French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [180]
Sea-bass (loup de mer) is excellent cooked in the same way.
LA TRUITE
TROUT
‘Never with butter, never with almonds; that is not cooking, it is packaging. (It is, of course, understood that my recipes are not for all comers.) With the exception of truite au bleu nobody knows how to cook a trout. It is the most unfortunate fish on earth. If an atomic bomb destroyed the world tomorrow, the human race would vanish without ever having known the taste of a trout. Of course, I am no more talking of tank-bred trout than I would give a recipe for cooking a dog or a cat.
‘So, a fine fat, or several fine fat, trout from the river, fresh (that goes without saying), gutted, scaled, etc.
‘A frying-pan previously rinsed out with flaming wine vinegar. Make this empty pan very hot. Into this very hot pan, a mixture of water and virgin olive oil (a claret glass of olive oil to 3 of water). Let it boil fast. Add a bouquet of thyme and nothing else whatever except 2 crushed juniper berries and some pepper.
‘Reduce the mixture, and when there is nothing but a centimetre of fast boiling liquid left in the pan, put your fine fat, or several fine fat, trout gently into the liquid. Do not turn the fish over. Cover the pan and boil 1 minute, then 3 minutes very gently, and serve.’
JEAN GIONO: in the number of La France à Table devoted to Haute Provence
Jean Giono is surely right about trout with almonds—it is a dish which seems to me rather pointless; but I would not condemn the cooking of trout with butter in quite so sweeping a way. As far as tank or fish farm trout are concerned, and one rarely gets any other kind either in French or English restaurants or fishmongers’ shops, cooking them à la meunière (see the recipe for rougets à la meunière on page 291) or grilling them are about the two best systems. But I must admit I would never go out of my way either to buy these fish or to order them in a restaurant.
LES TRUITES À LA MANIÈRE ALSACIENNE
TROUT IN COURT-BOUILLON
‘A trout, when it is a fairly large one, I prefer cooked au bleu, with the sole accompaniment of a few little curls of butter; but when chance—a happy chance—has filled your fishing basket with only a score or so of small trout, you can make an exquisite dish of them by cooking them in a court-bouillon in which white wine, butter, onion, salt, pepper, parsley, a clove and a little good stock have prepared, for your little fishes, a marvellously aromatic bath.
‘Then, when they are cooked, which does not take very long, you simply sprinkle them with butter in which you have cooked a few breadcrumbs until they are golden.
‘Here is an exquisite dish, even a naïf dish, but one in every way worthy of the learned gastronome.’
GASTON THIERRY: La Table, 1932
Les Coquillages et les Crustacés
Shell-fish and crustacea
COQUILLES ST. JACQUES À LA BRETONNE
SCALLOPS WITH BUTTER AND BREADCRUMBS
Allow 2, 3 or 4 scallops per person, according to size. Remove the little strip of skin and thick muscle on the outside of the white part. Rinse the white part and the red coral and drain well. Cut into small cubes. Allow 1 oz. of butter and 1 heaped tablespoon of very fine, pale golden breadcrumbs per person. Butter the deep scallop shells with half the butter, then add half the breadcrumbs. Lay the scallops on top. Season them lightly with salt and pepper. Cover with the rest of the breadcrumbs, and the remaining butter cut in very small dice. Cook uncovered in a very low oven for 20 minutes. By the time the scallops are done the breadcrumbs have soaked up all the butter; they should be golden and just beginning to turn crisp, but still moist. Obviously, the breadcrumbs soak up a lot of butter, and if too little has been used, the dish will be dry. For those who like it, a scrap of finely-chopped garlic or shallot and a little parsley can be mixed in with the breadcrumbs.
COQUILLES ST. JACQUES AU VIN BLANC
SCALLOPS