange-flower water

12 brioches, bridge rolls or finger rolls

black olives

Mix the ingredients up to and including the figs. Pound the next four together to a paste. Combine the two mixtures. Add lemon juice to taste, and then the orange-flower water – go slowly because it has a surprisingly dominating flavour. (If you want to do the chopping and pounding in a blender, you will need more olive oil.) Open the brioches, or rolls. Spread the top side with the anchoiade, and brush the bottom side of the cut with olive oil. Close the rolls, and heat for 5–10 minutes at gas 6–7, 200–220°C (400–425°F). Serve surrounded by black olives.

JANSSON’S TEMPTATION

The name of this dish is an incitement to culinary myth-making. For instance: ‘Eric Janson, the Swedish religious reformer who founded Bishop Hill, Illinois, in 1846, preached rigorous asceticism to his followers, no liquor and a diet that barely sustained life. One day, according to legend a zealous Jansonist discovered the prophet feasting…’ But as Jansson is a Swedish equivalent of Smith or Jones, why look any further for a meaning than ‘Everyone’s Temptation’? A gloss which is perfectly convincing when one has tasted this piquant gratin of potatoes, onions, anchovy and cream. Don’t use milk instead of cream, as many Swedes do these days, or the beauty of the title will escape you.

Norwegian ‘anchovies’ should be used but they are tricky to find.

Serves 6

3 large onions

1 kg (2 lb) potatoes

3 tins anchovies

freshly ground black pepper

300 ml (10 fl oz) double or whipping cream

60 g (2 oz) butter

Peel and thinly slice the onions. Peel the potatoes and cut them into matchstick strips (a mandolin cutter saves time). Grease a shallow oval gratin dish with a butter paper. Arrange about half the potato strips in an even layer, then make a lattice of the anchovies on top. Cover with the onions and the rest of the potatoes. Season well with pepper only. Pour over the oil from the anchovy tins and half the cream. Dot with the butter and bake in a hot oven (gas 7, 220 °C/ 425 °F) for half an hour. When the potatoes begin to look appetizingly brown, lower the heat and pour over the rest of the cream. Taste the cooking juices and add salt if necessary. Return to the oven until the potatoes are cooked.

A lunchtime dish, to be followed, prudently, by no more than a salad and some fruit.

NOTE The amount of cream can be varied in quantity (upwards) and type (mix in some single cream).

PISSALADIÈRE

If you are a cook living in the Mediterranean, the sun does half the work for you. Tomatoes and onions have acquired a concentration of sweet richness: olive oil, olives and anchovies flavour them to perfection. This combination is known to us all in the form of the pizza which has sadly become a cliché – I have even seen it described as an American national dish and, to be fair, people like Alice Waters have turned it into an elegant creation of the most skilful cooking. Mostly, though, it is plain awful, unless you find yourself in Naples where it all began and where in some pizzerie you will find the real original rustic sort of dish, baked in the right sort of oven.

At home you will do better with the Pissaladière – no connection, in spite of the similar sounds. Pizza means pie. Pissaladière takes its name from pissala, the modern descendant of those vigorous Roman confections known as garum and liquamen (see Anchovy Introduction). It can have a little tomato flavouring – Italian influence – but really it is an onion tart. You can make it on a bread base, like a pizza, but the contrast of a crisp sort of pastry, pâte brisée or shortcrust is really more agreeable. (It may be heresy to admit this.)

Serves 6

2 kg (4 lb) onions, sliced

3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

olive oil

1 large bay leaf

½ teaspoon thyme

salt, pepper

2 tablespoons tomato concentrate or well-reduced purée (optional)

25–28-cm (10–11-inch) pastry case, baked blind

2–3 teaspoons pissala or about 9 anchovy fillets, soaked

60 g (2 oz) black olives, preferably the tiny niçois kind

Cook the onions and garlic slowly in a little olive oil, with the bay leaf and thyme. Cover the pan to begin with, then remove it so that the mixture does not become watery. Season, having regard to the anchovies and olives, and mix in the tomato if used. Spread the pastry with pissala, if that is what you are using. Put the onions on top evenly. Dispose the anchovy fillets and olives on top of them.

Pour over a little olive oil and bake in a fairly hot oven, gas 6, 200 °C (400 °F) for 20 minutes or so, until the pastry is properly cooked and the olives are beginning to wrinkle.

Eat hot or warm with a glass of red wine – splendid picnic food.

SALADE NIÇOISE

When Mediterranean dishes are taken up by northerners, they become a kind of dustbin. Pizza is a sad example. We lose all sense of the basic austerity of the south. Salade niçoise was once the simple food of a none too wealthy community. Tuna fish has, for instance, been far too much of a luxury to be included until recently. To us, on the other hand, tiny broad beans and young violet-leaved artichokes and basil are luxuries. They are what give the salad its special character, along with tiny black niçois olives. Don’t spoil it with cooked French beans and potatoes. If you can’t get broad beans or artichokes young and tender enough to eat raw, steam or boil them lightly before adding them to the salad.

Serves 4–6

500 g (1 lb) tomatoes, quartered, skinned

salt

½ clove garlic

3 hard-boiled eggs, quartered

1 cucumber, peeled, thinly sliced

2 small green peppers, seeded, thinly sliced

6 spring onions, sliced

175 g (6 oz) shelled small broad beans or 8 small, trimmed violet-leaved artichokes, thinly sliced

12 salted anchovy fillets, soaked, cut in 4 or about 300 g (10 oz) cooked or canned tuna, flaked

100 g (3½ oz) small black olives

olive oil, large basil leaves, black pepper

Sprinkle the cut sides of the tomatoes with a little salt and drain them in a colander.

Rub the salad bowl with the cut clove of garlic, then discard it. Salt the pieces of egg lightly. Arrange the vegetables in the bowl, and put the tomatoes with them. On top, scatter the eggs, anchovy or tuna and olives. Pour over about 4 tablespoons of olive oil and tear the basil leaves over everything. Pepper well and chill for about half an hour.

Salade niçoise is served as a first course very often, or as lunch with plenty of bread. If you are going on a picnic, slice a shallow round loaf of bread across, remove most of the crumb and brush it with olive oil vinaigrette. Pack it with the salad ingredients, wrap it in cling film and chill under a light weight. This wonderful snack is known as pan bagna.

SCOTCH WOODCOCK

I am not keen on names which give an affected impression of the reality – rock turbot and rock salmon are two flagrant examples, however hallowed they may be by antique regional use. Scotch woodcock is another. In extenuation, I suppose that woodcock has become as legendary as the phoenix, except to millionaires and game-keepers: one can hardly be angry at a comparison one is never likely to be able to make.

This recipe comes from that wonderful book The Scots Kitchen by F. Marian McNeill: ‘Take six small rounds of buttered toast, spread them with anchovy paste, arrange on a dish and keep hot. Melt two tablespoons of butter in a saucepan, put in three tablespoons of cream and the raw yolks of three eggs, and stir over the fire until the mixture is a creamy mass.’ (Don’t boil, or you will have scrambled or curdled eggs.) ‘Add a little finely-chopped parsley and a dash of cayenne. Heap on the rounds of toast and serve very hot.’ I suggest you use anchovy butter instead of anchovy paste on buttered toast – see P. 49.

Mrs Beeton suggests using 150 ml (5 fl oz) cream instead of butter and cream. In either case, double cream gives the best flavour and consistency.

ANGLER-FISH see MONKFISH

ARGENTINE see A FEW WORDS ABOUT… SMELT

BLUEFISH & POMPANO

Pomatomus saltatrix & Trachinotus carolinus

In his North Atlantic Seafood, Alan Davidson joins these two fish together in one section although they are in fact of different species. The gracefully shaped bluefish, long, with a blue-green shine on its grey body, comes in to the Atlantic coast of America by the million every summer. It is a most ferocious animal – ‘an animated chopping machine’ – of carnivorous and wasteful habits. Its progress through the sea is marked by the bloody remains of other fish which had the misfortune to cross its path.

It is quite a good eating fish, not very firm but fairly oily. This means it grills well, and needs rather positive flavours to go with it. The recipes for Herring baked with cucumber on p. 183 and Red snapper créole on p. 479 can both be adapted to bluefish.

The pompano is one of America’s most famous delicacies. It is also caught in the Mediterranean (this is the Trachinotus ovatus, or the round pompano), but the place to eat it is undeniably at Antoine’s restaurant in New Orleans. As with bluefish, it is good baked or grilled with cucumber.

BLUEFISH BUSTANOBY

Many herring and mackerel recipes are suitable for bluefish. It is rich enough to take the sharpness of gooseberries, or the contrasting smoked flavour of bacon. In this recipe from the Long Island Sea Food Cook Book, by J. George Frederick, smoked ox tongue is used.

Serves 6

1½ kg (3 lb) bluefish

3 tablespoons mushroom juice

½ glass Chablis or other dry white wine

pinch of salt, pepper

3 tablespoons tomato sauce

1 tablespoon cooked smoked beef tongue, finely minced

Clean and store the bluefish. Dry it and place in a buttered ovenproof dish. Add mushroom juice (obtained by stewing mushrooms gently in butter so that they exude their moisture), the wine and seasoning. Cover with buttered paper and put into a fairly hot oven (gas 5, 190 °C/375 °F) for half an hour. Pour off the juices into a pan, add the remaining ingredients to them, and boil for 2 minutes. Pour over the fish and serve.

GRILLED BLUEFISH

Clean the fish, and bone it from the back, so that it opens out like a kipper. Brush with melted butter and put under the grill cut side up. When it is nearly done, turn it over and grill the other side.

Serve with melted butter sharpened with capers or lemon juice, or with pats of maître d’hôtel butter*. Mussel or oyster sauce can go with it, or a béarnaise*.

ANTOINE’S POMPANO EN PAPILLOTE

One of the best known recipes for pompano was devised in New Orleans at the beginning of this century by the son of the Marseillais founder, Antoine Alciatore. The occasion was, I believe, the visit to that city by the great Brazilian balloonist, Alberto Santos-Dumont. Like the Alciatores, he was French by origin, and no doubt appreciated the fine contents of the papillotes which had puffed up in the oven to the shape of one of his own dirigibles.

The early 1900s were the era of paper-bag cookery. The en papillote method had long been known, but was generally unsatisfactory because the taste of paper clung to the food inside. This problem was overcome by the development of special paper which did not have this disadvantage. In England, Spicers created the famous Soyer bag, at the instigation of Nicholas Soyer, grandson of the great chef, whose Paper-bag Cookery was published in 1911. Nowadays we use foil, which is completely neutral, and has the extra advantage over paper of being more efficiently twisted into a seal. Soyer demonstrated that almost anything could be cooked by this method, from cakes to huge joints of beef, but I think it is most successful of all with fish. If you cannot buy pompano, do not despair. Use fillets of any good firm fish instead – John Dory, turbot or brill, salmon trout, rainbow trout or bass. The rich crab sauce is excellent with this type of fish.

Serves 6

6 fillets pompano

salt, pepper

skin, bones and head for stock

1 chopped shallot or 1 heaped tablespoon chopped onion

90 g (3 oz) butter

600 ml (1 pt) dry white wine

250 g (8 oz) crab meat

250 g (8 oz) shelled prawns

½ clove garlic, chopped

250 g (8 oz) onion, chopped

1 sprig thyme

1 bay leaf

1 heaped tablespoon plain flour

2 egg yolks

Season the fish. Simmer skin, bones, etc. in 1 litre (1¾ pt) water for 30 minutes, strain into a measuring jug (there should be about 450 ml/15 fl oz of stock). Cook the shallot in 30 g (1 oz) butter until it begins to soften; add fillets. When they are lightly coloured on both sides, pour in the wine and simmer until the fish is just cooked and no more. Strain off the wine and set it aside. Leave the fish to cool.

Meanwhile, lightly fry crab, prawns and half the crushed garlic in another 30 g (1 oz) of butter. Add the onions and the remaining garlic. Cook gently for 10 minutes, covered. Add herbs and 300 ml (10 fl oz) of the fish stock. Make a thick sauce in the usual way with the remaining butter, the flour and the stock. Incorporate the white wine in which the fish was cooked, and the crab and onion mixture. Thicken further with the egg yolks. Correct seasoning. Remove the thyme stalks and bay leaf.

If you want to present the pompano properly, cut six paper or foil hearts large enough to contain the fillets. (Otherwise cut six oblongs, about 23 x 30 cm/9 x 12 inches.) Brush them lightly with oil. Put a layer of sauce on one half of each heart, then the fish and more sauce. Fold over the other side and twist the edges tightly together to make a close seal. Put these parcels on a baking sheet; place them in a very hot oven (gas 8, 230 °C/450 °F) for about 10 minutes.

NOTE This is said, by Marion Brown in The Southern Cook Book, to be the genuine recipe from Antoine’s. I have seen variations elsewhere in which crab meat alone was used, no prawns, and 125 g (4 oz) of sliced mushrooms added to the onions.

There is no reason why such a delicious sauce should not be served with pompano, and other fish, which have been poached in white wine, without the en papillote finish.

BAKED POMPANO WITH PRAWN OR SHRIMP STUFFING

Serves 6

1 pompano

salt, black pepper

1 small onion, chopped

1 tablespoon butter

60 g (2 oz) breadcrumbs

milk

1 heaped tablespoon parsley

175–250 g (6–8 oz) shelled prawns or shrimps

white wine or cream

Clean and season the fish. Make the stuffing; melt the onion in the butter until soft. Squeeze out the breadcrumbs in a little milk. Add to the onions and stir in the parsley off the heat. Chop the prawns or shrimps roughly and mix them in. Season to taste, and stuff the fish.

Butter an ovenproof baking dish and lay the pompano in it. Pour a little white wine over it – about a glassful – or some cream. Bake in a moderate to fairly hot oven (gas 4–5, 180– 190 °C/350–375 °F) for three-quarters of an hour.

GRILLED POMPANO WITH CUCUMBER HOLLANDAISE

Split and bone the whole pompano, or buy 6 fillets. Brush with melted butter, season, and grill with the cut side up. When the fish is almost cooked, turn it over and grill the other side if you like, but this is not necessary – the fish can be cooked completely without being turned over.

Serve with this sauce:

1 large cucumber

salt

hollandaise sauce*

Tabasco sauce

Slice the cucumber thinly. Put it into a colander, sprinkle with salt, and leave to drain for at least an hour. Rinse if the slices are too salty, gently squeeze them dry in a clean tea towel, and then chop roughly. Make the hollandaise sauce, incorporating a dash of Tabasco with the seasonings at the beginning. Fold in the cucumber just before serving, and adjust the seasoning.

BONITO see TUNA

† BRILL

Scophthalmus rhombus

There is one particular category, a category not much dwelt upon in food matters though I am sure it occupies a fair amount of the psychologist’s time, that corrals a sad group in many spheres of existence. It makes life hell in some families. It dents the morale of towns, suburbs and villages, schools and shops. I refer to the almost as good as category – for instance, Edward is almost as brave/tough/handsome as his brother Andrew. In food matters, this category can be exploited in unfortunate ways by devious businessmen – for instance, sponge-cake-with-additives-to-give-a-200-year-shelf-life is almost as good as the one you make at home with eggs, sugar and flour. Carob and that extraordinary stuff they coat biscuits with these days is almost as good as chocolate. Sometimes the almost as good as category is expanded so vigorously that it knocks out the tip-top category it was once compared with. People stop asking for the real thing because they have forgotten what it tastes like, even that it ever existed. Ice cream, sausages and properly reared, properly hung meat.

Whenever brill comes up, it is firmly placed in that category, too. Brill is almost as good as turbot. Actually, the gap is quite a large one. And perhaps I am being over-sensitive and even paranoid in suspecting that the fish trade keeps turbot from us, keeps sole from us, keeps wild salmon from us, so as to make us forget such things. Then we will stop demanding them, and they will have an easier time selling us brill, lemon sole and farmed salmon. Less worry about conserving stocks, which means less trouble with quotas. Eventually we shall end up with a choice between fish fingers and crab sticks. All fishermen will have to do is to run their vacuum cleaners over the sea bed, and transfer the haul to processing plants.

We have not, thank goodness, come quite to that point though in some fishing communities it seems uncomfortably near. Let us enjoy brill while we may, because it is a good fish of the second rank and worthy of our attention. I should perhaps add that the name is occasionally used for a most distinguished flatfish of the Pacific coast of America, the petrale sole. Although biologically the fish are not the same, they can be cooked in the same ways; recipes, too, for turbot, sole and other flatfish are all suitable as well. That goes without saying.

With all these flatfish or flounders, it is a question of sorting out the appropriate treatment. The first division comes with firmness – in this, sole and turbot have a supreme advantage since firmness combined with sweetness in fish is the most desirable of qualities. You underline this excellence with the finest sauces. Alternatively, you underline it by doing the least you possibly can so that nothing gets in the way, and serving it with the finest wine, the best bread. I remember the surprise of eating the very best oysters at Wheeler’s in London, oysters in lavish quantities, and being served ‘brown’ bread of such poor quality that one suspected it had come from a plastic packet of sliced bread.

Brill may not be of this high standing, but it is worth fresh and lively treatment. You could also try it with cheese: either bake it and pour a Welsh rabbit over it, or give it the more measured treatment of sole cooked with Parmesan (p. 384). The fillets are good for frying – Alan Davidson gives a delightful Swedish recipe for cooking the fillets this way in butter with a panful of chanterelle (girolle) mushrooms. But then, almost all white fish of second and lower quality is extraordinarily improved when cooked with mushrooms of any kind, even cultivated mushrooms. Try it, too, with samphire sauce*.

HOW TO CHOOSE AND PREPARE BRILL

Brill do not have the slightly diamond outline of the turbot, and they are in general smaller. The dark skin is smooth. Both sides need scaling, which is not the case with turbot.

When you are baking the fish whole, you can also cut through the dark skinned side. With flatfish, this is the equivalent to slashing the plumpest part of a round fish when grilling or baking it. Cut along the lateral line to the bone.

You may like to take the opportunity of easing the flesh a little away from the bone and introducing seasoning and butter. Place the brill down on its slashed side.

BAKED BRILL IN PORTUGUESE STYLE

A pleasant summery dish that depends for success on the quality of the tomatoes.

Serves 4

1 large brill, scaled and cleaned

salt, pepper

70 g (2½ oz) butter

1 large onion, thinly sliced

leaves of 2 sprigs thyme

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

1 bay leaf

125 ml (4 fl oz) dry white wine, preferably Portuguese

3 tomatoes (about 340 g/12 oz), skinned, seeded, coarsely chopped

½ clove garlic, finely chopped

pinch of sugar

Preheat the oven to gas 7, 220 °C (425 °F). Choose a heat- and ovenproof gratin or earthenware dish that accommodates the brill.

Slash down the dark side of the brill, along the central bone and scrape the flesh from the bones on either side to make a pocket. Season it inside and smear in a good tablespoon of butter.

Using a heat-diffuser mat if necessary, put the dish over a low heat and melt just enough butter to cover the base with a thin layer. Add the onion, thyme, parsley and bay leaf, and cook until the onion begins to look transparent and tender, without browning. Lay the brill in the dish, dark side down. Pour over the wine and lay a butter paper (or a buttered greaseproof paper) on top of the fish. When everything is bubbling away, transfer the dish to the oven and leave it there for 10–15 minutes, or until the fish is ready.

Meanwhile, cook the tomato in a generous tablespoon of butter with the garlic, salt, pepper, and a pinch of sugar if the tomatoes need its help. Aim to end with a fresh-tasting, choppy purée of a sauce.

When the fish is ready, stir the remaining butter into the tomato and pour it round the brill, stirring it slightly and as best you can into the juices. Serve with plenty of bread, and the wine that you used for the cooking.

BRILL WITH VERMOUTH

Dry white vermouth is an excellent wine for cooking fish. When the amount of liquid being used is small, its pronounced flavour and concentration gives a better result than dry white wine. Use extra dry Martini, Noilly Prat, or Chambéry.

Serves 6

6 × 125–175 g (4–6 oz) portions brill fillet

salt, pepper

4 tablespoons melted butter

breadcrumbs made from day-old bread

4 tablespoons finely chopped shallot

3 tablespoons chopped parsley

10 tablespoons vermouth

60–90 g (2–3 oz) unsalted butter

Season the fish with salt and pepper, a little in advance, if possible.

Switch on the oven to gas 8, 230 °C (450 °F).

Brush the top side of each piece of brill with melted butter and press it down into a tray of breadcrumbs to coat it. With a butter paper, grease an ovenproof dish that will take the fillets in a single layer, fairly closely. Scatter the shallot and most of the parsley over the base, and put the fillets on top, crumb side up. Sprinkle the rest of the melted butter over the crumbs. Pour the vermouth round the sides of the fish.

Bake for about 10 minutes, or until the brill is cooked. Remove the fish to six warm plates. Strain the cooking juices into a small pan and whisk in the unsalted butter. Season to taste. Pour the sauce beside the pieces of fish and scatter it with a little of the remaining parsley.

CAPELIN see A FEW WORDS ABOUT… SMELT

† CARP

Cyprinus carpio

For centuries, carp have been the pet fish of domestic waters. Frank Buckland described them as ‘water-sheep – herbivorous – gregarious – of a contented mind’. Still at great houses, like the château of Chantilly in France, they rise in crowds to the surface of moat or lake to be fed (not, I believe, on account of the bell which is rung, but because they see people collecting together and have learnt that this means food). Another of the French châteaux, Chambord, has given its name to a much-truffled preparation of carp in the princely style.

