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Blackfish, Saute, Fines Herbes
Scale, trim fins and wipe a three-pound fresh blackfish. Season all around with a teaspoon salt and a half teaspoon white pepper. Lightly baste with a little milk, then roll in flour. Heat two tablespoons melted butter in a frying pan, add fish and nicely brown ten minutes on each side. Set in oven fifteen minutes, remove, dress on a dish. Add half ounce butter to pan with half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley one branch chopped chervil, chopped leaves from a branch of tarragon, then toss on fire until a light brown, squeeze in juice of half a sound lemon, toss a little, pour over the fish and serve.
A whole pan-fried fish finished in the oven and sauced with browned butter and fines herbes. The hinge is the butter at the end: it should go nut-brown and no further, since the lemon juice goes in immediately after and stops it.
- What blackfish isOn the American Atlantic coast this means tautog, a firm white-fleshed wrasse still sold whole in Northeast markets. Any firm, non-flaky white fish of similar size works — black sea bass, striped bass, porgy — but avoid delicate fillets, which will not survive twenty minutes of pan work.
- "Baste with a little milk"This means moisten the seasoned fish with milk so the flour adheres. A shallow dish of milk and a quick dip is the practical reading; drain it before flouring so the coating does not turn to paste.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A moderate-to-hot oven, 375-400F, will finish a 3 lb fish that is already browned on both sides.
- Reconsider the timingsTen minutes a side in the pan plus fifteen in the oven badly overcooks a 3 lb fish by current standards. Four to six minutes a side to set the crust, then eight to twelve minutes in the oven, is closer; go by an internal temperature of 145F at the thickest point behind the head, or until the flesh parts cleanly from the backbone.
- Half ounce butterOne tablespoon. Two tablespoons of melted butter for frying a whole 3 lb fish is also sparse — expect to add more, or use a mix of butter and a neutral oil so the milk solids do not blacken during the long browning.
- The fines herbesA branch of chervil and the leaves of a branch of tarragon come to roughly a teaspoon of each, chopped. Chervil is the awkward one: it is rarely stocked and loses everything when dried, so use fresh flat parsley plus a little extra tarragon rather than substituting dried.
- "A sound lemon"Simply a firm, unblemished one; a quality descriptor, not a variety. Add the juice off the heat or the moment the butter colours, and pour over at once while it is still foaming.
- YieldA 3 lb whole fish serves perhaps two to four, depending on portion size, once the head and frame are accounted for.
Blackfish, or tautog, was a staple of New York and New England fish markets in the nineteenth century, cheap, plentiful and prized for flesh firm enough to hold up to frying whole — exactly the qualities this treatment relies on. The finish is straight classical French: fines herbes, the quartet of parsley, chervil, tarragon and chives, tossed into browning butter and sharpened with lemon, a sauce more usually seen on sole or trout. Pairing a local market fish with a Continental sauce is characteristic of American hotel and restaurant cooking of the period, where French technique was applied to whatever came off the boats that morning.