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By Root 2248 0

three or four years many people have rediscovered the merits of the primitive charcoal-burning grill. This, however, needs a properly ventilated kitchen, or at least a table standing by an open window, or you will be suffocated by the fumes. The technique of charcoal grilling also requires a certain amount of practice and skill as, for that matter, does any other form of grilling, but at least with gas and electricity it is mainly the food you have to attend to, not the fire as well. It is not quite enough to set down your steak or your fish on a wire grid over a charcoal fire and thereafter leave it to look after itself. Certain of the new London bistro type of restaurants are crowded with people drawn in by the magic words ‘charcoal grilling’ but, unfortunately, this too often proves to be just one more variation on the theme of good materials wrecked by the cook. Make no mistake, tending a charcoal fire is as much an art as cooking on it and those unpractised in this art will find that their food, so far from being deliciously scented with an elusive aroma of smoke, is partly burnt to a cinder and partly raw, abominably permeated with the taste of burnt fat into the bargain.

In all the wine-growing districts of France there still exists the method of grilling over vine cuttings and this, when well done, does truly give a uniquely aromatic flavour to the food so cooked. But it is not really a method one can import into one’s own kitchen, even were the vine cuttings available.

POISSONS A GRANDE FRITURE

DEEP FRIED FISH

Under the names of friture de la Loire, du Rhône, de Seine, du golfe, du lac, or mixed fried river, sea, lake fish, etc., French restaurants serve a mixture of small fried fish quite often unidentifiable, the varieties depending upon what the day’s catch has brought forth. When it is a question of the friture du golfe, in other words local sea or rock fish, these can be, when very fresh, barely dusted with flour and crisply fried in olive oil, very delicious. They are served with a garnish of lemon, nothing else.

About the small freshwater fish from the rivers and lakes, I am not quite so sure; they can be very bony and rather tasteless.

Having mentioned olive oil I cannot help but repeat once more that for the deep frying of fish there is no other fat to compare with it. Nothing else makes it so crisp and crackling; and never, with olive oil, will you get that after-taste of stale fat which mars the best fried sole in even the most expensive of our restaurants. For this reason, you will nearly always find that an Italian, a Jewish or a Provençal cook will serve you with beautifully fried fish, because, traditionally, these people all use olive oil for their frying.

As already explained on page 74, groundnut oil is a cheap and fair substitute for olive oil. Whichever you are using see that it is completely free of any sediment from previous frying. Heat it until it gives off the faintest blue haze. The proper deep-frying temperature is 356 deg. F., but you can test it by dropping in a little cube of bread. It should fry golden in barely one minute.

POISSONS À LA MEUNIÈRE

FISH FRIED IN BUTTER

I am always rather surprised when I read in books and articles that to cook fish à la meunière is one of the simplest of achievements. Simple in conception certainly; but in execution, no. This is a confusion of two distinct aspects of cookery into which it is very easy to fall. As we all know, there is a big difference between theory and practice, and the theory of a sole meunière is that the fish, fried in butter, is transferred to a serving dish and over it is poured a quantity of freshly cooked, hissing, foaming butter. A squeeze of lemon juice, a scrap of parsley, and the dish is ready. But do they think to tell you, the instructors of the nothing-is-simpler school, that the butter in which you fry your sole must be clarified butter, that you must watch your fish like a hawk to see that it does not stick and burn, that to turn it without breaking it is a tricky business, that you should discard