Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [145]
TO EAT HOT Fillet the larger fish and put them on to a hot serving platter, surrounded by the aubergine slices. Or arrange on individual plates. Pour a little of the sauce over the aubergine slices, as a seasoning, and round the fish. You can, if you like, turn it into a richer sauce by whisking in butter at the last minute, but to my thinking this spoils the simplicity of the dish. Put a light sprinkle of chopped basil or coriander over the dish.
TO EAT COLD Bring the fish out of the oven when it is barely cooked, since it will continue to cook in its own heat. Let it cool, then fillet the larger fish. Pour the reduced sauce over the hot aubergine slices, then allow them to cool. Serve the two together as above, sprinkled with basil or chervil, or coriander if you are addicted to it (I like it best with hot food, but you may not agree).
Red mullet andalouse
The sauce andalouse*, with its flavouring of sweet peppers, goes well with plainly grilled red mullet. By extension, red peppers on their own, or mixed in with tomato cooked as in the recipe above, show off its flavour, too.
RED SNAPPER see A FEW WORDS ABOUT… RED SNAPPER
RIGG see A FEW WORDS ABOUT… DOGFISH
ROCK TURBOT see A FEW WORDS ABOUT… CATFISH
† SALMON & SALMON TROUT
Salmo salar, Onchorhynchus spp & Salmo trutta
Salmon is, to man at least, the king of the fish. Much of its life history is unknown and mysterious. Its taste is so fastidious that it can only survive in pure waters (the appearance or disappearance of salmon is a barometer of a river’s pollution).
The salmon is one of those anadromous fish, like eel and shad, which spend most of their lives in seawater, yet return to the rivers, mainly to the rivers of their birth, to spawn. And to be caught. The tiny salmon is called a fingerling, then a parr until it leaves the river at anything from one to three years old. After that the salmon are known as smolt. From this point they disappear completely until their return, either a year later as grilse, weight up to 3 kg (6 lb), or up to three years later as large and handsome salmon weighing up to 15 kg (30 lb) or more. The grilse are often of a size to be confused with salmon trout and large brown trout; not that this need bother the cook, as similar recipes are suitable for all three.
The difference in size, and development, and age of the returning fish has puzzled the scientists. Obviously some salmon go much farther away into the Atlantic to feed. But why? And where? One answer to the second question was discovered in the last part of the 1950s. A US nuclear submarine, cruising below the ice between Greenland and Baffin Island, ‘spotted thousands and thousands of fish hanging like silver icicles from the underside of the pack’, feeding on the rich plankton. Luckily no one has yet discovered where the grilse feed, which must obviously be much nearer the coasts of Europe. By the time they do, let us hope there is adequate legislation to preserve them from the intensive greedy fishing which has threatened the survival of salmon off the west of Greenland.
But whether grilse, or larger salmon who have made the long journey from the other side of the Atlantic, most of them return to their native rivers. Exactly how is another mystery. They gather in the waters of the estuary, fine fat fish in prime condition, and make their way upstream, sometimes with those immense leaps that have given the salmon the name of salar, the leaper, Salmo salar.
From the moment they enter the sweet water, they eat nothing until they return to the sea again. Which means, to the cook, that the sooner they are caught the better. A spent kelt which is managing to get back to the sea – many of them die – is a dish for nobody.
The universal feeling in Europe, and perhaps beyond, is that Scottish salmon is the best. Salmon from the Tweed, perhaps. Someone told me that he arrived at a small hotel near Berwick some years ago