French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [178]
CARPE À LA JUIVE
SWEET-SOUR CARP IN THE JEWISH FASHION
Unless carp is exceedingly fresh it is scarcely worth cooking.
Here is a recipe from La Cuisine Messine, a collection of recipes from Lorraine with special emphasis on the old dishes of the Metz district, written by Auricoste de Lazarque in the nineteen-hundreds. This, he says, is the genuine formula for the carpe à /a juive as cooked in Lorraine.
‘In a deep pan, or if you are going to cook the fish whole, in a fish kettle, heat nearly pint of olive oil. When it is hot, throw in a quantity of small onions. As soon as they have turned golden stir in a little flour and a little soft white sugar; stir and do not let the flour and sugar brown. Add as much water as you will need to allow the fish to swim in it, a spoonful of wine vinegar, a little more sugar, some Malaga raisins and lb. of skinned and sliced almonds. Bring to the boil, and add a pinch of salt. Put in your fish, either whole or cut into steaks.
‘When the fish is tender, remove it to a fairly deep serving dish. Over it pour the cooking liquid and all its contents, arranging the almonds and the raisins round the fish.
‘To be served cold in the sauce, which turns to a jelly.’
A 2 lb. fish needs only half the quantities given above and takes about 30 minutes to cook. But I think myself that the dish is an acquired taste.
POCHOUSE SEURROISE
BURGUNDIAN FISH STEW
Never having had the opportunity to cook or to eat the famous Burgundian stew of fresh-water fish called pochouse, I cannot judge of its merits. Some speak of it with reverence and affection, others with fear and horror. Here is a recipe contributed by Henri Racouchot, former proprietor of the Trois Faisans (this famous restaurant is now incorporated with the Pré aux Clercs) at Dijon, to a collection of Burgundian recipes called Les Meilleures Recettes de ma Pauvre Mère, by Pierre Huguenin, published in 1936.
‘Brown in butter, without letting them fry, 150 grammes (about 5 oz.) of fat bacon cut into slivers and previously blanched; add 18 little onions already three-quarters cooked in salted water to which a little flour has been added. On top place your sliced fish (tench, eel, perch, pike and carp); 6 crushed cloves of garlic, salt, pepper and sufficient very dry white wine to cover the whole mixture. When it boils, add a Bordeaux glass of Burgundian fine, set light to it and then cook for 18 to 20 minutes, then add, little by little, 2 oz. of beurre manié, shaking your pan so that the butter mixture amalgamates with the sauce and binds it; but take care, for the sauce must not become too thick. Finally, add another lump of butter, and serve with croûtons of bread fried in butter, and rubbed with garlic.
‘Some people finish their pochouse with a binding of egg yolks and cream, but I do not see the necessity for this and it is contrary to the precepts of the original recipes.’
Alfred Contour in Le Cuisinier Bourguignon gives a very similar recipe but calls it pauchouse and omits the flaming with brandy; Charles Blandin in Cuisine et Chasses de Bourgogne et d’Ailleurs spells it pochouze, and says that the sauce, highly flavoured with garlic, should be sieved and then poured over the fish and the croûtons already in the serving dish.
A meurette of fresh-water fish is again very similar, but red wine instead of white is used, as in the matelotes of the Rhône and of the Seine.
At Tours I have eaten a matelote d’anguilles, which consisted of eels stewed in red wine, with pruneaux de Tours, the sauce thick and rich and very dark. It was a dish which had a kind of ancient grandeur and allure but I would not want to eat it often. The same might be said of the Provençal catigau d’anguilles, a saffron-coloured stew of eels served with very fiery sauce rouille, which is a speciality of a charming restaurant at the Pont de Gau in the Camargue.
SAUMON POËLÉ AU VIN BLANC