The first carp I encountered came from no such elegant waters, but from the river Loir, in May. The clammy creature was handed to me by a friend who observed that he had brought his lunch with him. I recognized the handsome large-scaled fish from Chinese plates and paintings, but I had not the least idea of how to cook it. Neither did I know that it should have been soaked in vinegar and water in case it had a muddy flavour.

As it turned out, I was lucky. That carp had been kind enough to avoid the murkier depths of the Loir. And the only means I had of cooking it – foil, a double row of bricks with a grill, and charcoal – were just right for its fresh liveliness of flavour. Butter, shallots, parsley and white wine all went into the package, and we remember its taste many years later.

Our second carp did not turn out so well. It was not Cyprinus carpio from the Loir, but a Mirror carp, a variety which has been bred for fish-farming. It looked strange, even amongst the exotic fish of Soho. The skin had a soft, wash-leather appearance, an opulent nudity, as the huge scales were few and dotted in single rows. That fish must have been a long way from home, because the flavour had faded. In fact, carp are good travellers. I should have been more careful to choose a livelier looking specimen. Although one could not expect the wild freshness of river-caught carp, these domestic varieties please the Chinese, and the Germans, and the French, all in their very different ways serious eaters of good things. Obviously carp are not selling in large quantities all over the world just because they are tough survivors and easily fed. (Some of the ponds extend to thousands of acres.)

I have learnt since that the carp is a surprisingly interesting fish for the cook, as I hope you will agree after reading the following recipes. It should be added that, for the eater, the flesh is firm and sweet, the arrangement of bones satisfyingly comprehensible. The soft roe is a great delicacy. If it is not required specifically in the recipe, turn to p. 430 and make the Curé’s omelette with it.

TO CHOOSE AND PREPARE CARP

The male carp with a soft roe is generally preferred to the female: its flavour is thought to be better.

A problem with carp is the likelihood that it will taste muddy. There are two ways to counteract this. First you can salt the fish, either sprinkling salt over the slices, or soaking the whole carp in a brine. As well, you can soak it for 5 minutes in water acidulated with vinegar – say 6 tablespoons to 1 litre (1¾ pt) of water. Take advice from the fishmonger.

However, before you get to this stage, you should scrape off the scales – unless it is Christmas Eve and you want to keep them on as good luck charms for the coming year. Then cut out the gills, wash and dry the fish. Now put it on a flat surface, remove the fins and cut the tail shorter and slit the belly so that you can remove the innards. Do this carefully, as inside there is a gall sack that should be removed intact or else the fish will remain bitter; you should also remove the thickest part of the intestine. The rest of the innards should be left inside, and neither they nor the cavity should be washed with water or the special characteristic flavour of the carp will be spoiled.

Now you can salt the fish, and give it a vinegar bath, before tackling one of the following recipes.

CARPE AU BLEU WITH HORSERADISH SAUCE

Serves 6

1¾–2 kg (3½–4 lb) carp

150 ml (5 fl oz) wine or tarragon vinegar

court bouillon no. 2*

300 ml (10 fl oz) double cream

60 g (2 oz) ground almonds

1 teaspoon sugar

grated horseradish to taste or prepared horseradish

salt

After cleaning it, tie the carp in a circle, nose to tail. (Do not wash or scale.) Put it into a pan. Bring the vinegar to the boil and pour it over the fish. Add the court bouillon, bring to the boil, and simmer until the carp is cooked. Drain and serve with the following sauce.

Bring cream, almonds and sugar to the boil. Stir in grated or prepared horseradish to taste and season with salt. A little lemon juice can also be added.

CARP STUFFED WITH CHESTNUTS

This is a more conventional recipe, from The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, though again there is the sweet note, in this case of chestnuts.

Serves 4

1½ kg (3 lb) carp

450 ml (15 fl oz) dry white wine

salt

cracker crumbs

2 generous tablespoons melted butter

STUFFING

1 medium onion, chopped

2 shallots, chopped

1 clove garlic, crushed

2 generous tablespoons butter

5-cm (2-inch) thick slice of bread

dry white wine

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

1 teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon each pepper, mace, powdered bay leaf, thyme

12 chestnuts, boiled, peeled and roughly chopped

1 egg

First make the stuffing. Cook the onion, shallots and garlic until soft and golden in the butter. Cut the crusts off the bread, dice it and soak in a little dry white wine. Squeeze out the surplus. Mix the rest of the stuffing ingredients together and put into the cleaned carp. Sew or skewer together and leave for 2 hours.

Bake for 20 minutes in a fairly hot oven, preheated to gas 5, 190°C (375°F), with the white wine and salt. Sprinkle with cracker crumbs, pour over the melted butter and put back into the oven for another 20 minutes. Serve with noodles.

CATIGOT

Catigot or catigau is a freshwater fish stew from southern France. Two or more varieties are cooked in white wine, the sauce thickened with egg yolks. Bacon fat or lard is used instead of olive oil or butter. This recipe is based on one from La Cuisine Rustique – Languedoc by André Bonnaure.

Serves 4–6

500g (1 lb) eel

750 g (1½ lb) carp

1 large onion, sliced

1 medium carrot, sliced

2–3 cloves garlic, crushed

lard or bacon fat

175 ml (6 fl oz) dry white wine

salt, pepper

3 egg yolks

½ tablespoon wine vinegar

croûtons of bread fried in lard or cooking oil and rubbed with garlic

Skin and clean the eel. Scale and clean the carp. Cut them into chunks about 4 cm (1½ inches) wide. Cook the onion, carrot and garlic, until lightly coloured, in just enough lard to cover the base of a saucepan. Put the pieces of fish into the pan. Pour in the wine and add water to cover. Season, and cook over a good heat for 10 minutes or until the fish is tender.

Meanwhile, beat the egg yolks with the vinegar. When the fish is cooked, strain a little of its liquid into the egg yolk mixture, stirring all the time. Return to the pan and keep over a low heat, without boiling, until the sauce is thickened. Turn into a serving dish and serve with the croûtons tucked around the edge.

CHINESE CARP WITH CHICKEN FAT SAUCE

The Chinese consider that the flavour of chicken fat enhances the soft delicacy of carp. The fish will be fried in the fat with spring onion and ginger: soy sauce, sherry and some water are then added so that the carp can finish cooking more comfortably. Kenneth Lo gives a slightly more elaborate version of the sauce, which is well worth trying.

Serves 4–6 with other dishes

1¼ kg (2½-3 lb) carp

salt

1½ tablespoons plain flour

5 tablespoons chicken fat

2 slices fresh ginger, peeled, cut into shreds

2 cloves garlic, chopped

4 spring onions cut into 2½-cm (1-inch) lengths

3 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon hoisin sauce

1 teaspoon chilli sauce

2 teaspoons sugar

2 tablespoons sherry

1 packet tofu, 300 g (10 oz)

175 ml (6fl oz) chicken stock

Clean the carp completely and rub with salt outside and in the cavity. Leave for an hour, then dry and rub the flour into the fish.

In an oval flameproof casserole, heat the chicken fat. In it stir-fry the ginger, garlic and half the spring onion for 1 minute. Then add the sauces, sugar and sherry. Lay the carp on top, cook for 2 minutes, then turn it over and give it 2 minutes more. Meanwhile, cut the tofu into 12 pieces and put them against the inside of the pot. Add the stock and remaining spring onions. Cover and simmer 10 minutes. Serve straightaway in the cooking pot.

HALASZLÉ KALOCSAI

Kalocsa fish soup is made with carp from the Danube, in a great iron pot, set on the banks of the river for preference. The right peppers to use are the hot cherry peppers that are much grown in Hungary, but fresh hot red chillis can be substituted. Other river fish can be used.

Serves 4–6

1 kg (2 lb) carp, cleaned

15 hot cherry peppers or 2 long fresh red hot chillis, 1 broken to expose the seeds

125 g (4 oz) chopped onion

3 teaspoons tomato paste

2 tablespoons paprika

salt

Chop the head and tail from the carp and put them into a large pot with the peppers or chillis, the onion, tomato paste, paprika and 1 litre (generous 1¾ pt) water. Bring to the boil and simmer for 1 hour. Remove the head and tail. Then cut the fish into steaks, put them into the soup and simmer for up to 30 minutes. Do not be tempted to stir the soup or the fish will break up; just shake the pot from time to time. Add salt to taste, give it another 2 minutes and serve with bread.

NOTE If you persuade the fishmonger to skin the carp for you, put that in with the head and tail to flavour the broth.

KARP NA SZARO (Karpfen in Polnische sauce)

In Poland and East Germany it is usual to have carp in grey sauce (szary sos) on Christmas Eve. The fish is cooked with its scales on and everyone treasures a scale or two in their purse to bring them good luck in the coming year. Sometimes the sauce is made with a mixture of beer and red wine, or with red wine alone – carp in red wine is a New Year’s Eve dish in some parts of Germany.

Serves 6

1½ kg (3 lb) carp, prepared and cut into steaks, the head split

salt

3 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons plain flour

1 litre (1¾ pt) liquid, half brown beer (not bitter) and half beef stock or one-quarter beer, one-quarter red wine, half beef stock or half red wine, half beef stock

125 g (4 oz) chopped onion

3 tablespoons chopped green herbs

¼ teaspoon allspice or 2 cloves

3 prunes, stoned, chopped

60 g (2 oz) chopped Pfefferkuchen, pain d’épices or gingerbread

lemon juice, pepper, sugar

60 g (2 oz) blanched almonds

60 g (2 oz) raisins

Put the carp pieces in a dish with the head and sprinkle with salt (unless it has already been salted). Set aside for an hour.

Cook the butter to the fragrant brown stage, stir in the flour off the heat. Cook gently to a coffee-coloured roux. Gradually stir in the liquid, and add the onion, herbs, spices, prunes and spice or ginger cake. Simmer for 30 minutes, then sieve into a pan that will take the pieces of carp. Taste the sauce, and add lemon juice, pepper and sugar to taste. When it tastes right, put in the almonds and raisins, and the pieces of carp which have been drained and dried. It is sensible to put the head in the bottom of the pan. Simmer until cooked.

Check the seasoning and serve in a warm shallow serving dish.

Carpe à la juive

This simpler version of the previous recipe makes a good cold dish. A strange thing about the carp is the unanimity with which it is treated across the world – as if everyone agreed to emphasize what Kenneth Lo described as its ‘uncomplicated sweet-freshness’. I cannot think there is any connection between central European and Chinese methods, because the carp recipes of mainland Europe seem to be living fossils of the sweet-sour style of medieval cookery. Interesting, though, that such recipes should have survived for carp, when so many other medieval recipes for other fish have not. This Jewish style comes from Lorraine.

Follow the recipe above, leaving the carp whole if you have a fish kettle. Prepare and scale it. Then cook as above,

Remove the cooked fish to an oval serving plate, re-forming the steaks into something of the carp’s original shape if you have had to cut it up. Reduce the cooking liquor, if need be, to make a stronger flavour, then remove the bouquet. Check seasoning and pour over the fish. The sauce sets to a jelly. Serve chilled.

MEURETTE DE CARPE

Serves 4

125 g (4 oz) mushrooms, sliced

1 medium onion, chopped

90 g (3 oz) currants

3 large cloves garlic

bouquet garni

1 bottle red Burgundy

salt, pepper

1–1¾ kg (2–3½ lb) carp

4 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoon plain flour

Simmer the mushrooms, onion, currants, garlic, bouquet garni and wine together for half an hour, uncovered, until the wine has reduced by a good third. Season. Clean the carp and cut into pieces. Add to the pan, cover, and simmer for another 20 minutes, or until the fish is cooked.

Mash butter and flour together, and use it to thicken the sauce (beurre manié*). Reheat and serve with croûtons of bread fried in butter. Remove the bouquet garni before serving, and the head of the carp.

VERSENYI BATYUS PONTY

Carp in a bundle, Verseny style, is a recipe of George Lang’s from his masterpiece of a book, The Cuisine of Hungary. It is served with a horseradish soured-cream sauce – a velouté made with beef stock and milk, flavoured with a little sugar, vinegar or lemon juice and 125 g (4 oz) grated horseradish which has soaked in a little boiling water for 2 minutes. Last of all 125 ml (4 fl oz) soured cream.

Serves 4–6

1 kg (2 lb) carp fillet, cut in 1 piece

salt

3 tablespoons plain flour

1 tablespoon paprika

4 tablespoons clarified butter

1 egg white, slightly beaten to break it up

DOUGH

175 g (6 oz) plain flour

125 g (4 oz) butter

1 egg yolk

1 tablespoon soured cream

1½ teaspoon salt

Make the dough first. Rub together the flour and butter until you have a crumbly mixture. Mix in the egg yolk, soured cream and salt. Knead on a lightly floured board to make a dough. Chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour.

Switch on the oven set at gas 5, 190°C (375°F). Salt the fish and roll it in the flour and paprika mixed. Shake off any excess. Fry slowly in the butter on both sides.

Choose an ovenproof dish measuring 23 × 15 cm (9 x 6 inches). Roll out the dough into a rectangle. Line the dish with one end of the dough. Put the fish on top. Fold the rest of the dough over and round the fish. Brush over with egg white. Bake 40–45 minutes.

NOTE If you can only buy smaller pieces of carp fillet, make individual pasties.

CARPET-SHELLS see A FEW WORDS ABOUT… CARPET-SHELLS

CATFISH see A FEW WORDS ABOUT… CATFISH

CERO see MACKEREL

CHAR see TROUT

CLAMS

Venus mercenaria, Mercenaria mercenaria

Everybody knows that clams are American. It is true that in Scotland scallops are often known as clams, and that we use the phrase ‘as tight as a clam’ about secretive people, but clams really belong to our rosier knowledge of American life. There is clam chowder for a start (not in fact a Red Indian dish, but an adaptation of the name and recipe of a French fish stew, see below). We have probably heard rather enviously of New England clambakes, those summer feasts on the beach when the shellfish are steamed on a bed of seaweed over red hot stones, along with lobster, chicken, sausages and a variety of vegetables. If we remember pioneering tales, we can probably recollect that wampum, the Red Indian money, consisted of strings and belts of clam shells (hence the second word of the specific name, Venus mercenaria).

It is not generally known that the bubbling dishes of praires farcies grillées, served in Norman and Breton restaurants (see Huitres farcies grillées, p. 256), are clams, real American clams, of the kind known as quahaug, quahog or hard clams. Efforts were first made to introduce them into France in the second half of the nineteenth century. Now they are acclimatized all down the Atlantic coast of France. As one sops up the last garlicky juices, one does not spend much time regretting the American clams that are not acclimatized in Europe – the cherry stone, little neck and butter clams which are eaten raw like oysters; the long razor clams which come to the table fried as well as in chowders; the soft clams which rejoice in the local names of gaper, maninose, nannynose, old maid and strand-gaper. I am sure that none of them can equal the praires farcies – or at least surpass them.

Clams are among the easiest shellfish to grow commercially. It is true that they take four years, almost as long as an oyster; but they are more good-tempered, less of a risk. As demand increases, so will production. It does seem ridiculous to go to France to eat them, let alone America, when we could be enjoying them at Southend or Torquay or in our own kitchens. Like many other shellfish, clams are best in the summer months. We tend to be superstitious about eating them when the month lacks an R (as we once were about eating pork). It seems that this is a groundless form of masochistic self-denial. Apparently only the native oyster, not the Portuguese but Ostrea edulis, should be avoided in July and August, because, as one authority put it, the shells are ‘full of gritty little babies’.

HOW TO PREPARE CLAMS

Having found your clams, how are you going to open them? If they are fresh and alive, use the oyster method, see p. 254. A few moments in warm water makes it much easier to push a knife through the hinges.

Some cookery books suggest using the mussel method (a large pan, covered, over a moderate heat) or, for the large ones, the scallop method (a few moments in a fairly hot oven, gas 6, 200 °C/400 °F, until they begin to open). Clams which have been deep-frozen are the easiest of all. Put them in warm water to thaw, until the shells just begin to gape. Finish the job off with a knife, oyster fashion. Keep deep-frozen clams for cooking.

Once the black-tipped siphon has been removed, all of the clam meat can be eaten. The coral foot and pinkish-white muscles are firmer than the central body part: for some recipes, it is a good idea to chop these parts, while leaving the soft part whole. Most oyster, mussel and scallop recipes can be adapted to clams – especially the one for Huîtres farcies grillées. Oysters Rockefeller (p. 261) is also particularly suitable.

CLAMS AU NATUREL

Fresh clams can be eaten raw on the half-shell, like oysters. Lemon juice and cayenne pepper can be served with them, plus the usual wholemeal or rye bread and butter, and a white wine such as Muscadet.

In The Boston School Cookbook, Fanny Farmer recommends that clams should be served with individual dishes of melted butter, sharpened with a little vinegar or lemon juice; the clam liquor should be strained, and served in glasses, for drinking at the same time.

Certainly clam liquor should be cherished, like oyster and mussel liquor.

CLAM CHOWDER

Being English, and of a tranquil disposition, I hesitate to offer comments on one of America’s sacred institutions. Even to suggest a recipe verges on impiety. But now that we have our own clam-producing beds, I can’t duck the issue, or any missiles that may come my way in consequence. It is strange how the monotheistic spirit has entered the kitchen. Each clam-chowder missionary expects everyone to bow down before his one true recipe (it is the same with Bouillabaisse in France). Tomatoes or no tomatoes? Milk or water? Onions – how many? Fanny Farmer instructs readers to take a pint of hard clams or a dozen large clams and one thinly sliced onion… In response Louis P. de Gouy thunders, ‘A dozen clams forsooth!… Men and women of Rhode Island and Massachusetts Bay never sat down to less than a peck of clams apiece.’ A peck, if I may remind the new metricians, is quarter of a bushel – think of a bushel basket for picking apples – in other words two gallons. They were gods in their appetite, the men and women of those days, cast in a gigantic mould. Here is one of them, Ishmael in Moby Dick, describing his first encounter with chowder at the Try Pots Inn run by Mrs Hosea Hussey in Nantucket: ‘Oh! sweet friends, hearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuits, and salted pork cut up into little flakes; the whole enriched with butter…’

Walt Whitman, too, would have found Fanny Farmer and her Boston School a little on the meagre, ladylike side:

The boatman and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me,

I tuck’d my trowser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time;

You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle.¹

Here, therefore, is Louis P. de Gouy’s recipe from The Gold Cook Book (1948):

‘Take 4 or 5 dozen good soft clams, if your family is a small one… Then take 6 large onions and ½ pound [250 g] of the finest salt pork. Cut the pork in half-inch [1¼-cm] dice and brown them slowly in an iron skillet,² then add the onion slices to the pork fat and let them turn to golden-brown rings. Meanwhile wash the live clams, using a brush to get rid of all sand, and heat them slowly in a pan till the shells open. Save the juice, cut off the long necks and remove the coarse membrane, then chop half of the clams, not too finely, and keep the rest whole. Put pork, onions, clam juice, and 1 quart of boiling water in a kettle,² add 3 large peeled tomatoes, 1 bunch of leeks cut finely, 2 stalks of celery, finely minced, 2 young carrots, diced, 1 tablespoon of parsley, chopped, ½ teaspoon of thyme leaves, 2 large bay leaves, 1 teaspoon of salt, ½ generous teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper, a slight grating of nutmeg, and let the mixture boil up smartly. Then reduce to the simmering point, and put in 3 large potatoes, peeled and cut in neat small dice. Prepare a roux by browning 2 rounded tablespoons of flour in 2 rounded tablespoons of butter, and make it smooth and creamy by stirring in broth from the kettle. Put all the clams into the kettle before the potatoes begin to soften, and simmer slowly until the potatoes are just tender, then stir in the roux and 2 large pilot biscuits² coarsely crumbled, and add 1 teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce and a dash of Tabasco sauce. Serve sizzling hot.

‘If preferred, omit the tomatoes and add instead 1 cup [125 ml/ 4 fl oz] of scalded cream.’

CLAMS FARCIES

As well as the recipes for grilled and stuffed oyster or mussels, try this delicious mixture. Bacon and mushrooms are good with most of the small shellfish.

Serves 6

48 clams

125 g (4 oz) mushrooms

4 slices bacon, crisply cooked

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

breadcrumbs (see recipe)

salt, pepper

butter

Like oyster shells, clam shells need to be settled firmly on a supporting base if they are not to wobble about during cooking. Tin pans with a thick layer of sea salt are one solution: the clams can be pressed down into the salt. I prefer large ‘platters’ of bread, in which holes have been made with a small scone cutter; the shells rest in the holes, and any juice which bubbles over is sopped up – to your ultimate benefit – by the bread. Having settled this point, open the clams, and pour off their liquor into a jug.

To make the stuffing, chop the mushrooms finely and crumble the bacon. Mix them together with the parsley and strained clam liquor. Stir in enough breadcrumbs to make a normal stuffing consistency – spreadable, but not sloppy. Season to taste. Divide this mixture between the shells, to cover the clams. Dot with butter and bake in a moderate oven (gas 4, 180 °C/350 °F) for about 12 minutes; until they are nicely browned and bubbling.

