Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [27]
If you don’t have the appropriate pots, you might do better to have one central fondue pot over a nightlight, with everyone dipping into it. It is more difficult, then, to manage the eggs, but they are hardly necessary if the bagna cauda is providing the first course of a meal, rather than the meal itself.
PAUL BAILEY’S ANCHOVY SALAD
This anchovy salad of Paul Bailey’s has a dark rich appearance, and a clean savoury taste, that make it an ideal start to a meal. Guests look furtively round the table, serving spoon in hand, as they count heads, trying to work out just how much they can decently help themselves to. Mainly Paul uses dried tomatoes put up in olive oil by the Italian firm of Carapelli: they are particularly soft and luscious. Dried tomatoes, sold by weight, can also be used: if they are very dry, soak them in a little very hot water before putting them into the salad.
Serves 6–8
4 large red peppers, roasted or grilled and skinned
5 small tins anchovy fillets in olive oil, 50 g (1¾ oz) size
about ⅓ jar dried tomatoes
pepper, basil leaves, olive oil
Make this salad several hours before the meal, if possible. This gives everything a chance to settle down well together.
Cut the peppers into strips, discarding the seeds. Split the anchovy fillets longways. Arrange both in a shallow bowl with the tomatoes, add pepper to each layer and display the various pieces to make an appetizing streaky effect of colour. Scatter in some torn up basil leaves. Pour in the oil out of the anchovy tins, plus enough extra olive oil to come almost to the top. Just before serving, scatter the top with torn basil leaves and extra coarsely-ground pepper.
Serve with a coarse country bread without too positive a flavour.
CANAPÉS À LA CRÈME
Serves 1
1 round of bread
butter
3–4 anchovy fillets
1 tablespoon clotted cream
Take the round of bread from a slice 1¼ cm (½ inch) thick, with a large scone cutter. Fry it pale brown in butter (clarified is best). Quickly arrange anchovies on top and place on a very very hot dish. Cover with clotted cream and serve immediately. The contrast between hot crisp bread, sharp anchovy, and cold grainy cream is excellent – whipped cream does not give the same result at all.
CROSTINI ALLA PROVATURA
An Italian rarebit, improved by anchovies – spectacularly improved.
Provatura was a cheese made from buffalo’s milk which has, according to Elizabeth David’s Italian Food, almost disappeared from the market. Even in Rome, this dish is now usually made with mozzarella cheese. Other substitutes are bel paese, Gruyère, and provolone – originally another buffalo milk cheese, though in fact it is now usually made from cow’s milk, like mozzarella, and is much less tasty in consequence.
The general point of the recipe is to improve cheese-on-toast with a sauce of anchovies melted in butter. Mrs David’s recipe suggests putting slices of cheese – nice thick slices – on rounds of French bread. These are then arranged, slightly overlapping each other, in an ovenproof dish, and put into a fairly hot oven until the bread is crisp and the cheese melted but not runny. For the sauce for 6 to 8 crostini, soak 4 or 5 fillets of anchovies in warm water for 10 minutes. Heat them in 60 g (2 oz) of butter, having chopped them up first. Pour over the crostini and serve immediately.
Ada Boni, this century’s Mrs Beeton of Italian cookery, has alternating chunks of cheese and bread on skewers, cooked over a wood fire or in a fairly hot oven (gas 6, 200°C/400°F). The sauce is similar, but the proportion of butter to anchovies is higher.
Incidentally, this sauce is excellent with veal or pork tenderloin escalopes, or on vegetables, or slightly dull white fish. Remember that leg of veal