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By Root 909 0

to track down this magnificent fish through another friend, Jack Shiells, the liveliest and most erudite fish purveyor in Billingsgate. They tackled the fish in their own kitchens. Jack Shiells liked the darker part sliced thin in Japanese sashimi style (p. 365). He also approved my sunfish in cream recipe. The Davidson family concluded that the best thing of all was steaks from the upper rear end, grilled, and the shoulder baked in the oven. On no account should the skin be neglected. Alan Davidson also gives a Danish recipe from the writer Mogens Brandt who lives at Skagen where opah is landed occasionally. Slices 1 cm (½ inch) thick are floured and fried with curry powder in butter. Then they go on to a bed of chopped shallots, cooked gently until soft and transparent, surrounded with small peeled tomatoes. Double cream is stirred into the pan juices to make a sauce. Pour it over the fish. Put the whole thing into a low oven for 10 minutes. This is good, and it works well with salmon.

Opah is also very successful when pickled in the Danish – or rather Scandinavian – gravadlax style (p. 310). If you are given to Beef Stroganoff, try making it with opah instead.

POACHED SUNFISH

Although sunfish can be poached in court bouillon of the usual kind, I think it is better to use a veal or chicken stock, sharpened with a spoonful or two of lemon juice or wine vinegar. Plenty of flavour without heaviness is the secret.

Put the piece of fish flat into a pan and cover it generously with the stock. Bring slowly to the boil. After three or four strong, convulsive bubblings, put the lid on and remove the pan from the stove to the larder to cool down. By this time the fish will be perfectly cooked.

Serve it with the kinds of salad appropriate to salmon – cucumber in cream (p. 183), hard-boiled egg, slices of tomato and so on. Plus a large bowl of mayonnaise. Or you could flavour the cooking stock with tarragon, and serve with tarragon-flavoured whipped cream sharpened with lemon juice. A small amount of orange and tomato salad, with black olives, is also very good with sunfish.

Should you want to eat the sunfish hot, leave it to simmer gently until the centre loses all transparency. This takes about 10 minutes, but the time will vary according to the thickness of the fish, and how slowly it came to the boil. Serve with new potatoes turned in parsley butter. Sauces to choose are hollandaise* or Maltese*, sauce aurore* or a cream* or butter* sauce. Again tarragon is a good flavouring.

SCALLOPED SUNFISH

Firm fish can be reheated successfully, provided this is done not too long after the original cooking. One way is to make a creamy sauce and add the fish to it at the last moment like the turbot recipe on p. 436. Another is to construct a piquant gratin with a béchamel-based sauce. The second method is best if you have only a small amount of fish to go round. By using scallop shells or individual pots, you can produce an excellent first course for a dinner party without the idea of left-overs crossing anyone’s mind.

The thing is to flavour the sauce in an appetizingly positive way. Choose an anchovy (p. 49) or Mornay* sauce, for instance, rather than a plain béchamel*, and spice it with French mustard. Sauce aurore* and white wine sauces* can be enriched with grated Parmesan and Gruyère cheese.

Put a layer of whichever sauce you choose into the base of individual ramekins or scallop shells. Then a layer of the flaked fish, then sauce to cover. Cook fine fresh breadcrumbs briefly in melted butter. Cool them and scatter them over the sauce and reheat the whole thing under the grill until bubbling and golden brown.

SUNFISH À LA CRÉOLE

Fish stews need quite a different technique from meat stews. Meat, shin of beef say, or neck of lamb, goes into the oven with the sauce ingredients; they all cook together for several hours. Now with fish, the method must be quite different because even the most solid, meaty-looking piece of tuna needs a comparatively short cooking time. It is one of the advantages of buying fish. So get the