Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [21]
CURRY MAYONNAISE This sauce, which is simple to make, goes well with the strong flavours of fish like pickled herrings. Add 1 teaspoon of finely grated onion and 1 teaspoon of curry powder or paste to the 2 egg yolks of the basic mayonnaise ingredients (which, in this case, may be made with corn or groundnut oil) and finish in the usual way.
In Scandinavia, a curry mayonnaise made with curry powder and an equal amount of chopped chutney is served with prawn dishes.
GASTRONOME MAYONNAISE Mix 150 ml (5 fl oz) mayonnaise with 100 ml (3½ fl oz) soured cream, 1 level tablespoon each of tomato paste and chopped tarragon, plus 1 teaspoonful tarragon vinegar. Serve this with cold fish, especially turbot and sole. This recipe comes from Bengt Petersen’s Delicious Fish Dishes.
GREEN MAYONNAISE Every cookery book gives sauce rémoulade, sauce tartare, sauce ravigote – all versions of mayonnaise. These sauces use herbs and sharp pickles, such as gherkins, anchovies or capers, with the occasional spice of some raw, chopped onion or shallot; the kind of sauce that each cook can alter to her own taste.
Here is a less commonly encountered herb mayonnaise, a green sauce of distinction. As a rule it is served with salmon, salmon trout and shellfish, but it goes with cold white fish too, turbot or John Dory, for instance.
According to the resources of your garden or neighbourhood, assemble one or other of these herb mixtures:
either
15 g (½ oz) each parsley, chervil, tarragon, chives, sorrel, salad burnet
30 g (1 oz) spinach and watercress leaves
or
30 g (1 oz) each parsley, tarragon, chervil, chives
45 g (1½ oz) each spinach and watercress leaves
Make your basic mayonnaise. Blanch the herbs for 2 minutes in boiling water. Pour out into a sieve and run under the cold tap. Leave to drain. Press the last moisture out, and pound to a paste either with pestle and mortar, or in a liquidizer with a little of the mayonnaise. Mix into the mayonnaise just before serving.
JELLIED MAYONNAISE FOR CHAUDFROID Instead of coating a cold, poached fish with aspic jelly*, jellied mayonnaise may be used instead. The mayonnaise is made in the usual way, using 300 ml (10 fl oz) of oil and 2–3 egg yolks. Fold in gently 150 ml (5 fl oz) of firm aspic jelly, or 150 ml (5 fl oz) water in which 8 g (¼ oz) gelatine has been dissolved, while the gelatine is on the point of setting but still liquid. Use at once.
LIGHT MAYONNAISE Add 60–90 ml (2–3 fl oz) soured cream to mayonnaise at the end of making it. Chopped green herbs, especially chives, are a good addition.
MALTESE MAYONNAISE Grate the rind of an orange, preferably a blood orange, into the bowl, before putting in the egg yolks with 1 tablespoon of lemon juice. Flavour at the end with the juice from the orange, and a little more lemon juice instead of vinegar, if extra sharpness is required. Good with cold white fish.
MUSTARD AND DILL MAYONNAISE The proportions for this superb Scandinavian sauce can be varied to suit your taste. The egg yolk may be omitted, in which case the sauce is a variant of vinaigrette. Serve with pickled salmon, trout or herring, boiled crab or lobster.
2 tablespoons French or German mustard
1 tablespoon white sugar
1 large egg yolk
150 ml (5 fl oz) corn or groundnut oil
2 tablespoons wine vinegar
1 generous teaspoon dill weed
salt, white pepper
Beat the first three ingredients together, and finish the mayonnaise in the usual way.
PAPRIKA MAYONNAISE Flavour a basic mayonnaise with 1 level tablespoon of tomato concentrate, 1 tablespoon chilli sauce and a finely shredded red pepper.
PERNOD REMOULADE A piquant sauce good with many of the round fish – grilled grey mullet, sea bass, John Dory, sea bream – and with mackerel.
basic mayonnaise
1 dessertspoon chopped sweet-sour pickled cucumber
1 dessertspoon each chopped parsley and tarragon
about 1 tablespoon Pernod
Fold the other ingredients into the basic mayonnaise, using the above measurements as a guide only.
SAUCE RAVIGOTE Chop