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Bluefish Etuve with Tomatoes
Neatly trim and remove bones from a three-pound fresh bluefish and place in a lightly buttered baking dish. Season with a half teaspoon each salt and curry powder and two saltspoons pepper. Cut into slices four ripe, fresh, medium tomatoes, place them on top and around the fish and season with a half teaspoon salt, three saltspoons sugar and two saltspoons white pepper. Mix on a plate one ounce butter with a half teaspoon anchovy paste, three very finely chopped shallots, half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley and the juice of half a lemon. Equally divide the mixture over the fish and tomatoes, cover the fish with a buttered paper and set in the oven for forty-five minutes. Remove, lift up the paper and serve in the same dish.
A straightforward French étuvée — fish cooked covered in its own juices with tomato — written for a cook who already knew what oven to use and how long fish really takes. Two things need adjusting before this works today.
- Cut the timeForty-five minutes will turn a boned three-pound bluefish to cotton. A fillet or split fish of that weight is done in 25 to 30 minutes at 350F; check at 20 minutes and pull it when the flesh just flakes and reads about 130-135F at the thickest point. The tomatoes will have slumped and given up their liquid by then.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; ovens of the period were rarely fitted with reliable thermostats and heat was judged by feel. A moderate oven, around 350F, suits this dish; the buttered paper and the tomato juices keep it gentle.
- SaltspoonA quarter teaspoon. So two saltspoons of pepper is a half teaspoon, and three saltspoons of sugar is three-quarters of a teaspoon — the sugar is there to correct acidic tomatoes, not to sweeten.
- Buttered paperA cartouche: parchment cut to the size of the dish, buttered on the underside, laid directly on the fish. It traps steam without sealing, which is the whole point of an étuvée. Foil will serve, though it lies heavier on the fish.
- Anchovy pasteStill sold in tubes. Half a teaspoon in an ounce of butter is a seasoning, not a flavour — it deepens the fish rather than making it taste of anchovy. Mash it thoroughly into softened butter or it will sit in salty pockets.
- BluefishAn oily, strongly flavoured Atlantic fish that must be very fresh; its dark bloodline turns rank quickly and is worth trimming away. Mackerel, Spanish mackerel or striped bass all suit the treatment if bluefish is not at hand.
- TomatoesFour medium tomatoes sliced over a three-pound fish will release a good deal of water. Seed them, or salt the slices for ten minutes and drain, if you want the sauce to stay concentrated rather than thin out in the dish.
- YieldA three-pound fish, boned, serves about four as a main course. Serve straight from the baking dish as directed — the collected juices are the sauce, and there is no other.
Étuvé (or à l'étuvée) is the French term for cooking in a closed vessel with very little liquid, so that the ingredients steam in what they release themselves; the buttered paper here does the work of a lid. Laying a French method over a thoroughly local fish is characteristic of American restaurant cooking of the period. Bluefish ran in great numbers off the Atlantic coast and was cheap and plentiful in East Coast markets — oily, assertive, and prone to tasting muddy if handled carelessly. The curry powder, anchovy paste and lemon can all be read as meeting a strong fish with equally strong seasoning.