Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [159]
For adding to tarts, or making small quantities of salmon rillettes, buy the odd bits and pieces and chunks left over from slicing a whole salmon side. When I first wrote Fish Cookery, these off-cuts were almost cheap. Now everyone is wise to this particular dodge, and prices have gone up accordingly. A pity, since they are ideal for giving a lift to cold fresh salmon when you are making a mousse (see above), or for pounding with butter or cream or mixing into mayonnaise, to enliven sandwiches, pancakes, baked potatoes and salads of poached white fish. You can make a mild salmon paste by pounding 175 g (6 oz) smoked salmon and adding it to 125 g (4 oz) ricotta cheese and 150 ml (5 fl oz) thick whipped cream: season with pepper and lemon juice. One of Albert Roux’s most famous dishes at the Gavroche is a mousse of smoked salmon with cream and fish aspic wrapped in an envelope of smoked salmon like a little cushion, Papillote Claudine.
There is no end to the ingenuity of it all. But when all is said and done, it is not the ingenuity of chefs that is important, but the skill of the smoker – and the fun of finding the smoked salmon that you like best.
SMOKED SALMON BUTTER
Pound 125 g (4 oz) smoked salmon trimmings with 125 g (4 oz) unsalted butter.
SALMON RILLETTES
Rillettes is the name given to potted pork in France. Chunks of meat are cooked slowly for a long time, then reduced to a thready mass and stored in stoneware pots under a covering of lard. Every household in Touraine, Anjou and Brittany has rillettes in the refrigerator for snacks and easy first courses. The name has been taken up by chefs working in the new style and applied to salmon, potted salmon in effect, although long cooking and long preservation is the last thing they have in mind. Here are two versions:
ANNE WILLAN
Serves 8
Poach a 500 g (1 lb) piece of salmon in a white wine fumet*, without added salt. Cool and shred with a fork, discarding skin and bone first.
Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a sauté pan with a tablespoon of water. Put in a piece of smoked salmon, weighing 375 g (12 oz). Cover and cook for 3 minutes, or until no longer transparent. Cool and shred.
Mix the salmons and beat in 350 g (11 oz) unsalted butter, which has been softened and creamed. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Pack into eight small terrines or one large one. Serve as a first course, well chilled, with toast or bread.
This potted salmon, which is very close to the English style of potted fish, can be kept for up to a week in the refrigerator under a layer of clarified butter.
PAUL MINCHELLI
Serves 4–6
Remove the skin and bone from a 400 g (14 oz) piece of fresh salmon. Slice and chop it coarsely. Do the same thing with a similar sized piece of smoked salmon. Remove the fine skin from 175 g (6 oz) smoked cod’s roe, mash the roe and add a couple of tablespoons of crème fraîche, 2 teaspoons of cognac and 2 teaspoons green peppercorns. Mix everything together, sharpening to taste with lime juice. Serve chilled with toast, with an apéritif or as a first course.
SALMON TROUT see SALMON
SAND-EEL see A FEW WORDS ABOUT… SAND-EEL
SAND-LANCE see A FEW WORDS ABOUT… SAND-EEL
† SARDINES & PILCHARDS
Sardina pilchardus
It irritates me to see fresh sardines on sale presented as an exotic fish (at an exotic price) for the travelled and knowing customer, when they are really no more than infant pilchards. It irritates me even more to see pilchards in tomato sauce, can upon can of this rather coarse confection, in the shops and never a fresh pilchard at the fishmonger’s. In 1985, I think, there was a brief hooray, pilchards were on the increase off the Cornish coast, but I suppose the canners or the Cornish got in first. The little paragraph that had appeared in The Guardian was filed, and that was the last we saw of pilchards.
Sardines are too young and tender to swim up into our bracing waters. Although