Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [171]
Scallops, especially the tiny bay scallops, are magnificent. Sole and the better flounders are an obvious choice, so is sea bass or striped bass or grouper or pompano. Wild trout do well, and so do small whiting. In Central America, oily fish of the mackerel tribe (p. 221) find themselves in cebiche.
The basic proportions are:
500 g (1 lb) scallops or filleted, skinned fish or a mixture
juice of 6–7 limes
salt
2 bay leaves
1 hot red chilli or chilli flakes
1 medium onion, sliced
Cut the fish into neat strips or pieces, or, if the scallops are large, slice them across into 2 or 3 discs. Put them in a refrigerator box, fitting closely. Remove the fine green peel from the limes with a zester and keep for a final decoration. Squeeze the limes. Sprinkle the fish with salt, tuck in the bay leaves, put the chilli or chilli flakes on top with the onion. Pour over the lime juice. Cover and leave in the refrigerator until the fish is completely opaque, turning it once. This can be as little as 2 hours or as much as 5, depending on the thickness of the pieces.
The seviche can now be arranged as simply or grandly as the occasion demands, once the fish is drained:
(1) since the dish has Polynesian origins, try the Tahiti style of cover ing it with about 300 ml (10 fl oz) coconut milk, mixed with a finely chopped clove of garlic and a couple of chopped spring onions.
(2) arrange it with some greenery, tomato and purple onion rings, with a few olives. Since a bitter contrast is a good idea, use curly endive, or mix rocket in with other sweeter greenery, or scatter the whole thing with chopped green coriander leaves.
Instead of olives, try sliced canned jalapeño chillis, or some strips of roasted, skinned sweet pepper.
(3) arrange more formally on a large dish with contrasting soft and crisp vegetables; avocados dressed with an olive oil and lime juice vinaigrette (those tiny avocados you sometimes see are ideal); slices of different coloured sweet peppers whether raw or roasted and skinned; different coloured sweetcorn, either the very small ones, or larger ones cooked and sliced across; celery or fennel; sweet potato, cooked and sliced; hard-boiled egg; a few slices of orange; sliced jalapeño chillis or scraps of hotter chillis.
Do not use all these things at once, or the fish will be overwhelmed.
SEA BASS, SEA PERCH & GROUPERS
Percichthyidae & Serranidae spp.
To walk into the fishmonger’s and see a tray of sea bass is a beautiful sight. Their scales, arranged in exact gradation of colour, shine with silver and dark grey markings. Their shape is slim and elegant. I find that the white flesh can be a little on the soft side, and for this reason prefer them baked or cooked in a crisp style, rather than poached in white wine or court bouillon. The bass, or spigola, is a great speciality of Naples. When very fresh, it is simply stuffed with garlic and a chopping of herbs, brushed with olive oil, sprinkled with crumbs, and baked in the oven. Olive oil and lemon juice are used for basting. For a bass which is not so newly arrived from the water, an interesting stuffing should be added to the simple formula. Alice B. Toklas’s recipe for Carp with chestnuts, on p. 70, can be adapted to it most successfully, but be sure to leave the chestnuts in a crumbly state; if reduced to a purée they make the mixture too heavy.
Many fish recipes – recipes for sole (Florentine or meunière for the smaller fish), recipes for salmon, bream, John Dory and so on – can be used for bass, although, as I’ve observed, a little vigour is preferable to a bland mildness.
The bass we normally see is only one of a huge family of fish, the Serranidae or sea perches. It includes the groupers, which unfortunately have a marked preference for the warm seas of the Caribbean and Mediterranean.