CLAM FRITTERS

Although soft shell clams are recommended for this recipe from The American Heritage Cookbook hard clams can be used instead. So can mussels.

By my estimate, 3–3½ kg (6–7 lb) of clams in the shell should produce the required amount, or 4 kg (8 lb) of mussels.

Serves 6

375 g (12 oz) clams, drained

2 eggs, separated

80 g (2¾ oz) white breadcrumbs, toasted

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon pepper

½ dessertspoon chopped parsley

½ dessertspoon chopped chives

generous 60 ml (2 fl oz) milk

butter or vegetable oil

Chop the drained clams finely. Beat the egg yolks, then mix in the clams, breadcrumbs, seasoning and herbs. Add enough milk to make a heavy batter. Beat the egg whites stiffly. Fold them into the mixture just before you intend to cook it. Heat the butter or oil in a frying pan. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into it and cook in the usual way.

Although the recipe doesn’t say so, lemon quarters are a good garnish: their juice cuts the richness of the fritters.

CLAMS MORNAY

You will need a prepared base for the clam shells, see p. 81. Alternatively, you can discard the shells, and divide the sauce and clams, on the same principle, between six little pots.

Serves 6

48 clams

butter

175 ml (6 fl oz) dry white wine

Mornay sauce*

125–175 g (4–6 oz) grated Gruyère cheese

3 tablespoons breadcrumbs

Open, remove and drain the clams, retaining the liquor. Fry the clams for 2 minutes only in just enough butter to cover the base of the pan. Pour in wine and simmer for 4 or 5 minutes – don’t overcook. Drain the clams carefully and set aside; add the reserved clam liquor to the cooking liquor, and reduce until you have a strongly concentrated essence. Add this gradually to the Mornay sauce, stopping before it becomes too salty.

Put some of the sauce into the shells, lay the clams on top and then cover with some more sauce. Mix the grated Gruyère and breadcrumbs, and sprinkle over the top. Brown lightly in the oven, or under the grill – the latter is simpler, and more easily controlled. Serve immediately.

This is a good recipe, too, for scallops – 18 should be enough for 6 people.

COLCHESTER CLAMS WITH SAMPHIRE

The biggest indictment of our catering trade is fish – or rather the lack of it. You can spend a thousand days at the seaside without being able to sit down in a café to a platter of seafood – lobster, crab, mussels, oysters, shrimps, prawns, whelks, winkles – served on ice with a bowl of proper mayonnaise. In seaside hotels, the one item of fish on the menu will be frozen or dull or overcooked, most likely all three. We need the influence of the new cooking from France, with its insistence on fish. Thank heavens that it begins to show – though this is often indignantly denied – in our best restaurants, the brave hundred (according to one food guider) that care about ingredients.

In fact, I think that the best turbot I have ever eaten was in Norfolk when Melanie de Blank had her hotel in Shipdham. Many of her ingredients came from her husband’s London shops, but the fish was splendidly local. She took advantage, too, of the samphire that covers the salt marshes of the flat Norfolk coast. In summer, you can pick it yourself (wellingtons are a prudent measure), or buy it from village stalls outside farmhouses and from fishmongers. Take home plenty because it freezes well. Steam or blanch it in unsalted water, after picking it over and cutting away brown stem lengths, and serve it with butter like asparagus. You pick it up, nibble off the tender tops and then chew the green lower sections from their central strings.

In this recipe, samphire is teamed with Colchester clams (mussels or oysters could be used instead), and the sauce is flavoured with saffron – not in these days from Saffron Walden but from Spain. Only use the stringless green tips of samphire, serving the rest at another meal: 1 kg (2 lb) should provide enough.

Serves 6

6 handfuls of samphire tips

36 clams

150 ml (5 fl oz) dry white wine

2 small shallots, chopped

1 medium carrot, chopped

pinch of saffron, steeped in a little hot water

300 ml (10 fl oz) crème fraîche or half each soured and double cream

julienne shreds of carrot and leek, blanched, to garnish

Wash and steam or blanch the samphire. Drain well. Scrub the clams. Bring the wine, chopped shallots and carrot to the boil, put in the clams, cover and leave for 2 minutes. Remove the clams, if open; otherwise leave a little longer until they open. Set aside six clams in their shells. Remove the remaining clams and discard the shells. Strain the liquor into a wide shallow pan, add the saffron and its liquor, and boil down to concentrate the flavour. Stir in the cream (s), and boil slightly to thicken. Off the heat, stir in the clams and cool. Add seasoning, if necessary.

Put the samphire on six plates, spoon over the clams with their sauce, and decorate with the julienne and the reserved clams in their shells.

SPAGHETTI ALLE VONGOLE

Small clams in a tomato sauce are often served with spaghetti in central and southern Italy. In the north, in Venice, they would be added to a risotto with a lump of butter rather than tomato sauce.

Serves 6

500 g (1 lb) spaghetti

3 kg (6 lb) clams, washed

1 large onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, chopped

3 tablespoons olive oil

400 g (14 oz) can tomatoes

60 g (2 oz) chopped parsley (large bunch)

Cook the spaghetti in plenty of boiling salted water in the usual way, until it is cooked but not slimily soft. Drain and keep warm until the sauce is finished.

Start the sauce as soon as the spaghetti goes into the pan. Open the clams in a large pan over a moderate heat, discard the shells and strain off the liquid from the fish. Brown the onion and garlic lightly in the oil. Add the tomatoes and some of the clam liquor. Boil down to a rich sauce. Add clams, which will be adequately cooked, just to re-heat them. Remove sauce from the stove, stir in the parsley and pour over the spaghetti, mixing it well.

† COD, LING, COLEY, POLLOCK, POLLACK, etc.

Gadidea spp.

Cod, oh dear not cod. Again. I used to dislike it, or perhaps I used rather to feel bored by it when it was the bottom fish on the marble slab. When I was first writing Fish Cookery in 1971, I noted that there were a number of things you could do with it, but were they worth your while? Although Escoffier had remarked that if cod were only rarer, ‘It would be held in as high esteem as salmon; for when it is really fresh and of good quality, the delicacy and delicious flavour of its flesh admit of its ranking among the finest of fish,’ when it came to the count, he had only been moved to give six recipes to it in his Guide Culinaire, by comparison with sole which had 182.

Fifteen years later, the laugh is on me: in those days, cod was forty-five per cent of the total wet fish landings in Britain; by 1985, it had dropped to just over thirteen per cent. A figure that would, I think, have surprised Escoffier. As I write now, in December 1986, there are reports of reduced breeding stocks with national quotas in the EEC adjusted accordingly. Prices are at £900 per tonne, whereas two years ago they were £700 and in 1982, £300. The conclusion of the article in The Independent, from which these figures come, is that prices cannot continue to rise. With more and more farmed salmon and the lowering of salmon prices accordingly, will there be parity of esteem? Perhaps not over the whole consumer range, since the magic of the word salmon may take a year or two to dispel, but many friends I have talked to agree that they would rather eat top quality cod than some of the farmed salmon one sees around.

This rarity of the real thing has drawn attention to the lesser relations. I exclude from this category haddock (p. 148), hake and whiting (pp. 161 and 446), which have strong identities of their own. They are all fish of fine quality. Somewhat less glorious, though adequate for stocks, soups, fish pies, fish cakes possibly, fish fried in batter, and for salting, is a bevy of fish with a confused nomenclature. From the cook’s point of view, all one actually needs to know is that they are all cooked like cod, haddock and hake. Nevertheless, here is a modest attempt to disentangle some of them, with French names to help if you are catering for the family abroad and are bewildered by the much greater choice of fish in the markets:

ling (Molva molva; lingue or julienne)

coley, coalfish,

black pollack, rock (Pollachius virens; Lieu noir, colin noir)

salmon, etc.

pollack, Dover hake,

lythe, Margate hake, (Pollachius pollachius; Lieu jaune, colin jaune)

pollock, etc.

Alaska pollack or

pollock (Theragra chalcogrammus)

You will see that pollack or pollock covers at least three realities.

Having acknowledged the lesser fry, let us return to the king of the cod fishery, Gadus morhua, once the most important food fish in northern Europe. It has all the freshness and crispness of form that cold seas can give it. The English name, cod, goes back to the year dot pretty well. No etymologist can work out where it has come from. One thing is sure, it has no connection with the Greek gados from which the first element in the Latin name derives. Obeisance should be made to its majestic importance, but it should also be pointed out that – from the eater’s point of view – there is cod and cod. Go for the small inshore fish that haven’t been bruised around in ice in a ship’s hold for weeks. Official sizing this side of the Atlantic goes by length:

small codling: less than 54 cm (21½ inches)

codling: 54–63 cm (21½–25 ¼ inches)

sprag: 63–76 cm (25¼–30 inches)

cod: over 76 cm (30 inches)

This gives you some idea of what to ask for, if your fish kettle measures 60 cm (24 inches). Assuming, that is, that you want to cook it whole as they do in Norway for Christmas dinner. There you choose your fish on the quay as it swims around in the tanks. The fishmonger dispatches and cleans it, and you take it home to poach and serve with a traditional mustard or egg sauce, or with melted butter and fine grated horseradish.

Another place where small codling are given their due is Boston (Boston, Mass., not Boston, Lincs.). It appears there, and so does haddock, under the name of scrod. They measure the fish there by weight:

scrod: ¾ – 1¼ kg (1½–2½ lb), less than 50 cm (20 inches)

market: 1¼–5 kg (2½–10 lb), 50–75 cm (20–30 inches)

large: 5–12 ½ kg (10–25 lb), 75–100 cm (30–40 inches)

whole: over 12½ kg (25 lb), over 100 cm (40 inches).

People fly across the States for it, I gather. One keen traveller ran out of the airport and jumped into a cab: ‘Take me some place good where I can get scrod!’

The cab drive sat back and paused, admiringly: ‘That’s a question I’ve been asked many times. But never in the pluperfect.’

Nowadays in Boston, sadly, and in Gloucester, cod fishing is not the vast trade it once was. Down at the pierhead auction with George Berkowitz who runs five of the best fish restaurants in Boston (each with a fishmonger’s counter beside the till, so that inevitably you walk out with supper after enjoying your lunch), I heard complaints of the great Russian ships which have invaded the traditional fishing grounds and hoover up the seabed like a carpet. In Europe, memories of the cod war with Iceland a few years ago are still sharp in many people’s minds. Its virtues, now we are unable to take it for granted, are more apparent.

Really fresh cod, not overcooked, falls apart in large firm creamy flakes, and the bones are easy to avoid. Its clean aplomb can be toned down to delicacy with a fine sauce, or underlined with shellfish or bacon, tomatoes, peppers, spices, wine. In batter, quick from the pan with a squeeze of lemon, it is perfect food for hungry people. Smashed down in the blender or processor, cod makes an excellent fish pudding. I use it as a substitute for unobtainable species of fish when trying out a stew. The cod chowders of America’s eastern seaboard are infinitely variable, warming food for a cold night.

Cod may not yet be regarded as an epicure’s delight, but as the fish of human martyrdom, of the tragedy of lost lives, it does have a splendid novel to itself. In Pêcheurs d’Islande, Pierre Loti turned the sufferings of this dangerous trade into a work of art, a sustained elegy for the tough, inarticulate Bretons who spent the summer in a frail ‘house of planks’, rocking on the North Sea in the pale void of the nights, ‘under the gaze of this sort of spectral eye which was the sun’. Beneath them, the ‘innumerable fish, myriads and myriads, all alike, gliding noiselessly in the same direction, as if they had a goal in their perpetual journeying. They were the cod which were executing their evolutions together… Sometimes, with a sudden stroke of the tail, they all turned together, showing the gleam of their silvered bellies and then the same stroke of tail, the same turn were propagated through the entire shoal in slow undulations, as if thousands of metal blades had given, under water, each a little flash.’ Again and again, one of the men – who worked in pairs – hauled in the lines heavy with fish, the live cod allowed themselves to be caught, ‘it was rapid and incessant, this silent fishing. The other gutted with his large knife, flattened, salted and counted, and all the time the soused fish which was to make their fortune on their return was piling up behind them, streaming and fresh.’

Nowadays, the cod fishermen spend winters there as well, in vast modern trawlers with wireless, and refrigerated chambers for the catch. They have a better chance against the ice and tumult of those bitter seasons off Iceland and the North Cape. It is still hard going, though, for the smaller inshore boats out from the Massachusetts ports, whose living is so precarious that they turn for home at the last possible moment, fearing to lose any possible chance of the fish that may just turn their sorties from loss to profit.

Some years ago, I was ticked off by a reader on account of my liking for salt cod. ‘Poverty food,’ she said, ‘and in this country, we are beyond the need for that kind of thing.’ Certainly the need for salt fish inland for the many fast days of Christianity long ago is no longer with us. The Reformation saw to that and, if it hadn’t, modern refrigerated transport would have done so in our time. Now we can eat it for pure pleasure, an extra item in our diet, just as buckling or kippers, ham or bacon, make extra variations on the basic themes of herring and pork.

Salt cod was originally the product of Holland and Scandinavia in the Middle Ages. I have read that Portuguese fishermen who were also after the cod in Greenland waters were setting up their drying tenters on the shores of America and Canada decades before Columbus set sail in 1492. Portugal is reputed to have a salt cod recipe for each day of the year: certainly my own favourite salt cod recipe is Portuguese (p. 103), followed by the creamy savoury pounded salt cod made in Languedoc and northern Italy. It is interesting that the best recipes all come from the destinations of the trade, rather than from its original homes in Holland, Iceland and Norway. In those countries, until quite recent times, you could see green and stony fields white over with fish, laid to dry in an unending patchwork. Nowadays the fish is hung up on racks in huge sheds where the drying is properly regulated and no longer affected by the uncertain weather. The main market was and still is the Mediterranean, with stops on the Atlantic coasts of Spain and Portugal. The ships brought back wheat and dried fruit.

Along with the salt cod went stockfish, which is made from the same members of the Gadidae family, cod, hake, coley and so on, but without the salting process. The fish is simply split and dried. This is the board-like fish that hangs in high rows, fringing shops in Ghana and other parts of Africa, still its main market. You will not find it easy to obtain in Britain or America. In some languages, the word stockfish is used interchangeably with the word for salt cod. And one can make use of them interchangeably in the same recipes, with adjustments of soaking time and seasoning. They are a sombre reminder – like black and red herrings (p. 191) – of the days of slavery: boats full of salt cod would set out from Boston for Spain and Africa, keeping back a little of their cargo to feed the people that were then crammed into the empty holds for the journey to the West Indies. Their place was taken by the sugar and molasses of the plantations that the slaves were imported to produce, and so back to Boston. This means, of course, that another source of good salt fish recipes is the Caribbean and Brazil.

HOW TO CHOOSE AND PREPARE COD

Whether you are buying whole fish, fillets or steaks, the top quality comes from inshore codling. It should look particularly bright and fresh; the steaks should have a milky whiteness that draws your eye.

Do not let this put you off coley (also called saithe and coalfish), which is a most unalluring dark greyish-pink colour. Often it is a good second best; it whitens in the cooking and tastes pleasant enough. For Bergen fish soup, below, one of the finest and most delicate of all fish soups, it is essential. You will find it works well in cod chowders (p. 515), too, and for fish stocks when you cannot get hold of fish bones and trimmings. I admit it is not the best of the cod-like fish – hake, haddock, whiting would be most people’s preference – but I feel protective towards it ever since I heard an old lady say to a fishmonger, ‘Oh, and give me a bit of coley for the cat!’

Cod’s head and shoulders used to be a favourite of the Victorian family table. There are good pickings, but today we are more squeamish. If you have a modern young fishmonger with a genteel trade, you may be able to get the cod’s head from him for very little (an older man may well have a better idea of its worth). Use the head for fish stock, removing the cheeks, jaw muscle, and so on, when they are just cooked. Or make soup – see the Salmon head soup on p. 318 – using the cooked fish as a final garnish. The reason people ate the cod’s head and shoulder in the past was because they were quite sufficient for a dish, and also because it is difficult to cook a whole cod evenly – ‘when the thick part is done, the tail is insipid and overdone’. Codling is all right cooked whole, however.

Another comment from Mrs Beeton is that fresh cod can be a little watery in the cooking. If you rub salt into it a couple of hours beforehand, it will stiffen and flavour it. In fact, I find most fish are improved by seasoning in advance, giving the salt time to penetrate. Obviously this works better with steaks and fillets than with whole, unskinned fish: even so, rubbing salt into the cleaned cavity and over the skin does help.

BERGEN FISH SOUP

This soup was the great delight of a trip we made several years ago now. We were part of a group of journalists from all over the world who were being taken to visit the salmon farms that are staked out in the narrows of the low rocky coast. In between lectures, there was some lovely food, especially one evening at the Royal Hotel, where we were staying: the chef gave us his recipe for the great local speciality, which is made – by choice – from coley.

Serves 8

1 kg (2 lb) coley fillet, cubed

1 kg (2 lb) fish bones, heads, etc.

1 large onion, finely chopped

1 large leek, trimmed, sliced

2 medium-sized bay leaves

salt, pepper

1 teaspoon sugar

white wine vinegar

2 medium carrots, cut in julienne strips

white part of 2 leeks, cut in julienne strips

1 tablespoon plain flour

2 tablespoons butter

3 egg yolks

150 ml (5 fl oz) each double and soured cream

chopped chives

FISH BALLS

250 g (8 oz) haddock fillet, skinned

½ teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons plain flour

2 teaspoons cornflour or cornstarch

2 tablespoons soft butter

pepper, nutmeg

225 ml (7½ fl oz) cold boiled milk

4 tablespoons cold boiled cream

Make a stock by simmering the first five ingredients together in plenty of water to cover. Give them 45 minutes, then strain off the stock into a clean pan. Season with salt, pepper and sugar. Liven the flavour with a teaspoon of vinegar, taste and then add a splash or two more but do not overdo it. Pour off enough of the stock into a shallow pan to make a 2-cm (¾-inch) depth for poaching the fish balls, which can be made while the stock simmers.

Reduce the haddock, from the fish ball ingredients, and the salt to a fluffy purée in a blender or processor, and add the rest of the ingredients in turn, one by one. Chill the mixture, if this is convenient, while you get on with the soup.

To the large pan of stock, which should be at simmering point, add the carrot shreds. Give them a minute’s cooking, then put in the leek. Mash the flour into the butter and add it to the pan in little bits, keeping the soup below simmering point from now on. Beat the egg yolk and creams, whisk in a ladleful of soup and pour back into the pan. Stir for 5 minutes and taste again for seasoning. Put in the chives. Keep warm without further cooking.

To poach the fish balls, heat the shallow pan of stock to simmering point. Form little balls, quite tiny ones, with two teaspoons, slipping them into the stock. After 2 minutes, taste one. If it feels light and soft, without any hint of flour, the fish balls are done. You may well not need all the mixture, which can be kept for another occasion (it is tricky making a smaller quantity).

Place the fish balls in the soup, and add their stock to the pan as well. The final result is a creamy white soup, with streaks of colour from the carrot and leek, beautiful and delicate, not insipid.

COD WITH MUSHROOMS

The important thing is to cook the mushrooms and cod together so that the flavours intermingle. A surprisingly good dish. Aim to keep the mushrooms in a light juice, rather than a lot of liquid.

Serves 6

6 × 175–250 g (6–8 oz) cod steaks

salt, pepper, nutmeg

6 slices of crustless bread cut to the size and shape of the cod

125 g (4 oz) clarified butter

seasoned flour

375 g (12 oz) mushrooms, caps sliced, stalks chopped

1 clove garlic, crushed, skinned, chopped

1–2 tablespoons chopped parsley

Put the steaks on a dish and season them, then set aside while you fry the bread until brown and crisp on one side only, in half the butter. Place the bread, cooked side down, on a hot dish and keep warm.

Dry the fish, turn it in the flour and fry it in the remaining butter. Add the mushrooms and garlic when you turn the cod. Remove the cod when done, putting it on top of the bread. Give the mushrooms a little longer if necessary, and season them. Put them round the cod, sprinkle a little parsley on top of the fish and serve.

NOTE Instead of slices of bread, you could fry small bread dice or coarse breadcrumbs and scatter them over the dish before serving. A crisp contrast makes a dish of this kind much livelier.

FISKEPUDDING (Fish pudding)

If you visit a Stockholm market, you may well see on the fish stalls a regimentation of what looks like collapsed kugelhupf cakes. A sad and weak-kneed array, to an outsider at least. They are likely to be interspersed with plastic tubs. Customers come along quite briskly all the same. The fishmonger wraps the chosen collapsible in foil, presumably for reheating, and hands over a plastic tub as well. Everyone seems happy. Try this recipe and you will see why. Having a processor is the secret.

Serves 4–6

375 g (12 oz) cod fillet

130 g (generous 4 oz) butter, softened

2 large egg yolks

2 level tablespoons plain flour

150 ml (5 fl oz) double cream

150 ml (5 fl oz) milk

1½ teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon sugar

pepper

2 large egg whites

extra butter, for greasing the mould

2–3 tablespoons fine breadcrumbs

1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley

Scrape the fish from the skin, removing any bones. Process with the butter, yolks, flour, cream and milk and the seasoning, gradually and in batches if necessary. Whisk the whites in a bowl and fold in the fish mixture. Taste for seasoning.

