French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [179]
SALMON STEAKS WITH WHITE WINE
French cooks tend to be rather fanciful in their treatment of salmon. Crayfish or mushroom sauces and all sorts of rather elaborate garnishes may appear with it. These seem to me to be unnecessary, if not detrimental, to a fish already so rich, but this little recipe from the Loire is excellent and provides a quick and easy way of making the best of the late season’s salmon.
For 4 salmon steaks weighing about 6 oz. each, melt 1 oz. of butter in a thick frying-pan. Put in the seasoned salmon slices, cook rapidly on each side, pour over a wine-glass of dry white wine (Muscadet or a dry Anjou), let it bubble, reduce the heat and cook gently for about 7 more minutes. There should be only a small amount of reduced sauce. Serve the salmon with a few small plain boiled potatoes and sliced cucumber.
SAUMON GRILLÉ DIABLE
GRILLED SALMON WITH DEVIL SAUCE
Have your salmon cut in steaks each weighing 5 to 6 oz. Season them with salt and pepper, paint them with olive oil and grill them, not too fast, for about 7 minutes, turning them once and moistening them during the cooking with a little more oil. Transfer them to a hot serving dish and on top of each steak put some of the following mixture: 2 oz. of butter worked with a coffee spoon of yellow Dijon mustard, the juice of half a lemon, a scrap of Cayenne pepper and a little finely-chopped parsley. Keep this butter very cold until the salmon is ready.
DARNE DE SAUMON BEURRE DE MONTPELLIER
MIDDLE CUT OF SALMON WITH GREEN BUTTER
For this dish, see the recipe for Montpellier butter on page 117. A darne of salmon is a fine thick piece from the middle of the fish, in this case poached and served cold. An alternative to the Montpellier butter, which is something of a labour of love to make, is a simple sauce ravigote, which, while containing similar ingredients, is very quickly made. It lacks the subtlety and elegance of the beautiful green butter, but is still a very attractive sauce in its own right. The old Provençal sauce for salmon on page 123 is another excellent alternative.
Instead of poaching the salmon in water or a court-bouillon it is more satisfactory to wrap it in oiled or buttered foil and bake it in a slow oven as explained in the following recipe for salmon trout. In this way texture, flavour and the natural creaminess of salmon are preserved intact.
A thick piece, weighing 2 to 2 lb., will take 1 hour at Gas No. 1, 290 deg. F.
TRUITE SAUMONÉE AU FOUR
BAKED SALMON TROUT
Few of us now possess fish kettles in which a large whole fish can be poached, but the system of wrapping the fish in greaseproof paper or foil and cooking it in the oven produces, if anything, better results.
Cut a piece of aluminium foil about 6 inches longer than your fish. Butter it copiously, or if the fish is to be served cold, paint it with oil. Lay the fish in the middle, gather up the edges and twist them together, so that no juices can escape. Also twist the two ends very securely taking particular care that the paper touching the tail and the head is well buttered or oiled, as these are the parts which stick easily.
Have your oven already heated for 10 minutes at a very low temperature, Gas No. 1, 290 deg. F. Place your wrapped fish on a baking sheet and leave it severely alone for the whole cooking time—1 hour for a 2 lb. fish. All you have to do when it is cooked is to lay it on the warmed serving dish, unwrap the paper and slide the fish and all its juices off the paper on to the dish. A hot salmon trout does not really need any sauce other than its own juices and a little bowl of fresh melted butter. If it is to be served cold, have with it a sauce verte or Montpellier butter or, best of all, I think, Escoffier’s horseradish and walnut-flavoured sauce, for which the recipe is on page 127. It also makes serving easier if the skin is removed while the fish is still warm; this is not difficult so long as the fish has not been overcooked but, of course, it must be done gently and patiently.
There is one more point.