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Blackfish En Matelote
Procure a three-and-a-half-pound fresh blackfish, scale, cut off the head, fins and tail. Cut into inch pieces, place in a saucepan with a tablespoon salt, half teaspoon pepper, clove garlic, sliced onion and two branches parsley. Cover the fish with two-thirds water and one-third claret, place cover on and let gently boil for thirty minutes. Lift up fish with skimmer and place in another saucepan. Knead a half ounce butter with an ounce flour, add little by little to the sauce, continually mixing while adding it, then let boil in a frying pan with a tablespoon melted butter, sprinkle a teaspoon of powdered sugar over and gently brown until a nice golden colour and thoroughly soft. Drain and add to the fish, with six cooked shrimps and six canned mushrooms, strain the fish sauce through a cheesecloth into the pan, add a teaspoon anchovy essence and the juice of a quarter lemon; carefully mix, cook for five minutes, dress on a hot dish, sprinkle a little chopped parsley over and serve.
A French-style red-wine fish stew built on the American blackfish (tautog), from an era when that fish was common on East Coast slabs. The method is sound; the quantities and one or two of the ingredients need translating.
- The fishBlackfish here means tautog, a firm-fleshed Atlantic wrasse still landed but rarely sold outside the Northeast. Monkfish, striped bass, halibut cheeks or any dense white fish that holds together in liquid will behave the same way.
- Bones make the sauceThe head, fins and tail are cut away but nothing says to discard them. Simmer them in the cooking liquid alongside the fish, or make a quick stock first, or the claret broth will be thin. Strain them out with the cheesecloth at the end.
- Thirty minutes is far too longInch pieces of firm white fish are done in six to eight minutes at a bare simmer. The half-hour reflects a period taste for fish cooked to the point of falling apart. Lift the fish out when it is just opaque and let the liquid keep reducing on its own if you want more concentration.
- "Gently boil" means simmerAn actual boil will shred the pieces before the sauce has any body. Hold the pan at a lazy tremble.
- ClaretNineteenth-century English and American usage for dry red Bordeaux. Any dry, moderately tannic red works; avoid anything oaky or sweet, which turns bitter as the sauce reduces.
- The beurre mani",Half an ounce butter kneaded with an ounce of flour is a stiff paste, roughly one tablespoon butter to a scant quarter cup flour. Whisk it in pinch by pinch off the boil, then return to heat; added in a lump it goes lumpy and no amount of beating recovers it.
- Anchovy essenceA Victorian bottled condiment of salted anchovy, vinegar and spice. Anchovy paste thinned with a few drops of vinegar, or a teaspoon of fish sauce, gives the same salty depth. Taste before adding more salt — a tablespoon has already gone into the poaching liquid.
- Canned mushroomsStandard garnish at the time and part of the flavour, but small button mushrooms sauteed in butter are better and cost nothing extra in effort.
- YieldA three-and-a-half-pound whole fish yields roughly a pound to a pound and a half of trimmed flesh (the pieces here are left on the bone) — four modest servings with bread and the sauce.
Matelote is the boatman's stew, from French matelot, sailor: freshwater or estuary fish simmered in wine with onions, mushrooms and a butter-and-flour liaison, thickened at the last moment and often served with croutons. In France it was usually made with eel, carp or pike from rivers such as the Loire and the Marne; American cookbooks transplanted the formula onto whatever the local coast supplied. Blackfish, or tautog, was one of those — a cheap, firm, unglamorous inshore fish that took kindly to a long braise and a strong sauce, and it appears in New York cookery of the period. The pairing of red wine with fish, which later fell out of fashion, was entirely unremarkable then, and the anchovy essence and canned mushrooms show a kitchen stocked with bottled and tinned flavourings.