Grease a 1¼ litre (2 pt) kugelhupf pottery or metal ring mould with butter. Mix crumbs and parsley and shake them about in the mould to coat it. Tip out any surplus.

Put in the fish mixture, cover with buttered paper and steam or cook in a bain-marie in a moderate oven, preheated to gas 4, 180° (350°F) for an hour or until firm to the touch. Ease with a knife, turn out on to a hot dish and serve with shrimp or prawn sauce, p. 281 – that is what the plastic pots contained in the Stockholm market.

POACHED CODLING WITH OYSTER SAUCE AND MELTED BUTTER

Here’s English cooking for you and, if well done, it is very well worth eating. Do not jib at the quantity of salt: if the fish is whole, you will find it agreeably seasoned and no more, just as you do when baking a whole fish or whole chicken in a mound of sea salt (p. 367). Oyster sauce is a special treat with chicken and turkey, as well as with white fish of firm quality.

Serves 6

1½ kg (3 lb) codling, cleaned

coarse sea or rock salt

sprigs of parsley

small new potatoes, boiled

SAUCE

24 large or 36 medium oysters, opened

60 g (2 oz) butter, softened

2 teaspoons plain flour

cream

cayenne pepper

BUTTER

250 g (8 oz) unsalted or lightly salted butter, cut in dice

Start with the sauce. Tip the oysters with their juice into a bowl. Swish each oyster about in the liquor to get rid of bits of shell and put it into a small pan. Strain the liquor over them, through a cloth. Bring to simmering point and hold them there until they look plump. Remove immediately and strain off the liquor into a measuring jug. Mash the butter and flour together and put into the top pan of a double-boiler. Add enough cream to the oyster liquor to bring it up to 300 ml (10 fl oz), and add a pinch of cayenne. Leave near the stove for last-minute cooking.

For the melted butter, bring the diced butter to boiling point in a small pan. Let it bubble briefly, then leave for the sediment to settle. Pour off into a small jug, for later reheating.

To poach the cod, lay it on the strainer tray of the fish kettle. Pour over enough water to cover it properly, measuring as you go. Stir in enough sea salt to make a brine, allowing 90 g to every 2½ litres of water (or 3 oz to 2½ pt). Bring up to a rolling boil, standing the kettle over two burners, then immediately lower the heat so that the water barely trembles. Poach the fish for 10–15 minutes, keeping it submerged by laying a dish on top. Test after 10 minutes by giving the first dorsal fin a little tug: if it comes out easily, the fish is done. Remove it to a hot serving dish and keep warm while you complete the oyster sauce.

Have the lower part of the double-boiler half full of boiled water. Pour the oyster and cream mixture into the top part and set it in place. Stir steadily until the sauce thickens: it should become very hot, but not boil. Stir in the oysters and give them a few moments to heat through, without further cooking. Remove and pour into a hot jug. Stand the little jug of melted butter in the double-boiler to heat up.

Surround the cod with sprigs of parsley and boiled potatoes. Serve with the two jugs of sauce and melted butter.

VERY FRESH COD NORWEGIAN STYLE

A fish straight from the tank should be cleaned – preserve liver and roe – and cut in ‘finger-thick slices’. Keep the head. Put all the fish into a bowl under a running tap until about 30 minutes before the meal, then drain.

Boil water with salt, as above, in a fish kettle. Lower the fish on the strainer tray, then remove the kettle from the heat when water returns to the boil. The slices will be almost cooked. Give them a minute or two more if necessary; the head will not need much longer.

Meanwhile, simmer any roe in salted water separately, tied in muslin, until just firm, about 10 minutes, then serve in slices with the cod. The liver should be chopped and cooked in the minimum of barely salted water with a splash of vinegar: this makes one sauce. Provide another such as hollandaise * or, in nineteenth-century style, an oyster sauce (p. 263). And boiled potatoes. Tuck bunches of parsley around the cod’s head, slices and roe.

CRAB STICKS ALIAS POLLOCK (OR CROAKER)

The crab stick or, in some circles, krab stik – is a phenomenon of ‘high tech’. A fairly recent phenomenon. A fishmonger in Cirencester market gave us a couple free in, I would say, 1983 when they were new on the British scene. Looking first at their rouged cheeks, and then pushing the thready synthetic sweetness round our mouths, we never thought they would come to anything. If someone had told us that a vast industry in Japan is devoted to such things, we would not have believed them. Yet now crab sticks lurk in the corner of every fishmonger’s slab.

I would say that they are spurned by the knowing customer here. Certainly it never occurred to me that crab sticks would appear in the revision of Fish Cookery until a trip to Paris in 1986. Three of us were taken by SPOEXA to the great food fair that is held there every other year. One evening we went to an elegant restaurant, the Quai des Ormes: among the dishes ordered was pasta with crab sauce. When it came, we were startled to see that the final flourish was an artistically squashed crab stick. Three days later, when I was with friends in Aix en Provence, the cook of the family came home from market with a new treasure. Just the thing, the fishmonger had assured her, for a nice crab salad, little batons of claw meat.

When I said, ‘Ah, crab sticks!’, she was mortified. Next day, we paid the fishmonger a visit. He swore they were the real thing – look at the fibres, Mesdames, and the colour that you always find on crab close to the shell. Obviously he believed himself. His sincerity was touching. It made us very nervous. Nothing is more impermeable than a gastronomically sincere French fishmonger – except perhaps a gastronomically sincere French chef. The implications are daunting. Watch out when you next go to France. Be wary of crab on the menu.

If crab sticks are not crab, what are they? That, as I discovered from a seafood quarterly, Ocean Leader, published in Seattle, is more interesting than you might suppose, and far more ancient.

The idea goes back a thousand years, to ingenious Japanese fishermen who for one or another reason were too far from home to get back and sell their catch in time. To save what they could, they boned and chopped the fish to a jellied hash that they called surimi. This was mixed with something starchy and salt, and cooked. The resulting paste was then moulded round bamboo sticks (chiku) in rings (wa), for later sale. This faceless edible surimi is a kind of marine tofu. It can be made from many fish, though nowadays it comes mainly from the vast catches of Alaskan pollock (and croaker) in the Bering Sea.

The Japanese used knives, pestles and mortar – until machines came along to take over. The processing of surimi is similar to the production of comminuted meat (i.e. meat, bones, gristle, etc. which are pulverized to a paste), the glue and ‘meat content’ of hot dogs, sausages, the more ineffectual pâtés. Surimi has the advantage of being springy in texture when it has been warmed and moisturized to the correct state. Then it is ‘extruded in a thin layer on to a stainless steel belt followed by a flame and steam heat set to yield a strong and cohesive sheet of product. This sheet passes through knives which cut the fibers lengthwise, but not completely through. The fibers thus produced are collated by rolling or bunching the sheet together and coating with an outer layer of the surimi mixture. The product is then printed with a food grade coloring agent, wrapped and heat processed before final packaging. Similar products’ – e.g. shrimp, scallops, lobster – ‘may be prepared by an extrusion process similar to spaghetti production.’

There it is. Now you know.

What irritates me is that this kind of thing can be pleasant enough to eat. From surimi, the Japanese have developed a kind of fish cake, flavoured with mirin, salt and sugar, called kamaboko; it comes in various cylindrical and semi-cylindrical forms, sometimes coloured red on the outside, or cut to show a red spiral design. In a Vietnamese restaurant, you may get prawn paste pressed round a short piece of sugar cane, rather in the style of that ancient chikuwa, that is really good. It seems that once big food business lays its high-tech hands on processing, all virtue, all art goes. Theoretically, artificial flavouring and textures could surely be as fine and lively in their own way as natural ones. Why should an artificial flavouring not be up to the standard, say, of the best perfumes from France?

With the size of the potential market, the expense of employing good tasters and sniffers would be nothing by comparison with the other costs. But then big food business is bent on selling the most tawdry product it can get away with at the highest price the public (i.e. the fools) will pay: ‘With the right dye, flavoring and processing technology, surimi can be made into just about anything. The best profit margins, though, come from imitating shellfish – generally regarded by consumers as luxuries… high tech will never replace the real thing’ – ah, but will it drive it out? Think of the effect frozen chicken has had on the availability of decent poultry – ‘but more importantly it represents a whole new market for the consumer who can’t tell, or afford, the difference. In the United States, where processed food is king, that’s just about everybody.’

That is why the respectable if humdrum pollock and croaker are being turned into crabless crab. It is so easy. Easy for the manufacturer. Easy for his accountants to rake in the cash. Easy for the fool of a consumer to unwrap a packet and serve up with loveless love, and a glass of milkless milk.

STOCKFISH, SALT COD OR KLIPFISH, AND LUTEFISK

HOW TO PREPARE IT

STOCKFISH This is the oldest form of preserved cod and its relations, being air-dried, without salt. The fish are beheaded, slit and gutted, then hung up in pairs, in the dry cold air of Norwegian winters, on wooden tenters like the framework of some ancient Viking homestead. The fish lose about four-fifths of their weight by evaporation, but none of their nutritional advantages. Only water has gone. The main European market is Italy where stoccafisso is even more popular than baccalà (salt cod). Nigeria and Cameroon are big buyers, too, of this useful storage item that requires no refrigeration. Humidity rather than heat is what spoils it.

All you need do is soak it for about thirty-six hours. It can then be used interchangeably with salt cod, though obviously you will need to add salt to the recipe.

SALT COD OR KLIPFISH This came up as a rival to stockfish in the seventeenth century as far as Norwegian exports are concerned. As a product, it had been around much earlier. One English writer recorded in 1555 that Cabot himself had named Newfoundland and the country Baccallaos, ‘because that in the seas thereabouts he found so great multitudes of certain big fishes… which the inhabitants call Baccallaos’. How this ties in with the Spaniards, I do not know, since it seems to be from their use of the term bacalao that the word spread through various European languages. The French use morue for preserved cod, morue sèche for stockfish, morue verte for salted cod that has not been dried out: the word for fresh cod is cabillaud, from the Netherlands’ kabeljauw and adopted in the thirteenth century. Be wary of this when you use French recipes.

The true klipfish (klippfisk in Norway) is the split kite of creamy-coloured flatness, backed with the silky grey of the skin. Plump, moister salt cod, the French green cod, which has been more lightly salted, is often to be found in sealed packages these days. The weight loss is obviously much less: something you need to take into account when buying it.

As with stockfish, you need to soak salt cod however light the cure. In earlier times, people left the boards of fish to regain tone in the central fountain, or in a country stream. If you have a spare sink – and no water meter – you can imitate the system by cutting the cod up into pieces, placing them in a colander and standing the colander under a gently running tap.

I confess I have found this idea picturesque rather than necessary. Forty-eight hours, with one change of water, has always been adequate in my experience for even the most obdurate board of dried-out salt cod. More lightly salted cod requires twenty-four to thirty-six hours. The sensible thing is to chew a bit after soaking and judge accordingly. This is not unpleasant. Norwegians sometimes tease out the dry cod into a loose shreddy mass, and chew it to induce a thirst. After the initial surprise, I found this quite good, like biltong or jerky but with a clean fishy taste.

If salt cod is not available in your shops, you could follow some of today’s chefs – and Mrs Beeton – by salting your own fresh cod (or hake or coley or pollock or ling). Sprinkle a tablespoon of fine sea salt over 1 kg (2 lb) cod fillets and leave for upwards of 2 hours. Turn the fish occasionally. Unless your hand slipped with the salt, or you left it a particularly long time, this domestic salt cod will need no more than a quick rinse. Again, taste it before submitting it to water.

TO COOK STOCKFISH, SALT COD AND KLIPFISH Put the piece or pieces into a pan and cover generously with cold water. Slowly bring to the boil, lower the heat and simmer for 5–8 minutes. Alternatively, bring to the boil, clap on the lid, remove to the side of the stove and leave for 15 minutes.

Drain and pick out the bones. Some recipes suggest discarding the skin, but this always seems to me a mistake, since it adds an extra succulence to the final dish.

In some dishes, you do not need to give salt cod this pre-cooking. Most recipes will make this clear, but with a little experience you will be able to judge for yourself.

NOTE Small lumps and humps of salt cod, the so-called tongues or cheeks (following), which are a great delicacy, are treated in the same way. Since they are special, and more expensive, you are justified in serving them in smaller quantity than the less rich salt cod from the body of the fish. Bearing this in mind, you can use them for any stockfish or salt cod recipe.

COD’S TONGUES, CHEEKS A particular delicacy of this salted and dried fish trade is the small nobbly bits from the head. I once bought some in Tours market. As far as I can remember, they were labelled joues de morue, cheeks of salt cod, though perhaps bajoues was the word since they really come from underneath the jaw where there is a tender muscle roughly the shape of an arrow-head. In some books they are called langues or tongues, a reference to their shape. I recognized what they were from meals we had eaten in Basque towns in Spain where these little nuggets – taken more often, in those parts, from hake than cod – are known as kokotzas and eaten fresh. They are cooked in olive oil with garlic and hot chilli, a little parsley and some stock; the milky liquor that emerges from them binds the sauce, making it particularly succulent.

Salted pieces can be cooked in the same way, once soaked. Or you could fry them gently in a little olive oil and simmer with some tomatoes, stirring in a spoonful or two of pesto as a finishing touch. I once used them for Bacalhau à Bras (p. 103), and it was even better than usual. The price is higher, naturally, for these diminutive luxuries, but they are richer and can be served in smaller quantities than the normal salt cod.

LUTEFISK OR LYE FISH A most particular speciality of Scandinavia, this has not made many converts in the outside world. You begin with stockfish which is soaked for a week, then submerged in a lye of birchwood ashes and slaked lime. After this, the fish is soaked for a further week, with daily changes of water. For cooking, the lutefisk is tied into a cheesecloth bag and poached in boiling water. Salt is added after the water boils so that the cooked fish will ‘shiver’, this being the test of first class lutefisk. The jellied texture and special flavour are not to everyone’s taste. Even Alan Davidson, whose inclination is towards every kind of fish in whatever form human ingenuity can devise, was cautious on the subject in his North Atlantic Seafood.

Despite the Christmas importance of lutefisk in Norway, Sweden and Finland, and in their settlements overseas, Mr Davidson was not convinced. He concluded that it survives as a fossil, its origin having been in past exigencies of climate and rough transport. A pamphlet I have from one of the producing firms, in Norway, instructs the cook to poach or steam the lutefisk, then provide ‘bacon fat, mustard sauce, grated brown cheese’ – this I take to mean gjetöst – ‘syrup, pease pottage or white sauce, to choice, accompanied by boiled potatoes and thin wafer crispbread’. The melted bacon fat, hot with little bits of bacon in it, seems intended, Mr Davidson says, to obscure an unpleasing taste that need not have been there in the first place.

AIOLI GARNI WITH SALT COD

The most spectacular dish of summer holidays in Provence is aioli, or ailloli garni, or le grand aioli. At its most flamboyant, it is a Matisse-coloured salad of salt cod and other fish; vegetables fresh and dried, raw and cooked; hard-boiled eggs, snails, and lemon quarters. With it comes a huge bowl of a special garlic mayonnaise. The flavour has nothing to do with rubbing a clove of garlic discreetly round a salad bowl. It comes from clove after clove after clove. So important is this sauce that the dish carries its name of aioli – ail being French for garlic – with all the rest reduced to the status of a garnish, lordly abundance being just an excuse as it were for eating the sauce. Although the classic mayonnaise has a way of dominating nomenclature – mayonnaise de saumon, mayonnaise de homard – I think no other name touches the grandeur of aioli garni which often appears as le grand aioli.

The start of a dish of this kind is a visit to the market, to see what vegetables are at their best. The salt cod you will have in stock: it should already be soaking, and have been soaking for about thirty-six hours.

Bear in mind the balance of your dish, what you can assemble by way of eggs, snails, semi-dried or dried beans. The obvious lack so far is crispness – celery, radishes, chicory, cardoon, Florentine fennel, sweet peppers; you serve them raw. Then there are vegetables that need only light cooking – sugar peas, string beans, cauliflower, sprouting broccoli of various kinds.

Deal with all your items, poaching the salt cod, cooking the dried beans and so on, cutting the raw vegetables, and arrange everything on a huge dish, interspersed with lemon quarters, the egg, snails, etc.

Now make the aioli* itself, and put it into a large bowl or bowls depending on the number of people involved. Serve with cloth napkins, as large as possible. Like anchoiade (p. 54) this kind of communal buffet dish can be excessively uncomfortable unless attention is paid to detail.

BACALAO AL PIL-PIL

Salt cod can be cooked in olive oil made piquant and spicy with dried chillis and garlic, in the same way as elvers or prawns (pp. 127 and 284). The thing about this particular method is that the juices of the cod do not emerge to make the sauce creamy as in the next recipe. Use a flat-bottomed earthenware glazed pot of a sturdy kind which can go straight to table: on electric rings or gas, it is prudent to use a heat-diffuser mat.

This recipe gives you a good way of using up the thin tail end of salt cod. The sharp cooking means that the plump kind is unsuitable, since the fish should be permeated with the flavours.

For four people, soak 500 g (1 lb) salt cod. Then cook, bone and drain it well. Leave on the skin and cut it into handy pieces for eating. Dry them on kitchen paper.

Heat up the pot you intend to use with enough oil to cover the base comfortably. In it, cook 4 quartered cloves of garlic until they are golden brown, together with 2 small hot dried chillis (if you are not accustomed to this kind of dish, taste the oil occasionally and remove the chillis when it is piquant enough).

Put in the cod, skin side down. Cook for a minute or two, moving the bits about to avoid sticking. Then turn and cook briefly again. Serve immediately (put back the chillis for the sake of appearance and the name of the dish) with plenty of bread to mop up the delicious oil.

BACALAO IN ITS OWN SAUCE (Bacalao ligado)

A favourite book of mine is Gastronomia Vasconum, a collection of Basque recipes by Juan D° de Echevarria, in five languages, published by Eduardo Izquierdo in Bilbao. I do recommend it. A number of recipes in this book are adapted from it, including this one. The magic, to me at any rate, of much Spanish and Portuguese cookery comes from the effects one can get by using heavy rustic earthenware pots directly on the heat. They are very cheap to buy on the spot, and I find they last for many years if treated reasonably carefully.

You will sometimes find that this dish is what comes to table, in restaurants, under the name of Bacalao al pil-pil (See preceding recipe).

Soak and lightly cook 500 g (1 lb) salt cod. Remove the bones and drain it well. Dry carefully before frying it.

In an earthenware pot, heat up 250 ml (8 fl oz) olive oil. In it fry 4 cloves of garlic, sliced across. Remove when they are golden brown, and keep for garnishing.

In a second pot, heat up a further 250 ml (8 fl oz) olive oil with 2 sliced cloves of garlic. When they are brown, put them aside with the other garlic. Keep the oil warm.

Into the first pan, put the cod, skin side up and add 125 ml (4 fl oz) water or light beef or veal stock. Shake the pot to and fro, adding the warm oil bit by bit. The sauce should turn creamy. Take care that the cod does not stick. Scatter the browned garlic slices on top and serve immediately.

NOTE It is wise to practise this technique with small quantities. Should you come to disaster – i.e. should the sauce not turn to a consistency somewhere between thick cream and mayonnaise – reduce the whole thing to a thready purée in the processor, or with an electric beater, to a version of Brandade, p. 104.

MEXICAN BACALAO

This recipe came from friends in Stockport who had it from a Mexican girl who worked for them a few years ago. When she left, they missed her beautiful presence but consoled themselves with this legacy that she had bequeathed them. It is a marvellous dish for a party, or for a holiday time, since it keeps well in the refrigerator for at least a week and can be eaten hot or cold.

I give the ingredients exactly as they came to me. The salt cod to use is the plump kind in plastic packages, which will not swell a great deal in the soaking. Should you be the lucky grower of good tomatoes, use them instead of canned purée, either wholly or in part. The essential thing, though, is to stick to preserved red peppers, the kind that come from Eastern Europe in jars.

Serves 8–10

1 kg (2 lb) salt cod, soaked for 24–36 hours

600 ml (1 pt) olive oil

10 cloves garlic, whole but peeled

6 large onions, sliced

2 handfuls of small parsley sprigs

5 × 150 g (5 oz) cans Italian tomato purée or 2 × 400 g (14 oz) cans passata or canned tomatoes, chopped

375 g (12 oz) preserved red peppers, drained, sliced

16–20 green olives

2 teaspoons sugar

salt, pepper

Remove any bones from the fish and flake it. Heat the oil in a large sauté pan or earthenware dish and fry the garlic until it is deep brown. Scoop out and discard the garlic. Put in the onion. Lower the heat and cook gently until it is transparent. Add the fish and stir together for a minute or so. Next, put in the parsley sprigs, then the tomato – if the sauce looks sinister at this point, don’t worry as it comes out all right in the end. Simmer for 15 minutes. Add the peppers and olives. Simmer again until the fish is tender and the sauce blended – about 30 minutes. Sprinkle on the sugar and taste for seasoning.

Serve hot with a risotto (saffron risotto makes a fine contrast) or cold with a rice salad.

BACALHAU À BRAS

This much-loved dish of the vast salt cod repertoire of Portugal is a winner. It is savoury and unusual – to the Anglo-Saxon experience at least – and completely delicious with its balance of cod and potatoes, egg and olives. If you are feeling hard up, increase the potatoes and decrease the cod. The name puzzled me, but apparently it is the inventor. Blessings on Mr Bras!

