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Matelote of Fresh Herring
Take some herring, half of which have soft and half hard roes; gut them through the gill opening. Cut off the heads and tails and divide each herring lengthwise into two fillets, removing the bones. Put a small quantity of butter in a fryingpan, and enough flour to nearly absorb it, then add a little chopped parsley and shallots; lay the herrings in the pan, sprinkle over them three wineglassfuls of red wine and cook over a hot fire. Put them on a hot dish and lay over some small onions and fried mushrooms, garnish the dish with fried breadcrumbs and serve hot.
A matelote is a fish stew in wine, here compressed into a fast pan dish. The whole thing hinges on the wine reducing into the flour-and-butter base while the fillets are barely cooked through.
- WineglassfulA wineglass in this period is about 2 fl oz, so three is roughly 3/4 cup of red wine. Use something dry and unoaked; the volume is small and it reduces to a sauce rather than a poaching liquid.
- TimingHerring fillets need 2 to 3 minutes total in a hot pan, skin side first. Cooked longer they shed their fat, break apart, and taste of nothing but the wine. Lift them out and let the sauce finish reducing on its own if it is still thin.
- Butter and flourThis is a small blond roux made in the pan, not a thickener stirred in later. Cook the flour in the butter for a minute before the parsley and shallots go in, or the sauce tastes pasty.
- Soft and hard roesSoft roe is milt, hard roe is eggs. Gutting through the gill opening is how you keep both inside the fish; if your fishmonger has already cleaned the herring, buy roes separately and fry them in butter as a garnish.
- Small onionsPearl or small pickling onions, glazed in butter and a little water until tender, and cooked before the fish rather than in the pan with it. Same for the mushrooms.
- Fried breadcrumbsCoarse dry crumbs fried in butter until deep gold, scattered around the edge of the dish. They are there for texture against the soft fish and go soggy within a few minutes, so add them at the table.
- SourcingFresh herring is seasonal and often sold whole and unsplit. Small mackerel take to this treatment much the same way; smoked or pickled herring does not.
- YieldTwo herring, giving four fillets, per person as a main course. Use a wide pan so the fillets sit in one layer, or cook in batches.
A matelote is a boatman's dish -- from matelot, sailor -- and in French cooking it usually means freshwater fish, classically eel, stewed in red wine with onions and mushrooms. Applying the name to sea herring is a bit of a liberty. Oscar Tschirky's book, assembled from the Waldorf's working repertoire at the turn of the twentieth century, is full of these compressed hotel versions of French country dishes: the garnish of glazed onions, mushrooms and fried crumbs is pure matelote convention, but the stewpot has become a sauté pan that can be fired off to order. Herring itself was generally reckoned one of the cheaper fish on the Atlantic coast then, which makes its appearance under a French name on a luxury hotel's menu a fair summary of how that kitchen worked.