Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [8]
1 or more hot red chillies
1 good pinch of saffron strands or 1 piece of dried orange peel
salt, freshly ground black pepper
Put the large shellfish and fish debris into a large pot. Crush the garlic with the blade of a knife and add it, with the skin still attached, to the pot. Put in all the other ingredients, plus 4 litres (7 pt) of water. Bring to the boil, then continue to boil steadily but not too vigorously for 30 minutes. Strain through a double layer of muslin. Add seasoning according to your proposed use for the stock.
TWO BATTERS
EGG WHITE BATTER
125 g (4 oz) plain flour
pinch of salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
generous 150 ml (5 fl oz) lukewarm water or beer
white of l large egg
Mix the flour and salt with the oil and the water or beer, beating well together. Cover and leave in the kitchen, not the refrigerator or cold larder, until required. This gives the flour a chance to ferment slightly, which improves the texture of the batter. Just before the batter is required, beat the egg white stiff and fold it in carefully.
WHOLE EGG BATTER
This is a tempura batter from Japan, which is quick and simple to make, and very light; it is particularly good for large prawns.
Break an egg into a measuring jug. Add four times its volume of water, then five times its volume of flour. Whisk well until smooth.
SAVOURY AND OTHER BUTTERS
The underlying principle of northern fish cookery is butter. So long as you have butter and the usual seasonings, you can do without many other things. Butter comes before wine, cream or eggs.
A fresh trout fried in clarified butter is food for the most demanding. So is Dover sole, brushed with melted butter, then grilled and served with maître d’hôtel butter as sauce and seasoning. A cod, salmon or halibut steak baked in well-buttered foil is a delicious thing to eat. And what about the sauces – how many of them begin and end with butter? Can you imagine eating whitebait or smoked salmon without brown bread and butter? What about shrimps potted in mace-flavoured butter? And all the traditional English pastes made from smoked haddock and smoked salmon, bloaters and kippers, pounded up with butter? Think, too, of the things we serve with fish – well-buttered spinach, new potatoes in parsley butter, sorrel or gooseberries melted to a purée in butter, and slices of mushroom stewed in butter. Have you ever tried mussels or oysters baked in garlic butter?
Butter is the flavour one misses most if margarine or some kind of innominate dripping has been used instead, or one of the tasteless oils of modern cookery. The only alternative for frying and grilling is olive oil and occasionally lard or bacon fat. But for all sauces except mayonnaise, vinaigrette and tomato sauce, which do need olive oil, butter is essential.
The best butter to choose is unsalted, preferably from Normandy. Lightly salted butters such as the Danish Lurpak do almost as well, but Normandy butter is best. And the finest comes from Isigny, a small port on the Cherbourg peninsula. This is easy to buy in Britain nowadays; use plenty, and avoid meanness. It is better to buy a cheaper fish than to economize on butter. Our own butters are made from sweet cream (most European butter is prepared from ripened cream), and have a fair amount of salt added to them: for these two reasons they are not as good for savoury butters.
CLARIFIED BUTTER
Small quantities of butter can be clarified and strained into the frying pan for immediate use, but if you cook a lot of vegetable dishes and fish, it is worth making it in quantity. Store it in a covered jar in the refrigerator: it will keep for weeks. The great advantage of clarified butter is that it burns at a higher temperature than unclarified. Any cook will see the advantage of this. It also contributes to a particularly pure butter flavour that enhances the quality of simple dishes.
Cut up two or three packets of butter and bring them to the boil in a heavy pan. Boil for 1 minute, then set aside to cool for 10 minutes. Strain