Serves 8–9

1 kg (2 lb) salt cod, well soaked or 750 g (1½ lb) salt cod cheeks

1 kg (2 lb) potatoes, peeled

groundnut or sunflower oil for deep-frying

500 g (1 lb) onions, sliced

4 tablespoons olive oil

175 g (6 oz) butter

1 large clove garlic, sliced

salt, pepper

12 large eggs, beaten

1 small bunch parsley, chopped

24–30 black olives

Flake and cut the cod into rough strips, discarding any bone. Shred the potatoes into matchsticks and deep-fry them until they are soft and lightly coloured but not brown and crisp like chips. Drain well.

Soften the onion in the olive oil and a third of the butter over a low heat. Add the garlic and cook a little faster so that the onion is nicely caught with brown in an appetizing manner: do not overheat the fat or it will burn. Add the fish and continue cooking for another 5 or 6 minutes, stirring often. Add seasoning, then put the whole thing into a bowl and mix in the potatoes. All this can be done an hour or two in advance.

For the final stages, you need two large sauté pans – another solution, better from the point of view of flavour, is to cook a generous half of the mixture, then the rest for second helpings.

Melt the remaining butter and stir in the fish and potato to heat through. Pour in the beaten egg and go on stirring until the whole thing is bound lightly – do not overcook. Turn on to a warm dish, sprinkle with parsley, decorate with the olives and serve.

BRANDADE DE MORUE

Brandade has had its devotees ever since Grimod de la Reynière ‘discovered’ it in Languedoc and wrote down the recipe at the end of the eighteenth century. He concealed the name of the place where he first ate this cream of salt cod, which has led to much pleasurable but fruitless speculation. (Like Lobster à l’américaine – or armoricaine.) Was the place Béziers, the ancient cathedral town between Sète and Narbonne? Or was it Nîmes, where one cooked food shop at least sends brandade to customers all over France? To add to the mystery, an almost identical dish, baccalà mantecato, is a great speciality of Venice and the Veneto.

Brandade is a fascinating dish to make. Poor-looking greyish-white boards of dried cod are transformed into richness by the gentle attentions of olive oil and cream. Less gentle are the attentions of the cook, who must keep up a steady crushing of the ingredients, combined with a shaking of the pot (the name is said – by Grimod de la Reynière – to come from brandir, an old verb meaning to stir, shake and crush with energy, for a long time: one may wonder on what other occasion it might have been employed). Such a slow transformation of substances may sound tiresome in a busy life, but it has its own relaxed pleasure, and a delicious result. A consolation – fruit is the only possible follow-up. The modern recipe has changed little. I use cream, you may prefer to use rich milk and some butter instead.

Serves 6

¾-1 kg (1½–2 lb) dried salt cod

500–600 ml (1 pt) olive oil

1 large clove garlic, crushed, finely chopped (optional)

300 ml (10 fl oz) single cream or milk and cream

salt, pepper, nutmeg, lemon juice

18 small triangles of bread fried in olive oil

2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley

Soak the cod and cook it in the usual way. Remove and discard all bony parts, but keep the skin. This is often discarded, but as Ali-Bab remarks in his Gastronomie Pratique, it helps the flavour and the consistency of the brandade, being gelatinous.

Put the pieces of cod, and skin if used, into a stoneware or enamelled iron casserole, over a low, steady heat (with a heat-diffuser mat underneath, if gas is used). Have the oil, and garlic if used, together in a small pan, keeping warm. The same goes for the cream or milk and cream. Pour a little oil on to the cod, and crush the two together with a wooden spoon, moving the pan about. Then add some cream, or milk and cream. Continue in this way until oil and cream are finished. You should now have a coherent creamy mass, very white if you have omitted the skin, white flecked with grey if you haven’t. Season with salt, pepper, nutmeg and lemon juice.

The thing to avoid is overheating, which could cause the brandade to separate. Should this happen, take the unorthodox step of putting the mixture into a bowl and beating it vigorously and, if possible, electrically. Or use the processor.

Serve either in the cooking dish (though this will probably be too large), or on a plainly coloured earthenware dish. Dip one corner of each triangle of fried bread first in the brandade, and then into the parsley, before tucking the croûton into the edge of the brandade as a garnish.

Any left over can be reheated another day, and served in tiny pastry cases. Or it can be made into little cakes – bind it with one or two eggs – dipped in egg and breadcrumbs, and fried.

NEW ENGLAND SALT COD DINNER

This kind of food is only good if it is properly done. You need to feel that it is something to relax over when you are really hungry and the weather is cold. The temptation is to cook the vegetables in a muddle, all together (except the beetroot of course) which usually means that nothing is quite right. The trickiest part for a cook in Britain will be finding salt belly of pork: fat green streaky bacon can be substituted, though these days you are most likely to get a watery fluid from it than proper fat.

Alan Davidson gives a very similar recipe to this one in North Atlantic Seafood. His version adds carrots, and substitutes egg sauce for parsley sauce.

Serves 6

750 g (1½ lb) salt cod, soaked, simmered until just tender

6 potatoes, boiled in their skins

6 boiled onions

12 small beetroot, baked in foil in the oven or boiled

parsley sauce made with cream*

175 g (6 oz) skinned salt pork, diced small

When the cod and vegetables are all ready, arrange them on a hot serving plate – skin the beetroot first, and the potatoes if you like. Keep them warm. Reheat the sauce and pour it into a jug.

Last of all, fry the salt pork in a heavy pan so that the fat runs from it and the little bits turn brown and crisp. Pour into a small hot jug, for people to help themselves, or else pour over the fish.

NEWFOUNDLANDERS’ PIE (Tourte des Terre-Neuvas)

As one reads in Pierre Loti’s novel (see Cod Introduction), the men who went fishing to Icelandic waters were known as les islandais, the Icelanders. Others who went to Newfoundland were les Terre-Neuvas, and this is their recipe. I would say a dish for rejoicing when – if – they returned home in September.

Serves 6

500 g (1 lb) salt cod, soaked, simmered

375 g (12 oz) boiled potatoes, peeled, sliced

1 large onion, chopped

3 shallots, chopped

125 g (4 oz) butter

3–4 tablespoons chopped parsley

salt, pepper

750-g (1½ -lb) piece of puff pastry

250 ml (8 fl oz) crème fraîche

While the cod and potatoes cool, stew the onion and shallots in half the butter until yellow and tender. Stir in the parsley and seasoning.

Roll out half the pastry to fit a 25-cm (10-inch) tart tin. Pile on the cod and potato in layers, interspersed with the onion and shallot mixture. Brush the pastry rim with water.

Roll out the remaining pastry large enough to make a lid. Cut a 4-cm (1½-inch) hole from the centre. Put the lid in place, pressing down the edges closely together. Decorate or score as you please. Brush over the top with a little of the cream. Chill half an hour, together with the circle cut from the lid.

Preheat the oven to gas 7, 220°C (425°F). When the temperature is set, slip in a baking sheet. Give it 3 or 4 minutes to heat up, then put the tart on the baking sheet. Place the circle of pastry beside it. Bake for 15 minutes, check the browning of the pastry and remove the circle if it is done. Give the tart another 15 minutes, lowering the heat if necessary.

Remove to a hot serving dish. Pour the rest of the cream into the pie through the central hole. Put on the circle of pastry and serve.

SALT COD FRITTERS

The kite-shaped boards of salt cod hanging from the fishmonger’s hooks look far too unyielding and dry for fritters. In fact, they work quite well (especially if you use only the thickest part) but results will be even better if you use the undried salt cod that you buy in packages. Be sure to soak the fish well. You do not need to cook it, but I think that the result is a little better if you give it 5 minutes’ gentle simmering. Then drain and cool it.

Cod’s cheeks or tongues are good for tiny fritters: soak well and cook briefly as above.

Serves 6

750 g (1½ lb) salt cod, soaked

batter with beaten egg white*

SERVE WITH:

lemon quarters

or skordalia and beetroot salad, p. 232

or tomato sauce* plus a chopping of walnuts, black olives and capers

or tomato and red pepper salad

or mayonnaise*

or mayonnaise derivatives – tartare, aioli, anchovy, etc.

Simmer the fish for up to 5 minutes in water (or use half water, half milk). It should be just tender enough to eat with pleasure. After removing bones and, if you like, any skin, drain and dry it extremely carefully. Cut it into roughly 5-cm (2-inch) pieces.

Make the batter and the sauce or salad before you start deep-frying the cod. Have everyone sitting ready, as fritters are best from the pan.

Heat the oil to 180°C (350°F). Dip each piece in the batter and deep-fry. Be careful not to overload the pan. When the batter coating is crisp and a deep golden colour, the fritters are done.

SALTFISH AND AKEE

One of the great dishes of salt cod cookery from Jamaica is worth making in quantity since the left-overs taste so good served in the halves of a very ripe breadfruit baked in buttered foil in the oven. Or it can be used as a stuffing for some of the livelier squashes, crooknecks or patty pans. Or as a filling for pasties and little tarts.

Akee, which we have to buy in tins, in Britain at any rate, looks like heaped billows of scrambled egg. The texture is soft and succulent. Ask anybody what it is and they would be pushed to give you an answer. And when you tell them the answer, they might well be keen to avoid it. Akee is properly the name of a tree, originally from West Africa, that was introduced to Jamaica from Guinea by Captain Bligh of the Bounty at the end of the eighteenth century. Hence its botanic name, Blighia sapida. The fruits are red and warty. When fully ripe, they burst open to show round black seeds, like berries, each one reposing in a creamy yellow cushion, a surreal padded egg cup – the aril – which is the part you eat. But, and this is quite a ‘but’, unless the fruit has ‘ripened to the point of voluntary opening, it is a deadly poison. No overly ripe, fallen, discoloured or unripe fruit dare be eaten,’ (I quote from The Joy of Cooking by Rombauer and Beck) ‘and the greatest care must be used to remove all seeds before cooking as these are always poisonous.’ So too is the pinkish pulp inside.

What heroine of the hearth I wonder first discovered the joy of eating akee, the right part in precisely the right condition to be eaten? Did she conduct controlled experiments with the tribe? Did she thoughtfully consider a succession of gastronomic deaths and reach – at last – the right conclusion? It is perhaps a relief to open a tin, rather than trust the judgement of a market seller.

The dish can of course be made without akee, but it neither looks nor tastes quite so good. It has occurred to me to use girolles instead, for their colour and consistency, but I have never had both girolles and salt cod in the house together. Scrambled egg is not a bad substitute at all visually, and it tastes fine if not exactly right.

Serves 6–8

500 g (1 lb) salt cod, soaked and simmered

500 g (1 lb) akee (contents of a large tin)

125 g (4 oz) salt pork, diced

lard or bacon fat (see recipe)

175 g (6 oz) chopped onion

1 green sweet pepper, seeded, cut in strips

1 teaspoon green chilli, seeded, chopped

4 spring onions or Welsh onions or very young leeks, chopped

good pinch of thyme

375 g (12 oz) tomatoes, skinned, seeded, chopped

6–8 streaky bacon rashers, fried crisp

1 tomato cut in 8 wedges

parsley or watercress to garnish

Drain, cool and flake the cod, discarding any bones and skin. If you are using fresh akee, put it into boiling water and simmer until tender: salt it cautiously (in view of the saltiness of the fish). Otherwise drain the tinned akee. Mix with the fish.

In a large sauté pan, fry the pork in its own fat, adding a little lard or bacon fat if necessary. When the dice are brown, scoop them with a slotted spoon into the bowl of akee and cod. In the fat remaining, fry the onion, pepper, chilli, spring onions or leeks, thyme and tomatoes, adding each item as the one before it wilts and softens. Cook to an unwatery sauce. Put in the akee, cod and pork to heat through. Check the seasoning.

Turn it on to a hot dish, scatter with crumbled or chopped crisp bacon, the tomato wedges and parsley or watercress, and serve.

ZURRUKUTUNA

A soup that can be turned into a meal by the addition of poached eggs. If you are lucky enough to have a supply of those dried Spanish peppers called ñoras, this is an occasion to use them. The first substitute would be other dried mild peppers (e.g. anchos), then grilled, seeded and skinned red peppers. The last resort would be canned peppers, or bottled peppers. This is a particularly useful store cupboard dish for winter meals.

Serves 4

250 g (8 oz) salt cod, soaked, cooked or 175 g (6 oz) dried salt cod, soaked, cooked

2 ñoras, soaked or 2 fresh red peppers, quartered, seeded, grilled

olive oil

4 large cloves garlic, halved

4 slices stale bread, crusts removed

4 tablespoons finely chopped onion

black pepper

4 poached eggs (optional)

cayenne pepper

Bone and flake the cod. Remove the skin if you like. Scrape the fleshy part from the ñoras, discarding the skin; or skin and purée the fresh peppers.

Heat enough oil in an earthenware pot on top of the stove (use a heat-diffuser if necessary) to cover the base comfortably and fry the garlic to a light brown. Remove, crush and add to the peppers. In the oil, fry the bread until it, too, is nicely browned on both sides.

Pour off any surplus oil, add the onion with the peppers and garlic to the pot, season with black pepper and pour on 1 litre (1¾ pt) water. Simmer for 15 minutes, crushing the bread down so that it disintegrates into the water. Add the cod and simmer for a further 15 minutes. Add extra water at this stage, if the soup is too thick, and adjust the seasoning.

Have ready four very hot bowls, pour in the soup and slip a poached egg into each one, if you like. Dust the soup lightly with cayenne pepper. Serve immediately.

COLEY see COD

CONGER EEL see A FEW WORDS ABOUT… CONGER EEL

CRABS

Before the war, I remember that one of the few attractive things about our depressed town was the regular arrival of fisherwomen from Cullercoats, further up the coast, in Northumberland. They came with baskets of crabs and other fish balanced on their heads. They swung down the hill by our house in long striped skirts. Their weatherbeaten faces were shaded – incongruously it seemed to me – by the prettiest of lilac-sprigged sunbonnets. They were tough, unsmiling, magnificent if you like, and their fish was fresh, their crabs the best in the world. On rare days when we went to Seahouses or St Mary’s lighthouse, we would stop by the row of little houses at Cullercoats and choose a crab to take home, weighing them thoughtfully in our hands to see if they felt heavy for their size. No crabs were ever so good.

Of course you will not agree with me – particularly if you live in Maryland, where crabs have restaurants to themselves. I am not sure if I agree with myself either, having tasted now the sweet spider crabs from the Atlantic coast of France; but those Cullercoat crabs set up a standard of deliciousness in my memory, however embroidered by time, which I cannot escape from. The point is that in this country at least, crab is a luxury that many people can afford, without feeling guilty. The price of lobsters have soared, scallops have joined them, oysters are not yet the poor man’s food, as they once were and as they may be again. Prawns and scampi, toughened by freezing, are a disappointment. But fresh crabs, like fresh mussels, are an unalloyed pleasure.

Unless your fishmonger is beyond reproach, the crab you boil yourself is far superior to the ready-to-eat kind. Be wary about ready-to-eat crab meat too. Sometimes it is mixed with foreign substances to pad it out. This may be approved by health inspectors, but does absolutely nothing for the true crab. Crab is a rich filling substance – it should not be weighed down by stodgy and concealed matter.

There is no way out of it. Boiling and excavating your own crab is best. It is also a pleasure. Particularly if you can find someone to read to you, as you jab away.

HOW TO PREPARE CRABS

The point of success lies in salting the water adequately. Even seawater needs extra strength. An egg should float in the brine – use about 175 g (6 oz) salt to 2–2¼ litres (3½–4 pt) of water. Put in the crab, fasten on the lid, and bring it to the boil, or rather to the simmer. Give it 15 minutes for the first 500 g (1 lb); 10 minutes for the second, third and so on. Remove from the pan to cool.

When the crab is cold, lay it on its back. Twist off the legs and claws. Push back and remove the pointed flap, and take out the central body part – a large mass of thin bone, crab meat and ‘dead men’s fingers’. Remove the small mouth part, too, by pressing down on it: it will snap away.

Have two basins ready. Scoop out all the soft yellowish-brown meat from the shell – the best part – and put it in one basin. Add any yellowish meat still adhering to the central body. Crack the large claws and remove the sweet pinkish-white meat and put it into the second basin. The quick part of the work is now over. Settle down with a larding needle or crochet hook, a small mallet and a teaspoon, and poke out all the residue of delicious white fibres from the central body, and the meat from the legs. Be careful not to add tiny pieces of thin shell to the basin. A good ¾–1 kg (1½–2 lb) crab can yield 375 g (12 oz) of edible deliciousness if you are prepared to be a little patient. This is enough for three people, or more if you are going to add sauces, salad ingredients and so on.

The large shell can be turned into a container for the crab. You will notice a beautifully curved line on the undershell. Give a few hard taps on the inner side of it, by the gaping hole, and the rough pieces will fall away along the line. Scrub out the shell, and brush it lightly with oil if you want to give it a gloss.

CRAB MAYONNAISE AND CRAB LOUIS

A good way of serving crab is to make it the focal point of a large salad. There is nothing original in the idea. To the usual ingredients, add slices of avocado pear (brushed with lemon juice to stop them blackening); this goes well with crab and mayonnaise. Hard-boil some eggs, cream the yolks with crab meat and a little mayonnaise, and fill the whites with this mixture. Try differently flavoured mayonnaise sauces.

Here is one version of an American mayonnaise, the main point of which is the chilli sauce. Sometimes finely chopped green pepper is included.

Crab Louis

Mix together the following ingredients:

Serves 6

mayonnaise, made with 2 egg yolks, 150 ml (5 fl oz) oil and the usual flavourings*

125 ml (4 fl oz) double cream, whipped

60 ml (2 fl oz) chilli sauce

2 tablespoons grated onion

2 tablespoons chopped parsley

dash of cayenne or Tabasco

1 teaspoon green pepper (optional)

extra lime or lemon juice

Arrange the crab meat on lettuce cover with the dressing and add the usual hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes and so on.

ACHILTIBUIE CRAB SOUFFLÉ

Mark Irvine’s Summer Isles Hotel, north-west of Ullapool in Scotland, is so far from the main road, along a single track, that he reckons it is a test of character for any guest arriving the first time. We certainly wondered where we were going to end up, the country would have seemed deserted if it had not been for the astonishing number of cars, even lorries, that we made way for. After 25 km (16 miles), we found ourselves on a narrowing tongue of land between beautiful pale sandy bays and turned left to Achiltibuie village and an hotel of reassuring comfort and warmth.

Sarah Irvine presides in the kitchen and has a much wider range of ingredients than you would think possible in such a place. She flavours her soufflés with crab bought from the fishermen in the village, or with her husband’s artichokes. He seems able to grow anything, either in his hydroponicum behind the hotel, or in plastic tunnels on the land which slopes down to the sea.

Serves 8–10

butter and dry crumbs for 2 soufflé dishes, or 8–10 individual dishes

90 g (3 oz) butter

60 g (2 oz) plain flour

450 ml (15 fl oz) milk

½ small bay leaf

100 g (3½ oz) grated onion

salt, pepper

1 tablespoon anchovy essence

2 teaspoons made English mustard

375 g (12 oz) crab meat

8 eggs, separated

Brush the dishes with soft butter and scatter with crumbs. Shake out the surplus.

Make up the soufflé base by melting the butter, stirring in the flour and cooking it gently for 2 minutes. Heat the milk and stir it in to make a smooth sauce. Add the bay leaf, onion and seasoning. Cook for about 20 minutes, tasting from time to time and removing the bay leaf before it becomes too dominant. Remove the pan from the heat and add the anchovy essence, mustard and crab meat. Beat in the egg yolks. Whisk the whites until stiff and fold them in, a little at first to slacken the mixture.

Divide the mixture between the dishes. Bake the larger soufflés at gas 6, 200 °C (400 °F) for 12–15 minutes, the smaller ones for 7-9 minutes. Serve immediately.

VARIATION Instead of crab, use the cooked and sieved bases of 8 artichokes, and use crumbled dry Stilton to flavour the sauce rather than anchovy and mustard. Allow about 175 g (6 oz), but add it to taste.

BRETON CRAB SOUP

One evening in 1884, Edmond de Goncourt and Emile Zola were invited to dinner by their publisher, Charpentier. It was so delicious that de Goncourt wondered if Charpentier was about to abscond with the cash, and became slightly nervous about the money owing on his novel Chérie. The star turn was crab soup, a Breton dish little known in Paris at that time. It was like a shellfish bisque, but ‘with something finer to it, something tastier, something more of the ocean’.

2 medium-sized cooked crabs

1 carrot, sliced

1 onion stuck with 3 cloves

bouquet garni

250 ml (8 fl oz) dry white wine, preferably Muscadet

fish, veal or chicken stock

150 g (5 oz) rice

up to 150 ml (5 fl oz) single cream

salt, pepper, cayenne

Remove the meat from the cooked crabs and set it aside. Put all the debris into a pan with the carrot, onion, bouquet, wine and enough stock to cover everything generously. Simmer for 30 minutes. Extract the toughest pieces of claw shell, then whizz the rest in a liquidizer to extract every hint of flavour into the liquid. Pour through a sieve into the rinsed out pan – do not press too hard, just enough to extract the softer part.

