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By Root 932 0

and divide between the mackerel. Add the cream (s) to the gooseberries remaining, season with a little sugar and add some pepper if you like.

Grill the mackerel or bake them uncovered in a hot oven. Reheat the sauce, beating in the last of the butter. Serve with the mackerel, and plenty of wholemeal bread.

VARIATION Currants or cranberries or rhubarb could be used instead of gooseberries.

MAQUEREAU AU VIN BLANC

This is a delicious first course dish which can be prepared up to eight days in advance, and kept in the refrigerator. If you take care over cutting the vegetables, it can look most appetizing. Serve it with unsalted butter and wholemeal or rye bread, with Muscadet to drink.

Serves 6–12

6 herrings, cleaned

1 level teaspoon aniseed or pickling spice

1 fresh red hot chilli, seeded

1 bay leaf

salt

court bouillon* with white wine

Put the fish into a pan so that they fit closely, head to tail. Scatter over them the spices, chilli, bay leaf and salt. Pour on the court bouillon with its vegetables. Bring slowly to the boil, let it bubble twice vigorously, then cover and remove from the heat.

By the time the fish has cooled to tepid, it will be cooked. Remove the skin and bone, so that you have twelve nice looking fillets. Put them in a dish, with the red chilli cut into strips, 1 or 2 slices of carrot from the bouillon, and 1 bay leaf. Season if necessary.

Taste the court bouillon. It needs to be strongly flavoured, so reduce by boiling it down if necessary. When cool, strain it over the fish to cover it. Put film across the dish and refrigerate for at least 2 days.

Pour off most of the liquid before serving the mackerel, so that the dish does not look sloppy.

NOTE Herring can be treated in the same way, or pilchards and large sardines. The recipe is the French equivalent of English soused herring and mackerel, but the flavour is finer because white wine is used instead of vinegar. A good dry cider can be used instead of wine.

MACKEREL WITH PEARS, PORT AND GINGER

This is a recipe adapted from one in The Encyclopaedia of Fish Cookery, by A. J. McClane.

Serves 6

6 fillets of Spanish or cero mackerel or 6 whole mackerel, cleaned, slashed

salt, pepper

6fine pears

pared rind and juice of 1 small lemon

4 tablespoons caster sugar

175 ml (6 fl oz) port

3 drained knobs of preserved ginger

375 ml (12 fl oz) soured cream

watercress salad with a light vinaigrette

Season the fish with salt and pepper. Peel, quarter and core the pears, dropping them into water with half the lemon juice.

Put 2 teaspoons of lemon juice, a wide strip of lemon rind, the sugar, port and 450 ml (15 fl oz) water into a pan. Stir until the sugar dissolves, then simmer for 5 minutes. Drain and then poach the pears in this syrup until tender, adding the ginger at the same time. Scoop out the pears and ginger to a dish. Reduce the cooking liquor to a fairly thick syrup and pour over the fruit.

Grill the mackerel in the usual way.

Put the soured cream into a bowl to serve as a sauce. Place the mackerel on warm plates, arranging the pears down one side with a very little of their syrup and the watercress salad on the other.

VARIATION If you wish to make a nut or seed oil vinaigrette for the watercress, toast some of the appropriate nuts or seeds and scatter them over the pears and mackerel discreetly.

MAKO see SHARKS

MONKFISH OR ANGLER-FISH

Lophius piscatorius

The great fish apart – by which I mean sole, lobster, turbot, eel – my own favourite both to cook and eat is monkfish, or angler-fish. Its beautiful sweet flavour and succulent firmness of flesh have led some writers to compare it with lobster – not really fair, I think, to either, but it gives a hint of the monkfish’s virtues.

Although a fair weight is landed in Britain each year, and although it is a common enough fish round our coasts, monkfish was not always easy to buy until recent years. Now, thankfully, it is available almost everywhere, and is found on the menus of most good restaurants.