Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [30]
Sprinkle the cut sides of the tomatoes with a little salt and drain them in a colander.
Rub the salad bowl with the cut clove of garlic, then discard it. Salt the pieces of egg lightly. Arrange the vegetables in the bowl, and put the tomatoes with them. On top, scatter the eggs, anchovy or tuna and olives. Pour over about 4 tablespoons of olive oil and tear the basil leaves over everything. Pepper well and chill for about half an hour.
Salade niçoise is served as a first course very often, or as lunch with plenty of bread. If you are going on a picnic, slice a shallow round loaf of bread across, remove most of the crumb and brush it with olive oil vinaigrette. Pack it with the salad ingredients, wrap it in cling film and chill under a light weight. This wonderful snack is known as pan bagna.
SCOTCH WOODCOCK
I am not keen on names which give an affected impression of the reality – rock turbot and rock salmon are two flagrant examples, however hallowed they may be by antique regional use. Scotch woodcock is another. In extenuation, I suppose that woodcock has become as legendary as the phoenix, except to millionaires and game-keepers: one can hardly be angry at a comparison one is never likely to be able to make.
This recipe comes from that wonderful book The Scots Kitchen by F. Marian McNeill: ‘Take six small rounds of buttered toast, spread them with anchovy paste, arrange on a dish and keep hot. Melt two tablespoons of butter in a saucepan, put in three tablespoons of cream and the raw yolks of three eggs, and stir over the fire until the mixture is a creamy mass.’ (Don’t boil, or you will have scrambled or curdled eggs.) ‘Add a little finely-chopped parsley and a dash of cayenne. Heap on the rounds of toast and serve very hot.’ I suggest you use anchovy butter instead of anchovy paste on buttered toast – see P. 49.
Mrs Beeton suggests using 150 ml (5 fl oz) cream instead of butter and cream. In either case, double cream gives the best flavour and consistency.
ANGLER-FISH see MONKFISH
ARGENTINE see A FEW WORDS ABOUT… SMELT
BLUEFISH & POMPANO
Pomatomus saltatrix & Trachinotus carolinus
In his North Atlantic Seafood, Alan Davidson joins these two fish together in one section although they are in fact of different species. The gracefully shaped bluefish, long, with a blue-green shine on its grey body, comes in to the Atlantic coast of America by the million every summer. It is a most ferocious animal – ‘an animated chopping machine’ – of carnivorous and wasteful habits. Its progress through the sea is marked by the bloody remains of other fish which had the misfortune to cross its path.
It is quite a good eating fish, not very firm but fairly oily. This means it grills well, and needs rather positive flavours to go with it. The recipes for Herring baked with cucumber on p. 183 and Red snapper créole on p. 479 can both be adapted to bluefish.
The pompano is one of America’s most famous delicacies. It is also caught in the Mediterranean (this is the Trachinotus ovatus, or the round pompano), but the place to eat it is undeniably at Antoine’s restaurant in New Orleans. As with bluefish, it is good baked or grilled with cucumber.
BLUEFISH BUSTANOBY
Many herring and mackerel recipes are suitable for bluefish. It is rich enough to take the sharpness of gooseberries, or the contrasting smoked flavour of bacon. In this recipe from the Long Island Sea Food Cook Book, by J. George Frederick, smoked ox tongue is used.
Serves 6
1½ kg (3 lb) bluefish
3 tablespoons mushroom juice
½ glass Chablis or other dry white wine
pinch of salt, pepper
3 tablespoons tomato sauce
1 tablespoon cooked smoked beef tongue, finely minced
Clean and store the bluefish. Dry it and place in a buttered ovenproof dish. Add mushroom juice (obtained by stewing mushrooms gently in butter so that they exude their moisture), the wine and seasoning. Cover with buttered paper and put into a fairly hot oven (gas 5, 190 °C/375 °F) for half an hour. Pour off the juices into a pan, add the remaining