Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [11]
Instead of béchamel sauce, a mornay or velouté sauce can be used.
300 ml (10 fl oz) béchamel sauce
up to 300 ml (10 fl oz) tomato sauce*
60 g (2 oz) butter
Heat the béchamel sauce to boiling point, then stir in the tomato sauce gradually, stopping when you get to the flavour and colour you prefer. So much depends on the original quality of the tomatoes that one cannot be precise. Bring to the boil again, remove from the heat and whisk in the butter in little bits. Check the seasoning.
Serve with turbot baked in milk, sole, a tailpiece of fresh cod or monkfish – any firm white fish of quality.
SAUCE CHIVRY I like herb sauces. They mean summer when so many fish are at their best – and look their best, served with a pale green sauce. I like walking down the garden – the genius of man having placed the herb patch as far away from the kitchen as possible, on the principle, I suppose, that exercise is good for cooks – past catalpa and hibiscus, to find chives, tarragon, and parsley, which flourish at the foot of a most entangling rose.
Recipes for herb sauces and butters usually glide over the main pitfall. They state 1 tablespoon, or 3 sprigs, with authority. What this apparently firm direction means is ‘a handful, more or less, as opposed to a sackful’. Reflect on this: last year we split a bushy tarragon plant in two, half for Wiltshire, half for our tiny garden in the Bas-Vendômois. In France eight or nine leaves will permeate a chicken: here I use three times as many and still don’t quite achieve the same result. There is a veil between us and the sun in England, a lack of clarity of light. To be fair, I should remark that a Vendômois friend grows basil in a successful quantity, but it hasn’t the flavour of Ligurian or Provençal basil – again the sun. So be guided by the season, and by your own taste and climate. Be prepared to use far more than I – or anyone else – suggest.
tarragon, chives, chervil, parsley, watercress
1 glass dry white wine
450 ml (15 fl oz) béchamel sauce
150 ml (5 fl oz) cream
90 g (3 oz) spinach (1 handful)
60 g (2 oz) butter
Chop equal quantities of the first four herbs, with half the amount of watercress (which has a strong flavour, so must not be allowed to be too dominant). Put half into a small pan with the wine, and boil down until there is about a tablespoon or two of liquid left. Add to the béchamel sauce with the cream, and leave to simmer. Cook the spinach with the remaining herbs. Press out all liquid, and combine this greenery with the butter. When you are ready to serve the sauce, stir in the spinach butter gradually until the flavour seems right to you: don’t let the sauce boil while you do this, or the flavour of the butter will be spoilt.
A good sauce with poached salmon or bass, or with any really fresh fish of a non-oily kind.
NOTE Keep this sauce for summer. Don’t be tempted to try it with dried herbs.
CREAM SAUCE This expression is sometimes used as a polite way of saying béchamel, but it should be béchamel sauce with a generous amount of cream added. If this makes the sauce too thin, boil it down. Add a final knob of butter before serving and a squeeze of lemon juice if you like.
CURRY SAUCE When making the béchamel, cook a medium-sized chopped onion slowly in the butter, and add 2 teaspoons of curry powder with the flour. Finish in the usual way. It is much improved by the addition of 150 ml (5 fl oz) cream, beaten with an egg yolk, particularly if it is being served with scallops. Remember not to let the sauce boil once the cream and egg yolk have been added. This is a true French sauce, with the curry powder being used as a spicing ingredient; it has no real relationship to Indian cooking.
MORNAY AND MUSTARD SAUCES See the velouté variations on p. 22 and apply the same seasoning to a béchamel base.
MUSHROOM SAUCE Either cook 175 g (6 oz) mushrooms in 60 g (2 oz) butter and add them to a béchamel sauce; or cook the mushrooms in the butter for the sauce with a tiny chopped