In a separate pan, meanwhile, cook the rice in some more stock, or water. When very tender, put it into the liquidizer with most of the crab meat (keep enough for the garnish). Blend to a purée and add to the crab shell stock. Taste and dilute further if necessary with more stock or water. Add cream to taste and reheat to just under boiling point. Put in extra seasoning, with a good pinch of cayenne, and the crab pieces you kept for the garnish. Leave for another 5 minutes, still without boiling, then serve with croûtons or bread fried in butter.

CHILLED GUMBO BISQUE

The gumbo stews of the southern states of America are often given their defining character by okra. Here is a delicious soup in which they may seem subdued: nonetheless they are essential to the satin smoothness and unusual flavour of the soup. This recipe is an anglicized version of a bisque devised by a New York friend to use up a can of crab claws. I never find canned shellfish satisfactory – it is almost as tasteless as the frozen kind – and prefer to use fresh crab claws which are sometimes sold separately, or fresh prawns in their shells. The important thing is to have some hard debris to flavour the stock, as well as soft meat for finishing the soup.

300–375 g (10–12 oz) fresh boiled crab claws or prawns in their shells

1 litre (1¾ pt) fish or chicken stock, plus 450 ml (15 fl oz) water or 1 kg (2 lb) fish trimmings plus 1½ litres (2½ pt) water and 250 ml (8 fl oz) dry white wine or cider

100 g (3½ oz) chopped celery

100 g (3½ oz) chopped onion

½ green pepper, chopped

2–3 tablespoons butter

250 g (8 oz) okra

1 medium can tomatoes (approx. 400 g/14 oz)

100 g (3½ oz) rice

salt, pepper, cayenne

Shell crab claws or prawns. Put the debris into a large pan. Set aside the meat. To the pan, add stock and water, or fish trimmings, water and wine or cider. Simmer for 45 minutes to extract the flavours, then strain into a measuring jug and add water to make 1½ litres (2½ pt). Meanwhile, soften the celery, onion and pepper in butter. Prepare and cut the okra in slices 1 cm (½ inch) thick. Add them with stock, tomatoes and rice to the vegetables. Season. Cover and simmer for an hour. Purée in the blender, dilute further if you like, then chill overnight or for at least 4 hours. Serve with some or all of the crab meat or prawns.

CRAB OR SHRIMP SOUP

Crabs, shrimps, prawns and freshwater crayfish can all be used to make a bisque, even the tiny crabs you pick up on holiday.

Use the Bisque de homard recipe (p. 211) as a guide. You will need 1–1½ kg (2–3 lb) of crab or shrimps. Substitute water for fish stock and add 500 g (1 lb) or more of good tomatoes. With tiny shellfish there is obviously no point in attempting to separate the meat from the shell, but it is important to break them up in a rough and ready fashion, about halfway through the main cooking time, so that none of their flavour is wasted.

For a more southern flavour, substitute olive oil for butter, include garlic and saffron in the herbs, and cook some fine pasta (forget the rice) in the soup after it has been sieved.

This recipe shows that no fish, however tiny, are useless to the cook, so long as the quantity is there.

CRAB TART (Tarte soufflée au crabe)

Use crab meat that is fresh for this tart, preferably from crabs you have cooked yourself. The recipe is easily adapted to other shellfish, with appropriate changes or additions to the seasoning.

In Britain, we like our pie pastry to be short and crumbly; if we need something stronger, for instance for raised pies, we use a hot water crust. The French pâte brisée lies somewhere between the two; it has to hold the filling for an open flan or tart, and yet be crisp and thin. One thing that our shortcrust and pâte brisée have in common is the need for coolness and quick working; marble is the ideal surface. Water should be iced; one’s hands cool. Rests for the dough in the refrigerator are essential, both before and after rolling. The one utensil you really need is a dough scraper.

Serves 6–8

FOR THE PÂTE BRISÉE

200 g (7 oz) plain flour, plus extra if necessary

pinch of salt

1½ egg yolks

about 3 tablespoons iced water

100 g (3½ oz) cold but malleable butter, cut in four

FOR THE FILLING

about 500 g (1 lb) meat from two large crabs

salt, pepper, cayenne, mace to taste

3 eggs, separated

200–250 ml (7–8 fl oz) crème fraîche or half soured, half double cream

about 1 tablespoon each grated Parmesan and Gruyère cheese

For the pastry, sift the floor and salt on to a marble slab or cold Formica surface. Make a well in the centre and put in the egg yolks, 2 tablespoons iced water and the butter. With your fingers, work the yolk mixture together, crushing the butter. Then gradually pull in the flour until you have a soft dough. Add the extra iced water if needed. Use the dough scraper to help you form the ball of dough which should not be tacky. Press the dough away from you with the heel of your hand, two or three times, using a light sprinkling of flour if necessary. Wrap in foil, parchment or cling film and chill for at least 30 minutes or up to 2 days – after that, you can store in the freezer.

When you are ready to make the tart, roll out the dough to line a 23–25-cm (9–10-inch) shortcrust pastry case and chill again. Preheat the oven to gas 7, 220 °C (425 °F) and bake the pastry case blind until firm but not coloured.

For the filling, check over the crab meat to make sure that there are no bits of shell in it. Season it to taste. Beat in the egg yolks, and the crème fraîche or creams, and add the grated cheese gradually to taste. Whisk the whites until they are stiff and then fold them in. Pile the filling into the tart and put in the oven at the same temperature as the pastry case was baked. Lower the oven to gas 5, 190 °C (375 °F) after 2 or 3 minutes and leave the tart for a further 30 minutes, or until the filling is puffed and slightly browned. If you like a creamy centre, remove the tart from the oven while it is wobbly under the crust in the middle.

Serve with a salad and rye or wholemeal bread.

GRAPEFRUIT AND CRAB SALAD

In hollowed-out grapefruit shells, put a salad made of crab meat mixed with some of the fruit’s skinned, diced segments, after first lining the shell with a lettuce leaf, so that it frills slightly over the edge. The rest of the grapefruit flesh can be used for another dish. If you like, also add some diced cucumber or tomato, with wedges of hard-boiled egg.

Put a spoonful of mayonnaise on top of each filling, to which you can add a little brandy if you like. Put a neat piece of grapefruit on top. Serve chilled, with extra mayonnaise and brown bread and butter.

You may substitute shelled prawns for the crab.

POTTED CRAB

In the past, potted meats and fish and shellfish were a practical way of storing food since the top layer of clarified butter kept out the air and preserved the contents underneath in a reasonable manner. They were our equivalent to pâtés and terrines in French cookery. What they often depended on for success was hard pounding by some poor young creature learning his or her trade in the kitchen. As this kind of labour disappeared, so did potted meat and fish, although odd examples survived – often very nastily – in some parts of the country where they had always been made by butchers: some Midlands potted beef I tasted on one of my tours of Britain was as disgusting as any we had been served in our northern boarding school during the war.

Now there is a revival of such dishes, thanks to the introduction of electric mixers, blenders and processors. Indeed, potted kipper and mackerel pastes have become too much of a cliché for comfort.

Potted shellfish can be very successful. The first recipe I give below is Elizabeth David’s traditional formula, which is followed by a more elaborate version from Michael Quinn.

Elizabeth David’s Potted Crab

This is one of the best ways of eating crab, very rich and delicious. It is taken from her pamphlet English Potted Meats and Fish Pastes. This method of serving crab is particularly successful as a lunch dish, to be followed by a green salad, or a salad of purple-sprouting broccoli. It works well for lobster, too.

Serves 4–6

1 kg (2 lb) crab, boiled

black pepper, mace, nutmeg, cayenne pepper

lemon juice

salt (see recipe)

about 250 g (8 oz) slightly-salted or unsalted butter

clarified butter to seal

Pick all the meat from the crab, being careful to keep the firm and creamy parts separate. Season both with spices and lemon juice – salt may be necessary if you bought the crab ready boiled. There will be about 375 g (12 oz) meat.

Choose an attractive round stoneware pot, or an oval one. Pack the crab meat into it, in layers. (If you prefer it, use four to six individual pots or soufflé dishes.) Melt the butter and pour it over the crab meat. There should be enough just to cover it – the quantity required will depend on the amount of crab meat you had the patience to pick out of the shell, and on whether you used one or half-a-dozen pots. It is only fair to point out that Danish – especially Lurpak – or French butter gives the best result with potted meat and fish: it is made in a different way from English butter, and has a milder flavour and better consistency for this kind of dish.

Leave to cool, then cover with clarified butter: a thin layer if the crab is going to be eaten within twenty-four hours; a 1-cm (½-inch) layer if it is being kept for a few days – in this latter case, add a foil covering so that the butter does not dry out and contract from the edge of the pot, so spoiling the seal.

Michael Quinn’s Potted Crab

Serves 6

75 g (2½ oz) chopped shallot

2 tablespoons dry white wine

2 tablespoons Noilly Prat

pinch of mixed spice

pinch of cinnamon

pinch of ginger

pinch of crushed coriander seeds

pinch of cayenne pepper

pinch of nutmeg

400 g (14 oz) unsalted butter, cubed

300 g (10 oz) white crab meat

300 g (10 oz) brown crab meat

salt

Put shallots, wine, Noilly Prat and spices into a pan and boil down to a juicy purée, with the shallot tender and the liquor reduced to just over a couple of tablespoons. Stir in the bits of butter, and when they are melted, simmer for 20 minutes. Remove, cool 30 minutes and sieve into a bowl.

Set the bowl over ice and whisk until thick and creamy but not hard. Mix in the crab meat. Taste and add salt and other extra seasoning as required. Spoon into six pots, cover with foil and chill in the refrigerator. Serve with brown bread and butter, and with some bitter-leaved salad.

SOFT-SHELL CRABS

Soft-shell crabs are a speciality of Venice, and of the southern coast of North America. They are not a separate species, but crabs which are ‘moulting’ – i.e. they have shed their shells, and the new one is still fragile. This sudden loss of weight means that they rise to the surface and can easily be caught. The Venetian molecchie, a May delicacy, are tiny, about 2½–5 cm (1–2 inches) across. They are washed, then soaked for a while in beaten egg (which they largely absorb). Just before the meal, they are drained, shaken in flour and deep-fried. One eats the whole thing, shell, claws, the lot, and it tastes like a crisp delicious biscuit.

In America the crabs are larger – two or three are a reasonable portion – but they are treated in much the same way. Sometimes they are grilled and brushed with melted butter. Tartare sauce or a similarly flavoured mayonnaise is served with them.

SEAFOOD PUDDING (Strata)

This is one of the best bread-and-butter puddings, but made with crab or prawns. For economy, a proportion of lightly cooked and flaked white fish can be used with the crab or prawns, but never more than half.

Serves 6

butter

12 slices from a small sandwich loaf

meat from a large crab or 250 g (8 oz) shelled crab or shelled prawns

salt, pepper, cayenne

1 tender celery stalk, chopped finely

1 tablespoon chopped onion

150 ml (5 fl oz) mayonnaise

3 tablespoons mixed herbs – chopped parsley, tarragon, chervil and chives

3 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

approx. 175 g (6 oz) Gruyère, fontina or Gouda cheese, grated

4 eggs

250 ml (8 fl oz) milk

250 ml (8 fl oz) single cream

Butter the bread and cut off the crusts. Season the crab or prawns. Mix the celery and onion with the mayonnaise, herbs and Parmesan and then fold into the shellfish. Make six sandwiches with the mixture.

Butter a dish that will take the sandwiches in a single layer. Cut them in half and place in the dish. Dot with the grated Gruyère, fontina or Gouda. Beat the eggs with the milk and cream and pour into the dish. Leave in the fridge for 2 hours or longer (overnight will not hurt).

Bake in the oven, preheated to gas 4, 180 °C (350 °F), for 30–40 minutes, lowering the heat as the top browns.

CRAWFISH see LOBSTERS

CROAKERS & DRUMS see A FEW WORDS ABOUT… CROAKERS & DRUMS

CUTTLEFISH see SQUID

DAB see SOLE

DOGFISH see A FEW WORDS ABOUT… DOGFISH

DOLPHINFISH see A FEW WORDS ABOUT… DOLPHINFISH

DORADO see A FEW WORDS ABOUT… DOLPHINFISH

DUBLIN BAY PRAWNS see LOBSTERS

†EELS & ELVERS

(Anguilla anguilla & Anguilla rostrata)

I love eel. Sometimes I think it is my favourite fish. It is delicate, but rich; it falls neatly from the bone; grilled to golden brown and flecked with dark crustiness from a charcoal fire, it makes the best of all picnic food; stewed in red wine, cushioned with onions and mushrooms, bordered with triangles of fried bread, it is the meal for cold nights in autumn; smoked and cut into elegant fillets, it starts a wedding feast or a Christmas Eve dinner with style and confidence. Its skin is so tough that it was used to join the two parts of a flail together (think of the strain on that join as the flails thumped down to winnow the corn at harvest), or to make a whip for a boy’s top, or to bind the elastic to his catapult. The eel has picturesque habits, often lurking in old mill leats under willow roots, until it is seduced by a waisted eel-trap set by the sluice gate.

It has mystery, too. Aristotle wondered why no eel was ever found with roe or milt. This question had become a matter for poetry, or poetical prosing, by the time of Izaak Walton – ‘others say, that as pearls are made of glutinous dew drops, which are condensed by the sun’s heat in those countries, so Eels are bred of a particular dew’. The true poet, though, of this strange creature, was not Izaak Walton, or any other mystified ancient, but a biologist; the great Danish biologist Johannes Schmidt. In 1922, after twenty-five years of back-tracking eel larvae, he came right over the spawning ground, the correct ‘particular dew’.

The first larva was found by chance near the Faroe Islands in 1904; a willow-leaf of transparency, 77 mm (3 inches) long and, as it turned out, three years old. Other smaller larvae were found in the following years, further away from the coasts of Europe. Schmidt realized that if he could follow this trail of diminishing larvae, he would come to their home. Which he did in 1922 (the First World War had held things up). Right over the spawning ground, at the seaweedy eastern side of the Sargasso Sea, he brought up in his net the tiniest larvae of all – 5 mm (¼ inch) long.

Millions of them radiate out in all directions. Elvers of the American eel, Anguilla rostrata, share the same spawning grounds as the European eel’s, but veer to the west and have only a short journey to make by comparison. In a year, they reach the East Coast and wriggle in vast troops up rivers from the Gulf of the St Lawrence to Mexico. Of the elvers of Anguilla anguilla, only those caught in the Gulf Stream survive and make the journey to Europe. There, almost in sight of land, the willow-leaf becomes a wriggling, vigorous, wormlike object, the glass-eel or elver, ready to swarm up the rivers of Europe from the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. (Apparently the slowness of larval growth increased over unimaginable time, as the continents drifted slowly apart: the eels clung tenaciously both to their spawning ground, and to their familiar rivers, however long the journey between them became.)

The elvers now come together in broods. They can be seen stringing along for miles in a yard-wide cordon or eel-fare (from which we have the word elver), pushing upstream at night with a strength incredible to anyone who has bought 500 g (1 lb) of elvers, feeble, thread-like things, from Gloucester market. Winds, tides, the hours of daylight, and of darkness which is their travelling time, all affect their speed, but they aren’t stopped by obstacles in their way. One French biologist remarked that he had seen them pass waterfalls, weirs, locks. He had seen them climb vertical walls, lock walls, even coming out of the water so long as there was a little moisture. The bodies of the casualties stick to the walls to make a sort of ladder for the push of elvers behind. They can wriggle themselves through the narrowest cracks… ‘and so they manage to populate the smallest stretches of water, even those which might seem to have no connection at all with a river’.

It is at night, between ebb and falling tide, that the Severn elver-fisherman sets out. He carries a scoop net, and a bucket for the catch; he has a lamp too, and sticks to support it. The elvers are mainly dispatched to the eel farms of northern Europe, but some are kept for the housewives of the Severn area as a spring delicacy for suppertime. If you live anywhere near Gloucester, it is worth making a visit in March (or April according to the season) to find elvers, to see the elver-fisherman’s equipment in the Folk Museum in Westgate Street, and buy an excellent illustrated guide to the Severn Fishery collection, by John Neufville Taylor. At Frampton-on-Severn, there is an annual elver-eating competition: the record – 500 g (1 lb) in a minute – is held by the village garage mechanic.

The elvers which survive the journey, and the attentions of fishermen, grow slowly to maturity in the hidden crannies of streams. Young eels are yellowish at first (yellow eels are not worth eating), then after eight years or more their flanks turn to silver and they are ready for the long swim home. In autumn, the ones who can return downstream, avoiding nets stretched across many rivers, and barriers of basketwork and reeds, with more or less success. These silver eels, mature eels, are the best. They are caught in tons at the mouths of some rivers: at Comacchio on the Po, it has been known for 1,000 tons to be caught in a single night. A favourite dish there is a simple soup of eel layered with slices of onion, carrot, and celery and seasoned with parsley and lemon rind. The eel is covered with water, and halfway through the cooking a spoonful or two of tomato concentrate and wine vinegar are added.

Once in salt water, the silver eel streaks out for the Sargasso Sea, thousands of miles away, fathoms down, along dark cold currents, with no light or fishing nets to impede its path. Eel from the Black Sea may take a year, but eel from Western Europe will do it in about six months, ready to spawn in the spring.

Only the European eel, Anguilla anguilla, makes so arduous and – to our mind – so moving a journey (other species, Anguilla rostrata, or japonica, or australis, have their spawning grounds comparatively close to the streams of North America, or Japan or Australia). As the salmon knows its way back to the river where it was born, so the eel knows its way back to the Sargasso Sea – but how much longer a journey that is. Mature eels are never found returning to Europe, so it seems that once they have spawned they die exhausted by the double effort: ‘The Sargasso Sea is at once their grave, and the cradle of their descendants.’¹

As to the elvers which are sent to eel-farms, they are destined to lead a pampered life, with the result that they will reach maturity in only two or three years. At Le Croisic in Brittany, old salt-marsh workings have been turned into great basins to accommodate the elvers or civelles of the Loire. Their seawater is regularly changed to avoid pollution, they are anxiously scrutinized for the first hints of disease, and their favourite food is flung to them in abundant quantity. Fish-farming seems to be more satisfactory than intensive meat-farming, because the end-product has a much better flavour. Nobody, I think, could tell the difference between eel-farm eels and the ones we are often given from the Loire. Both are absolutely delicious, the occasion for rejoicing.

WHAT TO DO WITH ELVERS

Elvers are extremely filling; I think you will find that 750 g (1 ½ lb) is enough for four people with good appetites. When you set out to buy them, take an old, clean pillowcase into which the fishmonger can tip them. At home, add a large handful of kitchen salt to the elvers, and swish the pillowcase about in a big bowl of water. Squeeze firmly to remove as much water as possible. Then add another handful of salt, and repeat the process with more cold water. This may be enough to get rid of the slight sliminess of the elvers, but be prepared to wash them a third time, and to pick them over continuously to get rid of bits of twig and grass, the general murk of the full river.

Exhausted after an evening’s work at the swirling mass, I can never face cooking and eating them at once. Some go into water in a covered bowl in the refrigerator for the next day: the rest, divided into convenient quantities, are tied into plastic bags set in refrigerator boxes and put into the freezer for later use, without further preparation. The cold kills them. They store well. This I learned in Spain, surprised to be served elvers at several restaurants at the end of September, right out of season: my informant, a knowing waiter in a Salamanca restaurant just by the covered market, added that quantities of elvers came in from Britain as Spanish rivers could not provide enough of such a favourite delicacy. This reminded me bitterly that it is impossible to buy eels in most parts of Britain – and America – because they are flown off to Holland. There are few treats more appreciated by North Europeans than smoked eel and schnaps.

GLOUCESTER STYLE Fry 8 rashers of very fat bacon until crisp. Take the rashers from the pan, and fry 500 g (1 lb) elvers in the bacon fat. When they turn white – after a few seconds – stir in a couple of beaten, seasoned eggs, to make a kind of omelette. Eat with the bacon. Don’t overcook the elvers; the omelette should just be set, not at all leathery.

KEYNSHAM STYLE Keynsham is a small town between Bath and Bristol which, according to the 1748 edition of Defoe’s Tour through Great Britain, used to supply both cities with elver cakes. The elvers were well seasoned and baked in shortcrust pastry for about 20 minutes. Modern oven setting would be fairly hot (gas 5, 190°C/375°F).

LOIRE STYLE Put 500 g (1 lb) elvers into a saucepan and cover them with cold water. Add some salt and a bay leaf. Bring the water to boiling point and simmer until they are white. Line a colander with muslin and pour the eels into it – leave them to cool.

When you want to eat the elvers, melt 100 g (3½ oz) butter in a large frying pan with a crushed clove of garlic. Allow the garlic to cook slowly in the melted butter for a few seconds, then add the elvers. Turn them about over a gentle heat until they are coated with the butter and very hot. Sprinkle them generously with chopped parsley; serve straightaway with bread and butter and dry white wine.

SPANISH STYLE Angulas en cazuelita, elvers in little pots, come bubbling hot to table in Spanish restaurants, with little flat wooden forks to spear them with. For 3 or 4 people, you need about 500 g (1 lb) elvers. Heat 8 tablespoons of olive oil with 2 red hot chillies, slit into two and seeded. Crush them down into the oil so that they colour it slightly, and put in 4 large, skinned, halved cloves of garlic: keep the heat moderate so that the oil is well-flavoured by both items before the garlic turns a deep golden brown. At this point, remove the garlic and chillies, and tip in the elvers, swirling them round in the pan until they are opaque. This takes a minute or two, not long. Salt them, then divide between three or four well-heated earthenware pots and rush them to table. Provide plenty of bread and dry white wine.

