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salt, pepper

Mix ingredients to make the marinade, and steep the fish fillets in it for at least an hour, turning them occasionally. Drain and dry. Dip in flour, egg and breadcrumbs. Fry in 90 g (3 oz) butter, and all the oil, until nicely browned. Remove to a warm serving dish. Add the rest of the butter and the chopped sage to the pan. Bring to the boil, stirring vigorously, pour over the fish, and serve at once.

NOTE If you cannot get perch, try this recipe with grayling.

ZANDER WITH A PIQUANT SAUCE

Zander, also known as pike-perch, is caught by fishermen in East Anglian waterways. Sometimes, Ann Jarman, who runs the Old Fire Engine House restaurant at Ely, manages to get hold of one, and this is how she cooks it. She also treats pike in the same way. The ideal, if you have a fish kettle, is a zander weighing 1½–2 kg (3–4 lb) but the recipe can be adapted to steaks from a larger fish.

Serves 6–8

butter

carrot and shallot or onion (see recipe)

zander, scaled and cleaned

dry white wine (see recipe)

bouquet of 2 bay leaves, large sprig parsley

STOCK

trimmings of the zander

2 onions, chopped

1 carrot, chopped

bouquet of 2 bay leaves, parsley and, if possible, dill

salt, pepper

SAUCE

125 g (4 oz) unsalted butter

2 medium onions, chopped

2 tablespoons plain flour

4 ripe tomatoes, skinned, chopped or 2 teaspoons tomato concentrate

1 scant tablespoon tarragon vinegar

3–4 pickled gherkins, sliced

Dijon mustard to taste

3 tablespoons chopped parsley

salt, pepper

First make the stock. Put the ingredients into a pan with water to cover generously. Simmer for 40 minutes, covered; strain, taste and add extra seasoning.

To cook the fish, butter a pot or fish kettle generously. Cover the base with chopped carrot and shallot or onion and lay the fish on this bed. Pour in dry white wine to come 2 cm (¾ inch) up the pan, then enough of the stock to bring the liquid level two-thirds of the way up the fish and the bouquet. Should you be short on stock, add other fish stock or water. Dot the top of the fish with little knobs of butter.

Preheat the oven to gas 5–6, 190–200°C (375–400°F), unless the fish kettle is too large to go into it, in which case you will have to simmer the fish on top of the stove.

Cover the kettle or pot with foil and the lid. Give it 25–35 minutes in the oven, or a slightly shorter time if you are cooking steaks of zander, or simmering the kettle on top of the stove.

The point is to catch the fish when it comes away from the bone. Baste it after 10–15 minutes and check up on its progress. Remove it to a serving dish, cover with the foil or butter papers, and keep the dish warm while you complete the sauce.

Make a roux for the sauce while the fish cooks. Melt half the butter and cook the onion in it until soft and yellow. Stir in the flour and cook for a minute or so. The roux should be loose. Set it aside until the fish is cooked.

Strain the cooking liquor from the fish to a shallow pan. Taste and reduce it until you have about 750 ml (1¼ pt). Reheat the roux and add this liquor to make a smooth sauce. Put in the tomato and vinegar. Boil hard to concentrate the flavour. Finally add the gherkins, and mustard to taste, whisk in the rest of the butter and the parsley. Check for salt and pepper.

PICKEREL see PIKE

† PIKE & MUSKELLUNGE or PICKEREL

Esox lucius & E. masquinongy

The long-snouted, tyrannical pike is the hero of one of the best chapters in The Compleat Angler. Izaak Walton obviously enjoyed the prolonged game of wits involved in catching it. He comments on the age that some pikes live to and observes that this makes them expensive to maintain as it means ‘the death of so many other fish, even those of their own kind; which has made him by some writers to be called the tyrant of the rivers, or the fresh-water wolf, by reason of his bold, greedy, devouring disposition’. He related a story that a girl in Poland had her foot bitten by a pike as she was