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Mullet, Red, with Tomato Sauce
Well butter a china fire-proof dish. Lay six red mullets in it, season them with pepper and salt, sprinkle them with chopped parsley, add six table-spoonfuls of tomato sauce, cover with a sheet of oiled paper, and bake half an hour. Serve in the dish in which they are baked.
A plain baked fish dish that needs only two adjustments: the time and the paper.
- The timing is the hingeHalf an hour will dry out a 6-8 oz red mullet completely. At 350-375F, whole fish of that size need roughly 12-18 minutes, until the flesh at the thickest part behind the head parts from the bone.
- No oven temperature is givenThe recipe says nothing about oven heat. A moderate oven, around 350F, suits this dish; the covering paper does the rest.
- Oiled paperA sheet of baking parchment brushed with oil, or foil, laid loosely over the dish. It is there to trap steam and stop the skin colouring, not to seal the dish airtight.
- "China fire-proof dish"An earthenware, stoneware or porcelain gratin dish that goes from oven to table. Any shallow ovenproof baking dish works, and the instruction to serve in it is practical: red mullet break up if lifted twice.
- Red mullet is not grey mulletMullus surmuletus or Mullus barbatus, a small reddish rock fish sold whole, quite unrelated to grey mullet. Ask a fishmonger by name; red snapper or small sea bream are the usual substitutes, though the flavour is not the same.
- The liverRed mullet was traditionally cooked undrawn, or gutted with the liver left in, which is why it was nicknamed the woodcock of the sea. Fish sold cleaned may have the liver removed; if you want it kept, say so when ordering.
- Tomato sauceA cooked, reduced tomato sauce of the kind found elsewhere in this book, not ketchup or passata straight from the bottle. Six tablespoons across six fish is a thin coating, not a bath.
- YieldSix fish, one per person, as a main course with bread or plain potatoes. Halve everything for three.
Red mullet has been prized far out of proportion to its size since antiquity: Roman writers record extravagant prices paid for large specimens, and the fish kept its luxury reputation in Victorian Britain. Its standing rested partly on the custom of cooking it undrawn, the liver being considered the best part, and partly on the way the skin holds its rose colour through cooking. Cassell's treats the fish very plainly. Butter, parsley, a spoonful of tomato sauce and a sheet of oiled paper are almost the whole method, and the paper-covered baking dish resembles cooking the fish en papillote, a technique long associated with red mullet in French kitchens.