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Boned Smelts, Meuniere
Thoroughly wipe twelve good-sized, fresh smelts, split them open through the bellies, remove the spinal bones. Season with teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Lightly dip in cold milk, then roll them in flour. Heat two tablespoons melted butter in frying pan, place in smelts one beside another and fry for three minutes on each side. Take them up, dress on a hot dish, squeeze the juice of a sound lemon over, sprinkle a half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley over them. Add half an ounce butter to the pan, shuffle the pan on the fire until the butter attains a nice brown colour, then pour it over the smelts and serve.
Sunday, Second Week of September
A classic à la meunière treatment, and the method is sound as written. The only real risks are overcrowding the pan and letting the finishing butter go past brown.
- The hinge: two buttersThe butter you fry in and the butter you finish with are added at different stages. The recipe simply adds the fresh half ounce (1 tablespoon) to the same pan; since the frying butter will be spent and speckled by the time the fish is done, pouring it off first will give you a cleaner nut-brown finish rather than a burnt one.
- "Shuffle the pan"Swirl it continuously over the heat. Beurre noisette turns from hazelnut to acrid black in a matter of seconds, so pull it the moment it smells like toasted nuts and pour it straight over the fish.
- Half an ounce butterAbout 1 tablespoon. The two tablespoons of frying butter is scant for twelve fish in one pan; three to four is more realistic, or fry in two batches.
- Boning smeltsSplit through the belly, open the fish flat, and lift the backbone out from the tail end with your thumbnail or the point of a knife — the pin bones in smelt are soft enough to eat. Heads may be left on or removed as you like.
- Milk and flourDip and drain, then flour and shake off the surplus immediately before frying. Floured fish left standing goes gummy and will not crisp.
- Pan heat and timingThree minutes a side suits the "good-sized" smelts called for here over medium-high heat; smaller fish need closer to two, and the flesh should be opaque at the thickest point. Leave space between them or they steam instead of browning.
- SeasoningA teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of pepper for twelve fish is on the assertive side by modern taste — season the fish, not the milk, and adjust.
- YieldTwelve smelts serve three or four as a main course, six as a first course. Serve at once; browned butter and crisp coating both fade within minutes.
Meunière means "miller's wife," the name generally taken to refer to the light dusting of flour that defines the method — fish floured, fried in butter, then dressed with lemon, parsley and browned butter. Smelts were the natural candidate in America: small, oily, abundant in spring runs, and cheap enough that a cook could serve a dozen at a sitting. Boning them, as here, turns a plain fry into a dish worth plating.