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4 tablespoons brandy

4 tablespoons port

175 ml (6 fl oz) light beef or veal or chicken stock

125 ml (4 fl oz) crème fraîche or double cream

Salt the fish steaks. Crush the peppercorns coarsely, using an electric mill, and mix them with the flour. Dry the fish and press the pepper mixture into both sides of each steak. Brown them lightly in the oil plus half the butter, on both sides. Flame them with brandy and deglaze with port, then the stock. Remove the fish when it is just cooked, and keep warm in a low oven.

Boil down the pan juices slightly, stir in the cream and continue to reduce until the sauce is rich and thick. Check the saltiness, put in the remaining butter in bits and strain round the fish. Serve very hot, on hot plates, with small boiled potatoes.

Some people like to eat the peppery coating, but others will prefer to remove most of it to one side.

This is one of the best fish recipes.

TURBOT SALAD

Cut or flake cooked turbot neatly and put it into a dish. Make an olive oil and lemon vinaigrette*, flavoured with chopped parsley, tarragon or chervil, and chives, a few capers, and 2–3 chopped anchovy fillets. Pour over the fish and leave it for at least 4 hours. Scatter with chopped hard-boiled egg, or put half-slices of hard-boiled egg round the edge.

Shellfish can be added to extend the salad, mussels, or shrimps, or crab. Mayonnaise* and similar oil-based sauces or sauces of the rouille* or romesco* type are also a good idea with cold turbot.

TURBOT VALLÉE D’AUGE

It may seem odd to cook fish with fruit, but it does enchance the natural sweetness of the fish. And apple also makes a good marriage with onion flavourings such as leek. In Normandy they might well use Calville or reinette apples: here you might choose a Charles Ross or a Newton Wonder, varieties which lie between the dessert and cooker categories, or an aromatic Cox. This recipe is particularly worth trying with brill as well as turbot.

Serves 4

white part of 1 large leek, trimmed, sliced

2 apples, peeled, cored, sliced

salt, pepper

1¼–1½ kg (2½-3 lb) turbot

300 ml (10 fl oz) dry cider or white wine

300 ml (10 fl oz) fish stock*

175 ml (6 fl oz) crème fraîche or double cream

butter, about 125 g (4 oz)

250 g (8 oz) small mushrooms

lemon juice

Heat the oven to gas 7, 220°C (425°F).

Choose a dish into which the turbot will fit closely and butter it. Scatter over it the leek and apple. Season lightly. Score the dark side of the turbot along the lateral line, through to the bone and put it into the dish, dark side down. Pour on the cider or wine and enough stock barely to cover the fish: lay a butter paper on top.

Bring to simmering point on top of the stove, using a heat-diffuser mat if need be. Then transfer to the oven and leave until the turbot is just cooked – start checking after 20 minutes. Remove the fish to a hot serving plate and keep warm.

Strain the cooking liquor into a shallow pan, pressing the juices through. Add any stock you did not use. Reduce by half. Whisk in the cream, reduce again, and finish with 4–6 tablespoons of butter. Season to taste. Meanwhile cook the mushrooms in a little butter, squeezing a little lemon juice over them to keep them white. Season them.

Put the mushrooms round the turbot, and serve the sauce in a separate sauceboat.

TURBOT WITH LOBSTER OR SHRIMP SAUCE

Here is one of the great dishes of English cookery, one that nobody ever sneered at. It is an example of the dictum that the finer the fish, the less you should do to it. To keep their end up, chefs devised a way of decorating it with an outline scallop of lobster eggs – which is fun to do, but unnecessary unless you have to prove genius in lieu of hard work.

If lobster is too difficult to find, and shrimp seems too ordinary; try an oyster sauce instead, p. 263. If shellfish is your allergy, remember that Thackeray who knew a great deal about food liked turbot best with plain melted butter.

Serves 4

1 chicken turbot, weighing about 1½ kg (3 lb)