WHITEBAIT STYLE Turn the drained and dry elvers into a plastic or paper bag with some seasoned flour and shake them about so that they are coated with flour. Tip into a chip basket, allowing surplus flour to fall off (into the sink or on to a piece of paper). Fry them in hot deep fat for a few moments until they are crisp; give them a second frying time at a higher temperature, like chips, if they aren’t crisp in a few moments the first time. Serve with lemon quarters, and brown bread and butter.

To my way of thinking, the Loire and Spanish styles are the best way of eating elvers. Some cookery books allow 250 g (8 oz) per person: I find that 125 g (4 oz) is plenty. With any slightly unusual food, you should never give people the chance to feel surfeited, because this will increase any lurking quivers of revulsion. Small quantities, well cooked, leave a desire for more on another occasion.

HOW TO CHOOSE AND PREPARE EELS

Eels should be bought alive. Insist on this (unless your fishmonger can be trusted when he says the eels on sale have just been killed that morning). Then ask the fishmonger to kill it for you.

Many recipes demand skinned eel, but for grilling and baking I find that the skin acts as a valuable barding layer. And when it is crinkly brown and charred from a fire of charcoal or vine prunings, it is good to eat as well: those who don’t like it can easily cut it away at this stage. Certain dishes would be less appealing with the dark skin of the eel, matelote or a pie for instance, but consider the matter before you rush in to have it skinned.

Although the fishmonger will skin the eel for you – and he should have no hesitation, considering the price you are about to pay – it is prudent to know exactly what to do in case an angling husband or neighbour presents you with an eel in a bucket of water. If you are really squeamish, ask someone to hold it down while you kill it with one blow at the back of the head with a cleaver, and chop the rest rapidly into chunks without skinning them. I don’t like doing this; it makes me understand why people about to be beheaded were often anxious about the axeman’s aim.

A better system is to kill the eel by piercing through the back of the head, through the spinal marrow, with a strong skewer; it is fair to ask the angler to do this. Now suspend the eel from a strong hook, using a slip loop of rope. Make a circular cut with a Stanley knife just below the rope, right through the skin. Sprinkle the cut with salt and, with the assistance of pliers, ease the skin away from the body for about ½–1¼ cm (¼–½ inch), enough to provide a grip. Now pull the skin down the body as if you were removing a tight glove, pliers in one hand and a piece of skin in the other. This can be tricky. I must admit that I’ve sometimes swung round an eel as if it were a rope-swing on a streetlamp. But once you get going, it is easy. Untie the eel, cut off and discard the head, chop the rest into appropriately sized pieces, and wash and clean them. A warning – pieces of eel may continue to jerk about in a disconcerting way. Leave them for a while in a covered pot.

CHICKEN WITH EEL IN THE DIGOIN STYLE (Poulet de ferme étuvé à la digoinaise)

This old Burgundian recipe, like the pochouse on p. 505 from the last part of the nineteenth century, I would say, comes from Alexandre Dumaine, now alas dead, once one of the finest chefs in France, contemporary and friend of the great Fernand Point, the inspiration and founder of today’s nouvelle cuisine. Dumaine’s restaurant, the Côte d’Or at Saulieu 72 km (45 miles) west of Dijon, was a high place of French gastronomy when I started writing about food in the sixties (we could never afford to go there, something I still regret). Then he retired to another part of Burgundy, his native town of Digoin, where the canal goes over the Loire in a beautiful stone bridge with barges bringing china clay for the porcelain factories. Among other things, he encouraged and trained Jean-Paul Billioux who, of all odd, square, ugly places, had made the Hôtel de la Gare famous for its food.

I give the recipe as reported by Alexander Watt, in The Art of Simple French Cookery, a book he dedicated to Dumaine who was at that time, after Point’s death in 1954, France’s greatest chef. It was a dish of his father’s time, which he was still eating frequently, ‘avec émotion’. For today’s tastes, you can omit the flour and concentrate the sauce by boiling it down. The country bread Dumaine speaks of was – is – not wholemeal but a huge loaf of coarser, more chewy texture than the usual French bread, though still light and holey: there really is no substitute – I use thick slices of bread made from unbleached white flour, though it is heavier than I would like.

Serves 4

1 generous kg (2¼ lb) chicken, cut into 8 pieces

250 g (8 oz) eel, cut into 4 lengths

60 g (2 oz) butter

1½ tablespoons plain flour

175 ml (6 fl oz) dry white wine

250 ml (8 fl oz) water

bouquet garni

2 cloves garlic, crushed, skinned

salt, pepper

6 slices country bread, fried in butter

No need to skin either chicken or eel pieces – you need the richness for the sauce. Melt the butter in a large heavy sauté pan. Put in the chicken and eel. Cover and leave to cook gently for 10 minutes – this is stewing rather than frying. Turn, cover again and leave for a further 10 minutes: the pieces should not brown or catch the heat.

Remove the chicken and eel to a plate. Spoon off any clear fat. Stir in the flour, cook very gently for a couple of minutes, then stir in the wine and water to make a sauce. Add the bouquet and garlic, and season. When everything is simmering harmoniously, put back the chicken and eel. Cover again and stew until everything is tender. Dumaine suggests 50 minutes for this, which indicates a very low heat indeed. I find 30 minutes is about right if you are using an electric hob rather than gas: it is sensible to remove chicken breast pieces and the thinnest length of eel before they overcook.

Put the six newly-fried pieces of bread on to a serving dish. Arrange boned pieces of chicken and boned eel (remove the skin if it looks raggy) on the bread. Keep it all warm. Taste the sauce for seasoning; adjust it by boiling down or by adding extra liquid so that it has consistency without heaviness. Strain and pour a little over the chicken and eel, the rest round the bread. Serve very hot, with extra bread.

EEL IN THE GREEN (Anguille au vert)

The idea of eel undulating through the greenery of a stream is one that has much appealed to cooks. Sedgmoor eel stew (p. 138) gives the simplest style of all; then there is Guy Mouilleron’s jellied eel mousse with watercress sauce (p. 137), and this great classic of Belgian and French cookery, Anguille au vert. The recipe below gives the simplest combination of greens, and sorrel is essential: watercress could be used instead of spinach (one English restaurateur’s recipe includes onion, chives, parsley and young nettle leaves, as well as wild sorrel for its extra sharpness).

If you don’t grow sorrel in your garden – or on your 17th-floor kitchen windowsill – put sorrel seed at the top of your shopping list. A cook without sorrel to hand is a deprived creature, a subject for lamentation.

Serves 6

1½ kg (3 lb) eel, skinned

salt, pepper

125 g (4 oz) clarified butter

3 handfuls (about 175 g/6 oz) sorrel, shredded

3 handfuls (about 175 g/6 oz) spinach, shredded

1 handful parsley (about 60 g/2 oz), chopped

6 sage leaves, chopped

8 tarragon leaves, chopped

375 ml (12 fl oz) dry white wine

3 large egg yolks

125 ml (4 fl oz) whipping or double cream (optional)

lemon juice

6 slices fried bread, if dish it to be eaten hot

Cut up the eel into pieces that will fit nicely on to the bread, for eating hot. For cold eating, cut them into fewer, longer pieces. Season and fry them in the butter until they begin to brown, then put in the sorrel and spinach. As they cook down, add the herbs and wine. Simmer until the eel is tender, about 15 minutes depending on thickness. Take the pan from the heat. Bone the eel pieces and arrange them on the hot bread on a serving dish or on six plates, and keep them warm: for cold eating, arrange the boned fillets on a serving dish and put it near the stove while you finish the sauce.

In the pan, beat the egg yolk with the cream if used, and some of the hot herby liquor. Put the pan back on the heat, stir in the egg yolk mixture and continue stirring until the sauce thickens gently, without coming near boiling point. Check the seasoning, sharpen agreeably with lemon juice and pour over the eel. Serve either very hot with very hot plates, or chilled.

AN EEL PIE WORTHY OF EEL-PIE ISLAND

From the seventeenth century until recently, people went to enjoy themselves at Twickenham Eyot in the Thames – in other words Eel-Pie Island. Boating parties, anglers, picnickers, gathered on its leafy acres, and bought eel pies from the inn. How sad that the famous inn should have ended up as a hippy battleground. Here is a recipe from The Cook’s Oracle by Dr William Kitchiner. It was published in 1843, when Eel-Pie Island was at the height of its prosperity, and soon after the inn had been enlarged to include a splendid assembly room.

The interesting thing is that this recipe, which I thought had vanished from our cookery many years before, turned up again recently when I was preparing British Cookery in the winter of 1983–84. It is on the menu of the Old Fire Engine House restaurant in Ely, close to the Fens where eels still flourish. The proprietor, Ann Jarman, told me that she found the recipe in a local Women’s Institute publication. Another example – there must be hundreds – of a dish once in the national repertoire surviving as a regional oddity. American cookery is full of such fossils – transparent tarts and oyster loaves being two conspicuous examples of once popular dishes that in this country we no longer make.

‘Skin clean and bone two Thames eels. Cut them in pieces and chop two small shallots. Pass the shallots in butter for five minutes, and then add to them a small faggot of parsley chopped, with nutmeg, pepper, salt and two glasses of sherry. In the midst of this deposit the eels, add enough water to cover them and set them on the fire to boil. When boiling-point is reached, take out the pieces of eel and arrange them in a pie-dish. In the meantime, add to the sauce two ounces [60 g] of butter kneaded with two ounces [60 g] of flour, and let them incorporate by stirring over the fire. Finish the sauce with the juice of a whole lemon, and pour it over the pieces of eel in the pie-dish. Some slices of hard-boiled egg may be cunningly arranged on the top, and in it amung the lower strata. Roof the whole with puff pastry; bake it for an hour. And lo! A pie worthy of Eel-Pie Island. It is a great question debated for ages on Richmond Hill whether this pie is best hot or cold. It is perfect either way.’

NOTE Use dry or medium-dry sherry – or white wine if you prefer it. Put into a hot oven (gas 8, 230 °C/450 °F), and after about 20 minutes – by which time the pastry should be well risen – lower the heat to moderate (gas 4, 180 °C/350 °F). No need to bone the eel: there should be about 1 kg (2 lb). Light fish stock can be used instead of water, and you may not need all the beurre manié to thicken it.

ITALIAN GRILLED AND BAKED EEL

Grilled eel is very popular in Italy: bay leaves are used, sometimes a little rosemary. In the north, a dish of Mostarda di Cremona will go with it; this is a mixture of many fruits pickled in a mustard and garlic-flavoured syrup, and exquisite chutney of some antiquity. Montaigne sampled it twice in 1581, near Cremona, on his way back to France. Very good, he said, but omitted to mention what he ate it with. It is usually a relish for meat, poultry and game, but if you can get a jar from an Italian grocery, do try it with eel. A mustard sauce could be substituted, but would not have the same enchantment and deliciousness.

Recipes for grilling eel can easily be adapted to the oven. Some friends of ours, who spend the summer at Lake Bracciano to the north of Rome, are able to buy the most enormous fat eels. They cut them into chunks about 5 cm (2 inches) long, and arrange them on a grid in a roasting pan. They are brushed with olive oil, seasoned and topped with a bay leaf for each chunk. The pan goes into a hot oven (gas 5, 190 °C/375 °F) until the eel is cooked, i.e. when the flesh can be prised easily from the bone. It is essential to place the eel on a grid or rack of some kind, so that the fat can drain away. Serve with lemon quarters, or with the Mostarda di frutta from Cremona.

The apotheosis of eel in Italy is the magnificent Capitone arrostito, one of the ritual dishes of the Christmas Eve dinner, the cenone, the start of the festival. In all Roman Catholic countries, this meal is always margo, lean, a fasting meal without meat. Fasting is one of those ideas which puzzle Protestants, they take it to mean going without food (or else eating badly cooked boiled fish on Friday): I remember fellow pupils at school fainting away in the cold church at early communion because they had had nothing but sips of water. To learn that oysters followed by monkfish or lobster is just as virtuous, whereas steak and chips or sausage and mash would be sinful – I know which I would rather have any day – make Protestants suspicious of the honesty of the Roman Catholics. Or rather it did in the part of the world where I grew up.

Capitone arrostito makes a good excuse for Romans to visit the huge and glittering Piazza Vittorio market to choose a fine fat eel, most probably from the lagoon at Comacchio. For 6 people, you need at least 1½ kg (3 lb) or a bit more since it is a feast you are preparing. It needs to be skinned, for elegance.

At home, cut the eel into 5- or 8-cm (2- or 3-inch) pieces. In a large bowl, beat together a vinaigrette of 250 ml (8 fl oz) olive oil, 4 tablespoons lemon juice or wine vinegar, salt and pepper. Add 2 or 3 bay leaves. Put in the well-washed pieces of eel, mixing them up thoroughly. You can also add a good handful of breadcrumbs. Leave for 2 hours or longer.

Drain the pieces, then thread them on to long skewers if you have an electric spit, or on to six individual skewers if you intend to grill, barbecue or oven-roast them. Between each piece put a bay leaf, and on long skewers use chunks of bread at each end to help keep the eel in place as the spit turns. If you are baking the eel, stand the skewers on a rack in a pan so that the fat can drip away freely.

However you decide to cook the eel, it should come into contact at first with high heat. With an oven, preheat it to gas 8, 230 °C (450 °F). You can lower the temperature later if there is a risk of scorching. With indoor grills and electric spits, preheat them for 15 or 20 minutes. With charcoal, make sure that it has reached that ashy grey-looking stage that conceals the fierce red heat of the coals beneath.

As the eel begins to drip, baste it with left-over marinade and keep basting it with fresh fine breadcrumbs that will catch the heat and turn into a golden-brown coating by the time the eel parts from the bone and is cooked.

Have ready a very hot serving dish and plates. Intersperse the skewers of eel with lemon wedges and little bunches of parsley.

MATELOTE OF EEL (Matelote d’anguille)

Unlike many of the smaller French rivers, the Loir has never been canalized into straight, poplar-lined elegance. It runs into a medieval diversity of side streams and leats, which once turned the wheels of a hundred and more mills from Proust’s Illiers-Combray down to Angers. A paradise for eels. And for eel fishermen – after a successful inspection of their nets they return to house or cave for wine. Most of the catch goes into a tank for the time being, but one or two are strung up and skinned. Meanwhile, a bundle of vine prunings is reduced to embers between two rows of bricks to make a rough barbecue. The pieces of eel are rubbed with coarse grey sea salt, placed on an iron rack over the heat and grilled gently to golden brown. I don’t think it is imagination to declare that eel grilled over vine prunings is the best way of all to cook it.

However, most of the Loir eels that are sold at market or to hoteliers will go into the richer, more elaborate dish of matelote. At least once every visit to Trôo, we go to the Hôtel de France at La Chartre-sur-le-Loir to eat Monsieur Pasteau’s matelote, a dish that in the twenty-five years we have been eating it never varies in quality. According to books of local cookery, Monsieur Pasteau also grills eel and serves it with grilled mushrooms, smoked bacon and tomatoes, plus straw potatoes and sauce tartare: there is also a recipe for pieces of eel, well seasoned and lavishly buttered, that are made into a pasty of puff pastry, in the style of an apple turnover.

These two dishes I have never seen on the menu, but I can vouch for the matelote which is stewed in red wine of the district, often with mushrooms from the old quarry caves that warren the low cliffs of the Loir. At Vouvray, on the great Loire, white wine is the natural choice. So it is at Saumur, and in Anjou where the dish is often called bouilleture de Loire. There, too, prunes are used to set off the delicate flavour of eel. They were once produced in Touraine, at Huistnes in particular, but now come from Agen far to the south – even (in small type, at the bottom corner of the packet) from California. It is surprising how well prunes go with river fish such as perch and lampreys – they are browned in butter, sprinkled with flour and left to stew or bake for half an hour in wine, with soaked prunes. Eel, though, seems to demand a little extra grandeur.

Serves 8

1 kg (2 lb) eel, skinned and cut up

3–4 tablespoons marc or brandy

4 tablespoons oil

salt, freshly ground black pepper

1 bottle white wine plus 1 large egg yolk and 90 ml (3 fl oz) double cream or 1 bottle red wine plus 1½ tablespoons plain flour and 2 tablespoons butter

2 cloves garlic, crushed (optional)

175 g (6 oz) chopped shallot or onion

white of 1 leek, chopped (optional)

bouquet garni

Also choose an appropriate garnish:

Turn the pieces of eel in the brandy and oil, season well and leave for several hours or overnight. At the same time, put the prunes, if used, to soak in half the bottle of wine.

A good hour before the meal, simmer the rest of the wine with garlic, if used, onion, leek and bouquet garni for half an hour. Arrange the eel and prunes, with any liquor from them, in a large pan, and strain the seasoned wine over them. The eel and prunes should be just covered. Stew gently for 20–30 minutes until the eel is cooked. Meanwhile prepare the garnish.

To thicken the sauce: either mash butter and flour together, dividing the mixture into small lumps, then add them to the red wine stew gradually, stirring all the time so that the sauce thickens smoothly; or beat the egg yolk and cream, whisk in a little of the simmering white wine stew, and return to the cooking pot, which should be kept below the boil so that the sauce thickens without curdling.

Correct the seasoning, pour into a serving dish and arrange the garnish on top. With triangles of bread, dip one corner into the sauce, then into chopped parsley, and tuck the opposite corner into the stew.

MATELOTE D’ANGUILLE DE TANTE MARIE

A recipe from the Vendômois that is really a good and homely dish. Things from the garden, onions and flageolet beans and Jerusalem artichokes, mushrooms from the quarry caves where they are grown in the cool darkness, and eel from the sluices on the many mill leats and streams that flow into the Loir, all speak of that genuine local cooking which varies from house to house according to what is to hand. The eel is almost always skinned, on account of its fattiness, but if you find this too difficult, give the pieces a quick browning over a high heat in a heavy greased pan before you put them into the sauce.

Serves 4

1 eel weighing about 600 g (1¼ lb), skinned, cut up

salt, pepper

60 g (2 oz) unsalted butter

1 level tablespoon plain flour

300 ml (10 fl oz) water from cooking dried beans or peas or vegetable stock

bouquet garni

12 medium-sized mushrooms

about 500 g (1 lb) Jerusalem artichokes, peeled, diced

300 ml (10 fl oz) Gamay or other red wine

12 small pickling onions

extra butter

sprinkling of sugar

Sprinkle the eel with salt and pepper and set aside. Melt the butter in a heavy pan, stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute. Moisten with vegetable water, add the bouquet, mushrooms and artichokes. When the artichokes are almost tender, pour in the wine.

In the meantime, brown the onions in the extra butter with a sprinkling of sugar to help them caramelize. Add them to the pan with the wine. Boil for 3 minutes, steadily, check the seasoning and put in the eel pieces. Lower the heat to a simmer and give the eel 20 minutes. If some of the pieces are thin, it is prudent to check after 15 minutes and remove them if the flesh is parting easily from the bones. Put them back just before serving.

Provide bread and more of the Gamay or other wine used in the cooking.

GUY MOUILLERON’S JELLIED EEL MOUSSE WITH WATERCRESS SAUCE

When Guy Mouilleron left the Relais at the Café Royal to open his own restaurant, Ma Cuisine, in Walton Street in London, this was one of the most popular dishes on the menu. He gave me the recipe, which is a pattern for fish terrines of all kinds, and a base for elaborations of your own.

Serves 8

2 eels, weighing about 1¼ kg (2½ lb) in all, skinned, filleted

salt, pepper, nutmeg

3 egg whites

500 ml (17 fl oz) double cream, well chilled

SAUCE

1 bunch or handful of watercress

150 ml (5 fl oz) double cream, whipped

salt, pepper

For the fish mousse, cut off 375 g (12 oz) of the messiest looking eel fillet. Season the rest and set it aside for the moment.

Chill the blender goblet or bowl of the processor in which you will be making the mousse. When it is thoroughly cold, set it in motion and drop on to the whirling blades the 375 g (12 oz) of eel fillet, lubricating the mixture with the egg whites. Chill the whole thing again, then put it back in place, switch on and pour in the cream. Season it well. You should have a rich white coherent billowy-looking mixture.

Take a stoneware or earthenware terrine respectable enough to appear on the table. Put in a layer of the mousse, then a layer of eel fillets that had been set aside. Repeat and then finish with a layer of the mousse. Cut butter papers to fit into the terrine, on top of the last layer of mousse, then cover the whole thing right over with foil.

Either steam the mousse for an hour or put it into a pan of boiling water to come halfway up the side and bake in a moderate oven, preheated to gas 4, 180 °C (350 °F) for the same time. Remove the terrine to a cool place, and when cold, chill overnight.

To make the sauce, remove enough leaves from the bunch of watercress to make a tablespoon when chopped. Blend or process the rest of the leaves with the minimum of water to make a murky slush. Sieve and add to the whipped cream. Season and fold in the leaves.

Serve the mousse in slices, cut from the terrine at the table, with a spoonful of the sauce. Provide brown bread to eat with it.

SEDGMOOR EEL STEW

The landscape of Sedgmoor in Somerset is a medieval creation. Monks from such abbeys as Athelney and Glastonbury drained the marshes by digging long canals known as rhines (pronounced reens). A paradise for eels. Here is one local recipe, very simple and direct.

