"Monica's" Way to Cook Fish
There are stock fish sometimes called tautog, Monica cooks them thus: Put the fish into a pan with a little butter. Let them fry until pretty nearly cooked, then put in a little wine, pepper and salt, and let them stew. Use no water. A little more wine, pepper and salt to make a good gravy—so says "Monica."
A minimalist wine-braise for firm fish — no water at all, just butter, wine and seasoning.
- What is “tautog”?Tautog, or blackfish, is a firm, sweet Atlantic fish; the recipe’s “stock fish” is a loose local name here, not the dried cod that word usually means.
- Wine, not waterThe whole method: fry the fish in butter till nearly done, then stew it in wine with pepper and salt — the wine reduces into the gravy.
- Choose a firm fishAny firm white fish (blackfish, snapper, grouper) holds up to this treatment; delicate flesh would fall apart.
- Building the gravyAdd “a little more wine” toward the end to loosen and enrich the pan sauce; a dry white works well.
- Gentle heat“Let them stew” means a low simmer after the initial fry — enough to finish the fish and marry the sauce, not to boil it hard.
Tautog earns its odd spelling from the Narragansett people of New England, whose plural word tautauog the colonists borrowed whole. Also called blackfish, the tautog is a stocky, structure-loving fish of the Atlantic coast, prized in the nineteenth century for firm, sweet flesh that stands up to exactly this kind of robust cooking. It was a special favorite around New York and the Mid-Atlantic, caught over rocky bottoms and old wrecks. “Monica,” whoever she was, knew her fish: only a firm-fleshed one could be fried and then stewed in wine without falling to pieces.
From page 28 of the 1904 edition.
Original page from the book
