Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [14]
salt, pepper
Put the first six ingredients into a large pan and boil steadily for half an hour. Strain off and measure the liquid. If necessary boil down again to 450 ml (15 fl oz). Use this stock, and the cream, to make a velouté sauce in the usual way. Let it mature and thicken by slow simmering.
CREAM SAUCES MADE WITH CREAM AND BUTTER
Twenty or so years ago, one used to come across people who would throw up their hands in horror at the thought of cream and butter sauces. Nowadays, crème fraîche has changed all that – although one would wish it were a little more readily available. Otherwise, you can use half soured, half double cream.
SAUCE À LA CRÈME NORMANDE
This wonderful sauce is the simplest I know. Once it was made on both sides of the Channel (there are recipes for it in eighteenth-century English cookery books); now you find it nowhere but in Normandy or under Norman influence. Serve it with salmon and salmon trout, or with wild river trout if you can get it. Use it as a binding sauce for mushroom fricassee – or to reheat a little left-over cooked turbot or salmon.
A chopping of fines herbes is the usual flavouring, but nutmeg could be used instead. If you confine yourself to tarragon, with a little chervil, it makes an admirable sauce for braised or poached chicken.
For about 300 ml (10 fl oz) cut up 175 g (6 oz) unsalted butter and melt it gently in a 21-cm (8½-inch), heavy frying pan, preferably a non-stick one. Pour in 200 ml (7 fl oz) crème fraîche or half soured and half double cream. Stir all the time with a wooden spoon as the sauce bubbles down to a rich thickness. Do not let it gallop but bubble it steadily to the consistency you need, which will be thicker for a binding sauce than for pouring.
Should the sauce show a tendency to oiliness, which can happen if you work too fast or, I suspect, if the cream is not the freshest and best, rapidly stir in a tablespoon of very cold water, off the heat. Season to taste.
SAUCE VERTE DE CHAUSEY
The Îles Chausey, several miles out from Granville in Normandy, once provided granite for the quays and cathedrals and monasteries of that coast, including Mont St Michel. Whether this sauce was made there, I have not been able to discover. Perhaps it was named for its dark, speckled-green colour, rather the effect of granite. The mustard makes it a good sauce for gurnard, garfish, herring, mackerel, saithe or huss. If you cut down the mustard, or increase the cream and butter, it goes well with salmon. It is a great improver of the cod family.
Makes about 250 ml (8 fl oz)
30 g (1 oz) finely chopped shallots
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 tablespoons chopped parsley, plus extra, to taste
125 g (4 oz) unsalted butter
1 scant tablespoon Dijon mustard
dash of white wine vinegar
125 ml (4 fl oz) crème fraîche or half soured, half double cream
1 tablespoon chopped tarragon
salt, pepper
Cook the shallots and garlic with the parsley very slowly in half the butter in a smallish non-stick frying pan or sauté pan. When they are tender add the rest of the butter and then the mustard and vinegar. Stir until the mixture bubbles again, and pour in the crème fraîche or cream. Keep stirring and let the sauce thicken a little. Off the heat, add the chopped tarragon, extra parsley, salt and pepper.
You can serve the sauce as it is, but I prefer to smooth it further in the blender. A few short bursts is enough, leaving plenty of speckled interest. Reheat the sauce gently. This sauce is served warm rather than boiling-hot.
EGG AND BUTTER SAUCES
SAUCE HOLLANDAISE AND DERIVATIVES
I can never decide which gives me greater pleasure – making a hollandaise sauce, which is in effect a hot mayonnaise, or eating it. Its origins are elusive but one thing is certain: it is not Dutch at all, but French. Sometimes it is called sauce Isigny, a genuflection to the hometown of France’s best butter.
3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
3 tablespoons water
12 white peppercorns
3 large egg