Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [201]
Ladle the soup into bowls and add a spoonful of smetana or soured cream with a sprinkling of dill.
SUNFISH see A FEW WORDS ABOUT… OPAH
† SWORDFISH
Xiphias gladius
Swordfish are found all over the world, but usually in warmer waters than ours. Americans are not short of swordfish, neither are Spaniards, Italians, Greeks and other dwellers to the east. Occasionally they swim to our shores, but normally prefer the Mediterranean which is where you should look out for them on menus and market stalls.
In October of 1970, there was excitement on the Atlantic coast of France because the fishermen of La Rochelle had encountered a huge shoal of swordfish. The trawlers concerned, the Vieux marin and the Claude Jean Robert from the Île d’Yeu, usually brought in no more than two or three tons of fish. This catch weighed twenty tons, and was uncommon enough to justify two or three paragraphs in the French papers. I asked our weekly fishmonger at Montoire market about it. She explained that the firm-fleshed espadon was a great treat – the shoal would bring much profitable joy to the fishmongers and merchants of La Rochelle. She obviously envied them. So did I, as swordfish was something I had never cooked.
There was no mention in the paper of any damage caused by this tonnage of swift and powerful fish. I had hoped for some modern record echoing the old reports that a swordfish strikes with the ‘accumulated force of fifteen double-headed hammers’, and can pierce through 50 cm (20 inches) of timber, even oak.
If you go down to the foot of Italy, to the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Straits of Messina, you soon discover that things do not always go the swordfishes’ way. When they go down to the African coast every year to spawn, the sharp-eyed fishermen are on the look-out and are prepared for the hunt. The strange boats they use can be seen at Bagnara, say, or Scilla. They have tall thin metal look-out towers, ladderlike in their silhouette, and long metal platforms that jetty out over the sea like a murderous arm. That and the ferocious tuna fishing are sights of antique barbarity and blood that one is hypocritically happy not to see. The August and September traveller sees swordfish for ever on the menu, and groans as it is so often overcooked.
Like tuna, or porbeagle and other sharks, swordfish is sold in steaks and intended, mostly, for the grill. First it will be marinaded in olive oil with garlic and parsley and lemon, then turned over charcoal and served with lemon. In Honey from a Weed Patience Gray describes a Catalan roasting technique, by which the marinaded fish is slapped down directly on the hot plate of a kitchen range. After a while it is turned and ‘roasted’ on the other side, then it comes to table with a pounded romesco sauce*. Often swordfish will be sealed in hot oil, then stewed gently in tomato with piquant additions such as capers, olives and anchovies. Alan Davidson describes a most odd-sounding sandwich of a pie in his Mediterranean Seafood. For years I jibbed at the sweet pastry – it is a recipe that takes one back in mind to the Arab occupation of Sicily, like the beccafico sardines on p. 329 – then took courage when swordfish began to appear regularly at Waitrose and tried it. It is most delicious and not odd at all, well worth trying.
HOW TO PREPARE SWORDFISH
Swordfish is sold in convenient steaks. Nothing much to do, unless you need to remove the bone and leathery skin for the recipe you are following. If the steaks are to be grilled or ‘roasted’, no need to bother.
Serve it simply with lemon quarters, or the Sicilian Salmoriglio which Ada Boni recommends: this is made by beating together, in the top of a double boiler, 250 ml (8 fl oz) of olive oil, the juice of 2 lemons and a couple of tablespoons of water. Flavour it with a generous tablespoon