Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [109]
LANGOUSTINES À L’ÉCOSSAISE
If you buy the langoustines in their shells, you will need about 1½ kg (3 lb). If they are actually alive, you should plunge them into boiling, salted water, and cook them for 10–15 minutes once the water has come back to the boil. Shell them when cool, and set the tails aside.
If the langoustines are already shelled, 750 g (1½ lb) should be enough. You will also need:
Serves 6
60 g (2 oz) butter
4 tablespoons whisky
SAUCE
3 large onions, chopped
1 large clove garlic, chopped
2 tablespoons oil
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon plain flour
150 ml (5 fl oz) dry white wine
150 ml (5 fl oz) fish fumet or light meat stock
150 ml (5 fl oz) double cream
salt, pepper
First make the sauce by cooking the onion and garlic gently in the oil and butter, until soft but not brown. Stir in the flour, then moisten with wine, fumet or stock, and cream. Simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, longer if you like. Season.
Reheat the langoustine tails in the 60 g (2 oz) butter. Warm the whisky, set it alight and pour it over them, turning them about in the flames until they die down. Pour on the sauce. Bring to the boil. Pour into the centre of a ring of boiled rice and serve immediately.
NOTE The flour may be omitted, but flame the onions with 3 or 4 tablespoons of whisky instead, before adding the various liquid ingredients. Reduce by boiling until the sauce is of good consistency and taste.
† MACKEREL, SPANISH MACKEREL, CERO & KING MACKEREL
Scomber scombrus & Scomberomorus spp.
In the last sixteen years in Britain, we have seen the fall of the herring and the rise of the mackerel, which appear now in – it seems – unending shoals from Cornwall to Ullapool. One of the strangest, most eerie sights I ever saw was coming over the brow of the pass down to Loch Broom, all peaceful in the pale autumn light, and seeing far below us ships stretching to the horizon. The farther you looked, the larger they became against all the rules of perspective. It looked like a scene from some wartime newsreel of the fleet gathering before an attack. The reason for this activity, and for the many languages you hear across the Fair-Isle jerseys in Ullapool shops, is mackerel. The huge ships to sea were Russian klondykers, curing and canning non-stop we were told, and sometimes they came from Japan! If ever I revise this book again round about the year 2000 AD, I wonder if Ullapool will have sunk back into its one-storey quiet again as the herring ports of East Scotland did in the late 1970s.
Mackerel has made its way with difficulty. Older people refuse to eat it unless they can see it pretty well taken off the boat. Without freshness, it is nothing. However if the catch is properly iced from the moment it is landed or within an hour or two, according to A.J. McClane whose authority is the Fisheries Research Board of Canada, ‘the eating quality of mackerel has been maintained for nineteen days’. It must be this improvement that accounts for the increasing success of mackerel at the fishmongers’.
The other thing mackerel needs is a sharp or positive flavour to balance the richness of the slightly pink flesh. This has been such a cliché of the kitchen over centuries that, in France, a gooseberry is distinguished from other currants by the name of groseille à maquereau (though a French cook these days is more likely to use sorrel or mustard; only in Normandy have I found a modern recipe that partners the two). Alan Davidson suggests a cranberry or rhubarb sauce, which have a similar effect of acid contrast. So, too, would red and white currants. I have also included a recipe for grilled mackerel with pears cooked in port with fresh ginger.
These svelte and beautiful fish, that winter in the cold depths of