Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [212]
Nowadays, looking round grand houses and coming at last to the kitchens, we stand and stare at the diamond-shaped copper turbot kettles artistically nailed to the wall. Many people in the party (sometimes including the guide) have no idea of the use to which some enormous pans were put. How could they, rarely having seen a lusty, knobble-skinned turbot on the fishmonger’s counter?
It is this lumpy dark skin – the white skinned side is smooth – that gives the turbot its name: -bot, as also in halibut, means flounder and tur- thorny. That is something of an exaggeration, but if you run your fingers over the humps and lumps you will find the sensation quite unlike any other you have experienced; it is even a little disquieting. This dark side is turned uppermost on the bed of the sea, so that the turbot melts into the background. Cooks usually cut through it to the backbone so that the white side remains smooth and uncracked, but some nineteenth-century epicures considered that the flesh under the dark side tasted better and ordered it that side up with no cuts made. Another point of turbot gastronomy is the fins which are considered a delicacy. Maria Edgeworth, the novelist, ‘relates an anecdote of a Bishop – and we doubt not that he came to be an Archbishop – who, descending to his kitchen to superintend the dressing of a turbot, and finding that his cook had stupidly cut away the fins, set about sewing them on again with his own Episcopal fingers. This dignitary knew the value of turbot.’
Another man who knew the value of turbot was Brillat-Savarin. The problem he was faced with was more fundamental. He arrived at a cousin’s country house in Villecresnes, to the south-east of Paris, round about seven one evening, to find the family in an uproar over the turbot. It was grand and beautiful and plump, and they had nothing to cook it in. The husband had an axe in his hand determined to cut it in two. The wife was distraught.
‘That turbot will remain in one piece!’ said Brillat-Savarin. Everybody calmed down, and followed him from room to room as he searched for the answer. And this is what he did. He cut the wicker base from a basket that held fifty bottles of wine and covered it with a layer of bulbes, which I take to be onions and leeks, and herbes de haut goût. On went the turbot, with more bulbes and herbes on top. This was set over the household copper, half full of boiling water. A tub was turned upside-down over the fish, and sand was heaped round to prevent steam escaping. The turbot was, of course, perfection. The party was delighted, especially the curé who rolled his eyes to the ceiling as a sign of ecstasy. Everyone agreed that turbot steamed in such fragrance was far better than turbot which had been cooked in boiling water in a turbotière.
HOW TO CHOOSE AND PREPARE TURBOT
Look out for the small chicken turbot which weigh about 1 kg (2 lb). They make a handsome dish for a dinner party and are not difficult to cook. Use a large glazed earthenware dish of the kind imported from France to cook them in (unless, of course, you are the lucky possessor of a turbot kettle). Another way is to wrap the fish in foil and cook it on a baking sheet in the oven in its own steam, at gas 7–8, 220–230°C (425–450°F): butter the foil, include appropriate aromatics and make a tightly closed but baggy parcel. Check the condition of the fish at 15 minutes: assuming the chicken turbot to have been 2½ cm (1 inch) thick, it should be ready.
Since whiteness is supposed to be one of the virtues of turbot, it is usually poached in milk and water with slices of lemon, or in water with lemon alone. To keep the white-skinned side unblemished, the dark side is cut through, down to and along the central bone. The fins are left in place, and the head. Cooks had problems with vast turbot, even with a turbot kettle of the right size, and all kinds of stratagems were required to prevent the skin cracking and the flesh breaking which would spoil the presentation.