Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [10]
MUSTARD BUTTER Cream 125 g (4 oz) unsalted butter. Add 1 tablespoon French mustard (or to taste), then season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Use with herring and mackerel.
ORANGE BUTTER Although this butter can be made with sweet oranges quite successfully, it is best made with Seville oranges. To 125 g (4 oz) unsalted butter, add 4 teaspoons orange juice, 4 teaspoons grated peel, 2 teaspoons of tomato concentrate (or to taste), and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
See individual sections for butters based on the following: Anchovy, Lobster, Prawn & Shrimp, Smoked Salmon.
HOT SAUCES
ELIZA ACTON’S RICH MELTED BUTTER
This is a useful basic sauce for fish and comes from Eliza Acton’s Modern Cookery. Many flavourings can be added to it – hard-boiled egg, lobster, oyster, crab, anchovy essence, some pounded anchovy fillets with mace and cayenne, or shrimps.
1 dessertspoon plain flour
½ saltspoonful salt
300 ml (½ pt) cold water
125–175 g (4–6 oz) butter
‘Mix to a very smooth batter a dessertspoonful of flour, a half-saltspoonful of salt, and half a pint of cold water: put these into a delicately clean saucepan, with from four to six ounces of well-flavoured butter, cut into small bits, and shake the sauce strongly round, almost without cessation, until the ingredients are perfectly blended, and it is on the point of boiling; let it simmer for two or three minutes, and it will be ready for use. The best French cooks recommend its not being allowed to boil, as they say it tastes less of flour if served when it is just at the point of simmering.’
BÉCHAMEL SAUCE
This is the most useful sauce of home cookery. If you have a freezer, make it in quantity from time to time and store it in containers of every size from 3 tablespoons up to 600 ml (1 pt). The recipe following gives 600 ml (1 pt) more or less, depending on how far you reduce it.
600 ml (1 pt) milk
1 large shallot or medium onion, stuck with 2 cloves
1 carrot, quartered
5-cm (2-inch) piece celery stalk
bouquet garni
salt, pepper
60 g (2 oz) butter
60 g (2 oz) plain flour
Bring the milk slowly to the boil with the vegetables, bouquet and seasoning. Leave it over a very low heat to infuse for half an hour; it should not boil, just keep it very hot.
Melt the butter in a heavy pan, stir in the flour and cook to a roux for two minutes, without browning it. Gradually stir in the flavoured milk, through a strainer. Do this off the heat and use a balloon whisk. Return it to the heat, stir and bring to simmering point, then leave it to cook down steadily to the consistency of double cream. Stir occasionally. Making this sauce well can take an hour or even longer. Of course you do not need to stand over it all the time, but you should give it a chance to mature.
QUICK METHOD Make a butter and flour roux as above. Meanwhile bring the milk to the boil, then add it to the roux gradually. Put in the vegetables, bouquet and seasoning and simmer steadily, with the occasional stir, for at least 15 minutes, preferably 25. Strain before serving or storing.
ANISE SAUCE Into the béchamel, stir in Pernod, anisette or pastis Ricard, all aniseed-flavoured, until the taste is delicate but noticeable. This sauce should be served immediately.
SAUCE AURORE It is easy to see how this most beautiful of the béchamel variations was given its name. The flush of colour, from the mixture of ivory béchamel and coral tomato purée, has a Homeric tone of early morning rose. Some recipes are content to achieve this effect with a couple of squirts from a tube of tomato concentrate, but this does not give the right texture at all, or the right delicacy of flavour.
In classic French cookery, sauce aurore partners fine white fish – turbot, sole, monkfish – as well as chicken, and eggs