Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [132]
Pike fishing is again popular in Britain. I read that many pike are caught in a year, some of them over 20 kg (40 lb) in weight. Yet one never sees them for sale, as one does in France. I wonder why? Do pike fishermen treasure them for their own secret enjoyment? Or would it be more accurate to assume that hundreds of these fine fish are thrown back into the water every year?
So you must excuse me if most of the following recipes come from France where pike is one of the more highly-regarded – and expensive – of fish. Do not be chauvinistic in the matter, for all the recipes can be applied with equal felicity to the pike of this country, or to the pike and rather larger muskellunge – or pickerels as both are sometimes called – of Canada and the United States. Muskellunge, and the masquinongy of the specific name, is the Ojibwa for this large pike of North America. It means ugly fish, but French settlers took it to mean masque allongé (which it undoubtedly is) and that did not help the spelling which can be something of a muddle.
A great snag of pike is held to be the odd y-shaped bones. As long as you are forewarned they are not so much of a nuisance, and as the fish gets larger the problem gets less. Both for texture and flavour, this is one of my favourite fish. It is a good market-day in Montoire when I see its unmistakable presence on the fish stall, with the grey and yellow markings and the lengthy nose.
HOW TO CHOOSE AND PREPARE PIKE
If you want a whole fish for baking, consider the size of your oven before you buy. The northern pike is a long fish: American and Canadian cooks would perhaps do better with a middle-cut of muskellunge – being thicker, it will need a longer baking time. The other alternative is to cut the fish in steaks, but then you cannot stuff it. Sometimes cutting the head off is enough.
Because of the slimy film, scaling the fish can be messy. Put it in the bath if it is too long for any of your bowls, and pour a kettle of boiling water over it. Then turn it over and repeat the exercise. The scales should come away fairly easily.
When cleaning the fish, save the liver but not the roe, which can be indigestible. The liver can go into any stuffing, or be added, chopped, to some sauces towards the end of cooking time.
Baking, poaching and – for fillets – frying are all suitable for pike. Suitable sauces go from the richest and most complex to a jug of melted butter and a little bowl of freshly grated horseradish (see the turbot recipe, p. 435).
IZAAK WALTON’S PIKE
Here is the recipe as given by Izaak Walton in The Compleat Angler for cooking pike: ‘This dish of meat is too good for any but anglers or very honest men; and I trust you will prove both, and therefore I have trusted you with the secret.’
In Walton’s day, the pike was cooked on a spit. Inside the fish with the flavouring items there was 500 g (1 lb) of butter and no crumbs, not a stuffing at all but an interior sauce that fell out at the end to mingle with the claret the pike was basted with as it turned before the fire. Today we have to bake the fish, and there is no reason why you shouldn’t reduce the butter to go inside the fish, and add breadcrumbs. Although sweet oranges were beginning to come in from about 1660, the orange used for cooking was the bitter or Seville orange – if you do not have any in the freezer use the juice of 2 sweet oranges and 1 lemon.
First open your Pike at the gills, and if need be, cut also a little slit towards the belly. Out of these take his guts; and keep his liver, which you are to shred very small with thyme, sweet marjoram and a little winter-savoury; to these put some pickled oysters, and some anchovies, two or three; both these last whole, for the anchovies will melt, and the oysters should not; to these you must add also a pound [500 g] of sweet butter, which you are to mix with the