Planked Fish
Prepare as for "Broiled fish." Heat plank, brush with drippings and dust with salt and pepper. Place fish, skin side down, doubling thin part so that it will not burn. The oven must be hot before putting in plank; cook 20 minutes; reduce to moderate heat and leave in oven 10 to 20 minutes longer. Melt 1 tablespoon butter, add 1 teaspoon salt, 1/8 teaspoon pepper, and pour over fish. Garnish with potato roses, lemon and parsley and serve on the plank.
A short set of directions that assumes you own a seasoned hardwood plank and know what "prepare as for broiled fish" means. Both need filling in, and the timings belong to a large split fish rather than a supermarket fillet.
- The hinge: the plank must be hot and oiled firstA cold or dry plank steams the skin and the fish sticks fast. Heat the bare plank in the oven until it is too hot to touch comfortably, brush it with fat, season it, and only then lay the fish on.
- What the plank should beUntreated hardwood -- oak, maple, ash -- an inch or more thick, never softwood, never construction lumber, plywood or anything varnished or glued. The thin cedar planks sold for grilling are meant to be soaked and smoked, and are liable to char badly over a bake of this length.
- Oven numbers"Hot" in books of this period usually means roughly 400-450F; "moderate" roughly 350-375F. Do the first 20 minutes at the high heat to set the surface, then drop the dial for the remainder.
- "Prepare as for Broiled fish"That means a fish split down the back and opened flat, or a thick side with the skin on -- cleaned, wiped dry, and seasoned. The 30 to 40 minutes total implies something substantial, most likely a whole split fish of several pounds rather than a single portion.
- Timing for a modern filletA 1-inch fillet is done in 12 to 15 minutes at 450F and would be dry ruin after 40. Cook to 145F at the thickest point, or until the flesh just parts at the bone, and ignore the clock if the fish is smaller than the recipe assumes.
- DrippingsRendered fat saved from roasting, commonly beef or bacon fat. Clarified butter or a neutral oil with a high smoke point does the same job; whole butter will scorch at this heat.
- Potato rosesMost likely a duchesse-type mixture -- riced potato bound with egg yolk and butter -- piped in rosettes around the edge of the plank and browned. The recipe treats them as garnish, so add them late enough to colour without drying.
- ServingThe plank comes to the table with the fish on it, so set it on a tray or a folded cloth. Expect the exposed wood to darken permanently; a planking board is a one-purpose object.
Planking is one of the few American cooking methods often traced to indigenous practice: fish lashed or propped on a hardwood slab beside an open fire is recorded among Northeastern and Great Lakes peoples, though the accounts we have come from colonial-era and later observation, and shad planked before a wood fire became a fixture of Chesapeake and Potomac spring festivities, where planked-shad dinners are still held. By the time this book was written the technique had moved indoors and upmarket -- restaurants and hotel dining rooms sent out planked whitefish, shad and steak on scorched oak boards, and the plank itself, ringed with piped potato, was the presentation. Household cookbooks carried the method for cooks who had bought a plank on the strength of that restaurant fashion, which is why the instructions here are so brief: the reader is assumed to want the effect, not an explanation.