French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [167]
In one of those noisy, busy, cheerful Lyon bistros renowned for very simple, rather rough but well-cooked food, in copious quantities, I had skate with black butter beautifully served. We were sitting within a yard of the kitchen but even so the patron almost ran from the stove to our table with the little covered dish containing the skate and its hissing, bubbling sauce, to which a few capers, cooked with the vinegar, had been added.
RAIE GRATINÉE AU FROMAGE
SKATE WITH CHEESE SAUCE
Skate with black butter is so good that it seems unnecessary to go looking for other or more recherché methods of cooking it but, if you have some left over, or choose to cook an extra piece to serve next day, or find the black butter method impossible because of the last-minute cooking involved, it is excellent done with a creamy cheese sauce and augmented, if necessary, with a few potatoes, cooked and sliced into rounds.
Line a gratin dish with a layer of your prepared sauce, put in the skate, freed of all skin and bone, and put a ring of sliced potatoes round the edge. Pour the rest of the sauce over the top, covering the potatoes as well as the fish. Strew with breadcrumbs and a few little nuts of butter and bake in a fairly hot oven, Gas No. 7, 420 deg. F., for about 15 minutes. Finish for a minute under the grill.
To make the sauce
Heat 1 oz. of butter; stir in one good tablespoon of flour. When it is smooth add a scant pint each of the strained cooking liquid from the fish and creamy milk; the stock should go in first, and both should be warmed. Stir until the sauce is creamy, season lightly with freshly-milled pepper, salt and nutmeg. Leave to simmer very gently with a mat under the saucepan for 15 minutes, stirring at frequent intervals. Stir in 2 tablespoons of grated Parmesan or Gruyère.
These quantities are enough for a good large cup of cooked skate.
ROUGETS À LA MEUNIÈRE
RED MULLET FRIED IN BUTTER
By name, sole or other fish fried à /a meunière are known to everyone who frequents restaurants either here or in France. In fact, it is rare to get it in precisely the correct condition because it is essentially a frying-pan-to-plate dish. The butter poured over the fried fish immediately it is cooked should still be foaming as it comes to table. Once the butter has cooled the dish is no longer the same; it has started to become greasy. The supposition that French cooking is greasy is largely due to dishes such as these being not so much imperfectly cooked as served in the wrong condition.
I give the recipe here in quantities for two people only. For 2 moderate-sized red mullet weighing, say, about lb. each, first clarify a minimum of 2 oz. of butter. (Butter for frying fish is always best clarified—that is, gently melted over hot water, then filtered through a damp muslin; the risk of the fish sticking to the pan is then greatly diminished.) While this clarified butter is heating in the frying-pan, coat your fish very lightly in seasoned flour. Do not do this in advance, or the coating will turn soggy.
When the butter is hot, but not too hot, put in your fish and let it get quite crisp on one side before you lower the heat and gently turn the fish over: 10 minutes altogether of quite slow cooking, the fish having been turned once more during this time, will be sufficient. Remove the fish to a very hot dish. Quickly pour off the used butter (not down the sink, it will make a spluttering and a smell), wipe the pan clean, and into it put 2 oz. of fresh butter—not clarified this time—and when it is foaming pour it over the mullet, sprinkling a dusting of fine parsley over it and adding a squeeze of lemon as you bring it to table.