Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [235]
3 stalks celery, chopped
175 g (6 oz) chopped green pepper
60 g (2 oz) butter
2 cloves
grated rind of the lemon
60 g (2 oz) chopped parsley
½ teaspoon each rosemary and thyme
1 bay leaf
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 × 400 g (14-oz) cans tomatoes
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
Tabasco
salt, freshly ground black pepper, sugar
Make the sauce first, taking trouble to get the reduction and seasonings to your taste before baking the fish. It is an elaborated version of the créole sauce*.
Put onion, celery and pepper into a frying pan with the butter. Cook gently until soft. Add cloves, lemon rind and herbs, including the garlic. Quickly drain the tomatoes and add them (keep the juice for another recipe). Leave this mixture to boil down busily for about 20 minutes, or until it has lost its wateriness and has become a liquid purée. Stir in the Worcestershire sauce, then add the rest of the seasonings to taste.
Sprinkle the fish with seasoned flour and place them in an ovenproof baking dish. Arrange slices of lemon on top, two to each fish, and pour the sauce round and between them.
Bake in a moderate oven (gas 4, 180°C/350°F) for about 20 minutes until the fish is done. Baste occasionally.
NOTE One large red snapper can be used instead of six little ones; it will take longer to cook: 35–45 minutes.
VARIATION Some recipes suggest making the sauce above in half-quantity, and adding enough breadcrumbs and egg to bind it to a stuffing. Chopped shrimps and prawns are sometimes mixed in as well. Filled with this mixture, the fish are then baked in the juice from the tomatoes, plus a little water and lemon juice, or simply in a well-buttered dish.
† SAND-EEL, SAND-LANCE Ammodytes spp.
Sand-eels and sand-lances look like miniature eels, long and silvery and darting – but this is where the resemblance stops. The flavour is pleasant rather than distinguished. The flesh is firm and sweet, but without the rich delicacy of eel.
Équilles and lançons are more popular in France than sand-eels and sand-lances are here or in America. We often see them at our weekly markets in the Bas-Vendômois, especially at the equinox when tides are full – ‘à la Saint-Denis, on pêche l’équille d’assis’, around 9 October, which is the fête of France’s patron Saint Denis, you can catch sand-eels without budging, according to fishermen in Normandy. In nineteenth-century Britain they provided a lively holiday occupation, as they still do in France today: ‘When it is discovered that a shoal of sand-eels have hidden themselves in the sand’ – this is at low tide – ‘sea-side visitors should sally out, armed with spades, shovels, rakes and forks, and dig them out. When extricated from the sand-beds, the fish leap about with singular agility, and afford much sport.’ So said Frank Buckland in his History of British Fishes (1880). The professionals, whether or not they have to budge, use nets, and catch the fish at sea.
The great pleasure of these fish is to eat them crisply fried. Some French cooks soak them in milk for half an hour after cutting off the heads and cleaning them. They are then dried, floured and deep-fried for 4 minutes, and served immediately with parsley, lemon wedges, bread and white wine. You can also fry them in clarified butter or olive oil, but the temperature has to be lower which means the fish will be less crisp.
They are also an excellent addition to a mixed bag of small fish for a Fritto misto di mare, Italian style.
SEA-URCHINS Strongylocentrus droebachiensis
‘Sea-urchins (there are several edible varieties) are a menace to bathers on the shore of the Mediterranean, for they cluster by the hundred in shallow waters, hidden in the rocks, and anyone who has ever trodden on a sea-urchin with a bare foot knows how painful and tedious a business it is to remove their sharp little spines from the skin. They are, however, delicious to eat for those who like food redolent of the sea, iodine, and salt. They are served cut in half, and the coral flesh