Allow 250 g (8 oz) of eel per person. Skin and cut it into appropriate pieces, discarding the heads as usual. Put the pieces into a shallow pan that will take them in a single layer – a non-stick sauté pan is ideal, or an enamelled pan. Cover with rough or dry cider. Simmer until tender – at least 15 minutes. Remove the pieces to a serving dish, seasoning them and seasoning the liquor. Mash together 2 tablespoons each of butter and flour. Add this mixture bit by bit to the simmering liquid, until it thickens lightly (you may not need it all). Put in a great deal of chopped parsley. Check the seasoning and pour the sauce over the eel.

You can make this dish grander in various ways. Serve the eel on croûtons of bread, as in Anguille au vert, p. 130. Reduce the cooking liquor slightly and enrich it with clotted cream before adding the parsley – this means you can do without the flour-and-butter mixture (beurre manié). But really this is a country dish: if you want something grander, I would go for the Anguille au vert and leave this recipe alone.

ELVERS see EELS.

FLAKE see A FEW WORDS ABOUT… DOGFISH

FLYING FISH see A FEW WORDS ABOUT… FLYING FISH

FOGAS see PERCH

FRESHWATER CRAYFISH see A FEW WORDS ABOUT .. FRESHWATER CRAYFISH

GARFISH see A FEW WORDS ABOUT… GARFISH

GRAYLING see TROUT

† GREY MULLET

Mugil cephalus and spp.

There are about 100 species of mullet spread about the warm and temperate seas of the world, a fact which may surprise you in view of their comparative scarcity at the fishmongers’. In the eastern Mediterranean, though, and in the Black and Caspian Seas, they are abundant enough to provide roes for Taramasalata (p. 530), and that piquant substance known as Botargo (p. 529), once prized by Rabelais and Pepys as a stimulus to thirst, but now difficult to find in northern Europe.

Our grey mullet is likely to come from the sea off Cornwall and the west of England during the summer and autumn months. The fish move in shoals, sometimes coming right into estuaries and ports where the brackish polluted water may give them a muddy taste. I have never experienced this with grey mullet, but if you have reason to think they have been caught in such places, wash them in several changes of salted, vinegared water.

Grey mullet, also known as striped mullet in North America and black mullet in Florida, looks a little like sea bass, silvery in colour, but clouded and pointed with dark grey. A svelte creature. The flesh is reasonably firm and delicate, the price reasonable. Its success depends on its freshness. Elsewhere in the world, the different species do not have the same muddy inclination and the fish is better thought of.

In Senegal, the cooks of Saint-Louis prepare a complexity of stuffed mullet. The fish is slit down the back, the flesh and innards carefully prised from the skin. The edible parts are chopped and mixed with breadcrumbs, tomato, garlic, parsley and chilli, then packed back into the skin, which is sewn together. The resurrected fish lies on a bed of tomato, fried potato, cooked carrot and turnip for baking. A tricky operation of a kind I am never tempted to perform.

The ways of Hawaii seem to me more sympathetic. There, mullet – amaama – may simply be steamed until half done, then gently finished in coconut milk. Or it may be made into little parcels and baked, see below. I have a weakness, too, for the Green Fisherman’s recipe from Pinocchio. He floured mullet and flung it into a huge frying pan of olive oil which smelt like newly-snuffed candles. It was part of a Fritto misto, which also included red mullet, hake, sole, anchovies and spider crabs – and nearly included Pinocchio, too – all freshly caught, straight from the sea. How good it must have tasted, absolutely delicious. It improves most fish to be fried in olive oil, I would say.

Another way is to grill mullet. Larger ones can be boned and cut into pieces and strung on skewers with bits of fat bacon and bay leaves, for cooking en brochette. Small ones can be grilled whole after being scaled, cleaned and slashed three times on each side. Brush them with oil or clarified butter*, and serve them with a tomato sauce*, or hollandaise and its derivatives*. Or with sauce andalouse*, which may sound a little old-fashioned with its velouté base, but which goes well with mullet of all kinds.

My own feeling is that grey mullet is best cold, since it has a chance to lose any hint of pappiness and firm up. Plainly baked or steamed or poached, it goes well with mayonnaise. And the cold Provençal olive treatment – p. 143 – is a winner.

HOW TO PREPARE MULLET

Scale the mullet carefully. Both roe and liver are worth saving, and many people treasure the extraordinary length of gut compressed into the cavity – over 2 m (6½ ft) for a fish weighing 500 g (1 lb).

BAKED MULLET PARCELS (Lawalu amaama)

To make this Hawaiian dish as it should be, you need leaves from that Scrabbler’s godsend, the ti tree, otherwise known as the tree of kings or the good luck tree. For each little parcel you need one leaf, split into two longways. The first piece is wrapped round the bits of fish in one direction, the second at right angles to it. The whole thing can then be tied up neatly with a bit of raffia.

In our less exotic situation, the long green husks that enclosed a head of sweetcorn may be used, or a homely square of foil. I am sure that something is lost, perhaps the ti leaf has as much to contribute by way of flavour as a vine leaf, but the result is genial all the same.

Serves 4

2 mullet, each weighing at least 500 g (1 lb)

4 rashers of unsmoked streaky bacon

4 bay leaves, split in 2

8 very thin slices of onion

1 small green pepper, seeded

salt, pepper

Slice each fish across into 4 pieces about 5 cm (2 inches) long. Keep the wrapping in mind – if you are using leaves or husks you may need to adjust the size of the slices. Discard the heads and thin tail end, putting them into the freezer stock bag.

Cut a piece of bacon to go on top of each slice, then arrange the bay leaves, onion and a neat strip of green pepper on top (you will not need all the pepper). Season as you go, remembering the saltiness of the bacon. Tie up the parcels.

You can put the parcels into a baking dish with a thin layer of water in the base, and give them about 20 minutes in a hot oven preheated to gas 7–8, 220–230°C (425–450 °F). Or you can steam them for 30 minutes until the contents of the parcels feel firm. It is wise to have an extra trial parcel as a tester, if you are not used to steaming.

BAKED GREY MULLET WITH JERUSALEM ARTICHOKES AND BLACK OLIVES

One of the discoveries of modern cooking – presumably in the wake of the new interest in Mediterranean eating – has been how well fish goes with certain vegetables. I was brought up to think that only a few potatoes were permissible with fish. But then with a northern diet the alternative vegetables, in wintertime at least, would have been cabbage or turnip or swede which were far too strong, watery and unbuttered to do anything but overwhelm the excellent fresh cod and haddock. This particular combination was a happy accident: I have repeated it since with red mullet and various breams. It works with cod, but would be overwhelming with the more delicate white fish.

Serves 4–6

2 large grey mullet, weighing at least 500 g (1 lb) each

salt, pepper

1 kg (2 lb) Jerusalem artichokes

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 large tomato, skinned, seeded, chopped

1 bunch spring onions, about 10, sliced

250 ml (8 fl oz) medium-dry white wine, e.g. Vouvray

about 18 small black olives

Clean the mullet and season the cavities. Set aside. Peel and dice the artichokes – this should give you about 750 g (1½ lb), in other words you will lose about a quarter of their weight, though some varieties are smoother and less knobbly these days.

Switch on the oven to gas 7, 220°C (425°F).

In a sauté pan, heat the butter and oil and stew the tomato briefly. Setting aside a little of their green part for a final garnish, put the rest of the spring onions into the pan with the artichokes and the wine. Stir everything well, cover and stew gently until the artichokes are tender. If the mixture begins to look watery, remove the lid and raise the heat: you need to have the whole thing as dry as possible without allowing it to catch. Sieve or put through the coarse plate of a vegetable mill. Check for seasoning and spread into a baking dish. Put the mullet on top and bake for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile cook the olives briefly in boiling water. Dot them around the fish, check on its state and give it another 5 minutes in the oven or longer, until cooked. Scatter with the onion green that you set aside, and serve with bread.

GREY MULLET WITH OLIVES (Mulet aux olives)

In Provence in the past, and in some families still, Christmas begins on 24 December, the eve of the festival, with the Gros Souper or Big Supper. It is full of symbolism and mystery. First there is the business of the yule log, which has to be cut from a fruit-bearing tree. It must also be large enough to burn for three nights and days. The oldest and youngest members of the party carry it at either end, and with the family make a procession three times round the room before laying it on the hearth. The grandfather sprinkles the log with vin cuit, blessing it in the name of the Trinity. Then he lights it, and with the youngest grandchild says ‘Cacho-fio, bouto-fio, Dieu nous allègre’, a blend of Provençal and French meaning ‘Let the log burn, God brings us happiness’. And everyone sits down to supper.

No meat, game or poultry is served as everyone will be going off to Midnight Mass and it is still Advent. The table is covered with three cloths and three candles burn, for the Trinity. At one end of the table is a bowl of green sprouting wheat, at the other sprouting lentils: the seeds were sown on 4 December, St Barbara’s Day. Twelve rolls for the twelve Apostles and a large loaf for Christ are marked with the cross before anyone eats them. And seven dishes are served for the seven wounds of Christ on the cross. They are made from vegetables, eggs and fish – one of them will be mullet with olives, another with salt cod with raita. There will be anchoiade (p. 54) with celery and cardoons with an anchovy sauce (p. 49). As far as the mullet is concerned, there are a number of variations you can make to the basic recipe, and I recommend that you eat it cold.

Once the seven dishes have been dispatched, and a salad of curly endive to remind us of the curly head of the Infant Jesus, the thirteen desserts are put on the table so that people can chat and nibble away until it is time to leave for the church. But that is another story.

Serves 4

1 kg (2 lb) grey mullet

salt, pepper

1 small handful of parsley leaves

2 large cloves garlic

3 tablespoons olive oil

seasoned flour

juice of 1 large lemon or 4 tablespoons dry white wine

2 bay leaves

125 g (4 oz) mixed black and green olives, blanched for 3–4 minutes in boiling water

slices of lemon or orange to decorate

Preheat the oven to gas 7, 220°C (425°F).

Season the cavity of the mullet. Chop parsley and garlic together. Heat the oil in a shallow, flameproof baking dish that will hold the mullet comfortably, and cook the parsley mixture for about 3 minutes over a low heat.

Turn the fish in the flour, shaking off any excess, and put it into the oil. After a few seconds, turn it over. Add the lemon juice or white wine, bay leaves, olives and 200 ml (7 fl oz) of water. Season and simmer 5 minutes, then put into the oven.

Allow 10 minutes for 2 mullet, 15 minutes for 1 large one. Baste once.

When the fish is just cooked – it is particularly important to avoid overcooking if the mullet is to be eaten cold, since it will cook a little more in its own heat – remove it from the oven and pour off the juice into a shallow pan through a strainer. Boil it down steadily to a good flavour: it should be quite sharp, but pleasantly so. Pour over the fish, adding any debris of parsley and olives from the strainer. If the bay leaves look fagged out, discard them, and add a couple of fresh ones.

TO EAT HOT Serve immediately with plenty of bread and dry white wine, and slices of lemon or orange ranged neatly down the mullet.

TO EAT COLD Leave to cool, turning the fish from time to time. Serve chilled, so that the juices have a chance to turn to a light parsley-flecked jelly. Decorate finally with a few slices of lemon or orange.

MULLET BAKED WITH FENNEL AND PASTIS

I used to cook mullet en papillote, but now feel that this treatment is only suitable for very firm fish. Baking in a hot oven works better.

Serves 6

6 mullet

salt, pepper

3 heads of fennel, cut into strips, the leaves saved and chopped

3 tablespoons pastis

1½ teaspoons thyme

1½ teaspoons fennel seed

olive oil

lemon wedges

STUFFING

roes and liver from the fish, if any or 3 pairs herring roes, soft or hard

6 tablespoons fine breadcrumbs

1 teaspoon thyme

1½ teaspoons fennel seed

3 tablespoons chopped shallot or onion

3–4 tablespoons butter

salt, cayenne pepper

Preheat the oven to gas 7, 220 °C (425 °F).

Season the mullet cavities with salt and pepper. Blanch the fennel strips in boiling salted water until they are almost tender. Mix the pastis with thyme and fennel seed, then add it to the drained fennel strips and put them into an oiled ovenproof baking dish.

For the stuffing, crush the roes and mix them with the breadcrumbs and most of the leaves saved from the fennel. Crush thyme and fennel seed in a mortar and add to the crumbs. Soften the shallot or onion slowly in the butter: when it is soft and yellowish, add to the crumbs. Stuff the mullet with this mixture – season the mixture with salt and cayenne pepper first – and put the fish on top of the fennel strips in the dish, head to tail. Brush them over with oil, season and bake in a hot oven, gas 7, 220 °C (425 °F). Test after 15 minutes. Be prepared to give them a little longer. Scatter with the last of the chopped fennel leaves and serve with lemon wedges.

MULLET IN CHARENTE STYLE (Meuille à la charentaise)

The butter of the Charente is famous and it combines well with the vegetables that come from the neighbouring market gardens of the Marais, just to the north. I once read that Rabelais had introduced the tomato to France, sending seeds from Rome to his friend and master, the abbot of Maillezais, but I have never seen any real evidence that this was true – although it is agreeable to sit by the abbey ruins on one of the Marais canals and think about such things. Certainly tomatoes, garlic and onions now flourish in those parts – all the good things of that favoured region come together in this recipe.

Serves 6

6 mullet, about 250 g (8 oz) each

salt, pepper

175 g (6 oz) butter

6 cloves garlic, halved

leaves of 1 handful of parsley

500 g (1 lb) tomatoes, skinned, seeded, chopped

4 tablespoons dry white wine

cayenne pepper, sugar (see recipe)

3 tablespoons finely grated Parmesan

Season the mullet cavities with salt and pepper. Preheat the oven to gas 6, 200 °C (400 °F).

Reduce two-thirds of the butter, the garlic and parsley to a crumbly chopped mass in the processor. Cook the tomatoes down to a purée in a shallow pan buttered with a little of the remaining butter. Add the wine. Do not overcook – you want to keep the freshness of the tomato flavour. Season with cayenne, and a pinch or two of sugar if the tomatoes are on the tasteless side.

Meanwhile, bake the mullet in a buttered shallow dish for about 10 minutes. Pour over the very hot sauce, scatter with the Parmesan and put back into the oven until the mullet are cooked. About another 10 minutes.

GROUPERS see SEA BASS

GURNARD see A FEW WORDS ABOUT… GURNARD

† HADDOCK

Melanogrammus aeglefinus

After cod comes the haddock – at least in the way of popular consumption. And in some regions it is preferred to cod, for instance in the West Riding of Yorkshire where fish and chips means haddock and chips. Alan Davidson points out that discriminating Icelanders also prefer haddock to cod. This makes me feel that they are offered a superior strain, or perhaps just a fresher fish. The haddock one gets here under the normal humdrum circumstances of life is, in my experience, an uninspiring if estimable acquaintance. Chances are that you buy it because sole or turbot or halibut are too dear, because it is there on a thin day for choice and you cannot think of anything else. Faced with a fillet of haddock, the heart does not sing.

The tragic realities of fishing cod that lie behind the history of New England and the western countries of Europe, that have stimulated great novels such as Pêcheurs d’Islande and Captains Courageous and a host of songs, are not so apparent in the matter of fishing haddock. Perhaps it is something to do with the name. It has a jaunty, diminutive air – like bullock or hillock – that does not seem to have appealed to the poet’s or novelist’s ear. The haddock’s main cultural achievement is to have become identified with St Peter, like the John Dory. After the Transfiguration, Jesus and St Peter arrived in Capernaum on the shores of Galilee, where the ruins of the synagogue of that time may still be seen. Immediately the local customs people were after them. Christ knew that being locals and not strangers they were not liable, but said precisely to St Peter, ‘Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that take, and give it unto them for me and thee.’

The dark round marks behind the head, above the pectoral fins, are by legend the fingerprints of St Peter. The silly thing is that neither the haddock nor the John Dory could possibly have been the fish since they live in the sea, and the Sea of Galilee is a freshwater lake.

An interesting point about haddock is that being softer and smaller-flaked than cod, it is not as suitable for long-term drying and salting. Small haddocks, rizzered haddock, may be lightly salted and hung up to dry when the air is clear, to make a breakfast dish next day, but their particular virtues are best shown off by smoking. The fisherfolk of eastern Scotland developed a couple of famous cures for haddock. I do not know how long ago, but presumably in the eighteenth century, if not earlier: they became more widely known in the rest of the country and abroad in the nineteenth century as Finnan haddie or haddock and Arbroath smokies. These are two of the great delicacies, when properly done.

HOW TO BUY AND PREPARE HADDOCK

As with cod, the finest part of the haddock is behind the head (which also has its pickings). As a change, instead of cooking a whole bass or salmon, why not buy a whole haddock of 1–1½ kg (2–3 lb) ? You can then stuff and bake it in a hot oven, say at gas 7, 220 °C (425 °F), using a light mixture of breadcrumbs, herbs with a little green onion, perhaps some chopped mushrooms or hard-boiled egg and some lemon juice. Or you might poach it in very salty water, as if it were cod, see p. 94, and serve it with clear melted butter and fine shreds of grated horseradish, or with an hollandaise sauce*. Freshness is the key to success.

As with so many others of the cod family, pre-salting is a surprising improvement. You might go further by salting it liberally and leaving it for twenty-four hours; it will then need rinsing before you cook it. We had home-salted fish once at Joigny, at the Lorains’ À La Côte St Jacques, with very young, neat root vegetables – simple and good.

ESCOFFIER’S GRATIN OF HADDOCK WITH COURGETTES

I was idling through Escoffier’s Guide Culinaire one day, enjoying the nomenclature of kings and princesses, archdukes, admirals and opera stars, les grandes horizontales and the smart resorts they adorned, the characters and places of history which give such a picture of that age and its more frivolous preoccupations, when the words ‘earthenware dish’ caught my eye. The Empress Eugénie or the American soprano Mary Garden may be honoured in porcelain and crystal dishes, what has earthenware to do with Escoffier? It appeared in a trim little recipe, very direct, after a dish dedicated to the Great Condé in which sole fillets covered with a white wine sauce were picked out with lines of buttered tomato purée and decorated like shields with crosses piped in the same purée (perhaps this was the device of that famous soldier?). The earthenware dish recipe was also for sole, but I find it most useful for the many more times I have haddock to cook, and other less glorious fish of the cod family. It must entirely have reminded Escoffier of the implicities of his childhood in Provence.

Choose an earthenware dish that will just accommodate in a single layer the number of haddock fillets you are intending to cook. Butter it, put in the fish, skin side down, and season. Set aside for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to gas 5–6, 190–200 °C (375–400 °F).

Peel and slice enough young courgettes to make a single layer on top of the fish. Butter a sauté pan and put in the slices with 2–3 fine ripe tomatoes that have been skinned, seeded and roughly chopped. You need enough to make a light moistness. Add a few drops of lemon and some seasoning. Cook gently until almost done. When you turn the slices, add 2–3 sprigs of basil.

Spread the courgettes over the fish evenly. Sprinkle with a layer of crumbs from day-old bread. Bake for upwards of 15 minutes – time will depend on the thickness of the fish – ‘so as to cook the fillets and brown the crumbs at the same time. Serve in the dish just as it is.’

GREEN FISH SOUP

A most attractive and unusual soup that demands no particular local genius of a fishmonger or greengrocer. Anyone could make it, I would say, anywhere above – or below – the tropics. Something of a relief to the writer of a fish cookery book. One spends so much time trying to come by a few squid or an ambulant crab or prawns that are not weighed down with icy jackets. For this original soup made from such unoriginal ingredients, we have to thank Marion Jones of the Croque-en-bouche restaurant in Malvern. She is a cook of verve and ingenuity.

Serves 8

1 medium onion, thinly sliced

1 small leek, thinly sliced

2 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons plain flour

1 litre (1¾ pt) fish stock, flavoured with fennel

salt, pepper, nutmeg

500 g (1 lb) skinned fillet of haddock, whiting, hake or ling, cut up

375 g (12 oz) sprouting broccoli or Calabrese, prepared weight

about 6 tablespoons single cream (optional)

Sweat onion and leek in the butter until soft, without colouring them. Stir in the flour, cook gently for a few minutes, then stir in half the stock. Simmer for 10 minutes. Season the liquid and add the fish. Cook for 1 minute and leave to cool down. Blend at top speed, or process and sieve until very smooth.

Meanwhile, chop all the broccoli or Calabrese except for a few flowering heads to use as garnish. Cook in enough salted water to cover, resting the heads on top so that they steam; do not put the lid on the pan. Remove the heads carefully and set aside. Sieve the rest of the contents of the pan into the soup, liquor included. Or use the blender. Dilute further to taste with the remaining fish stock and, if necessary, a little extra water.

Reheat carefully, check the seasoning and stir in the cream, if used. Float the broccoli or Calabrese heads on top.

GRILLED HADDOCK WITH LIME AND GINGER BUTTER

When you experiment with fish and unaccustomed spices and flavourings, you can minimize possible disaster by grilling it plainly and then blending the new items into a flavoured butter. Not that I anticipate anyone would dislike haddock with lime and ginger butter, which is a delicate combination, lovely to look at since lime zest gives a general pale green tone, speckled with flecks of green onion. The ginger is the mystery.

Serves 2