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Cold Brook Trout, Ravigote Sauce
Trim and wipe three medium, fresh brook trout. Place in a saucepan pint water, half gill white wine, two tablespoons vinegar, one sliced onion, one branch parsley, a sprig thyme, a bay leaf, one clove, teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, then boil five minutes; remove pan to a table and let thoroughly cool off in the broth. Dress fish on a cold dish with a folded napkin over, decorate with a little parsley greens and serve with a cold Ravigote sauce separately.
A classic cold court-bouillon poach. The recipe assumes you know what a court-bouillon should look like and how a cold ravigote is built, so the gaps are worth filling in.
- The hinge: never let it boilBring the aromatics to a boil first, then slip the trout in and hold the liquid at a bare shiver, 170-180F. A hard five-minute boil will split the skin and tear the flesh off the bones, which ruins a fish meant to be served whole and looked at.
- Not enough liquid as writtenA pint of water plus a quarter cup of wine will not cover three trout in any normal saucepan. Use a wide pan or fish kettle and scale the whole court-bouillon up until the fish are just submerged, keeping the same proportions of wine, vinegar and aromatics.
- Half a gillA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is a quarter cup of white wine. Two tablespoons of vinegar alongside it makes a fairly sharp bouillon; the acid is generally held to help firm the flesh.
- DonenessMedium brook trout of 8-10 ounces need roughly 6-10 minutes at a simmer depending on thickness. The flesh at the backbone should be opaque and pull cleanly from the bone, about 145F at the thickest point.
- Cooling in the brothCooling in the court-bouillon is what keeps the fish moist and seasons it through, and it is worth doing. Let it lose its steam on the counter, then move pan and all to the refrigerator rather than leaving cooked fish standing at room temperature for hours.
- Cold ravigoteThe cold version is a sharp vinaigrette: oil and vinegar with finely chopped shallot or onion, capers, mustard, and chopped parsley, chervil, chives and tarragon. The hot ravigote of the same era is a different sauce entirely, a velouté finished with herb butter, and is not what is meant here.
- The napkinServing cold fish on a folded napkin was standard hotel practice; the linen absorbs the liquid that weeps out as the fish sits. A folded cloth on the platter still works, or drain the trout well on a rack and skip it.
- Brook troutTrue brook trout is largely a sport fish now. Farmed rainbow trout or arctic char of similar size behave identically in a court-bouillon.
- YieldThree trout, three servings as a first course or a light main with the sauce passed separately.
Ravigote takes its name from the French ravigoter, to perk up or revive, and the cold version is exactly that: a herb-and-caper vinaigrette meant to cut the flatness of poached fish or boiled meat. Escoffier and his contemporaries distinguished two sauces of the name, a hot one built on velouté and finished with herb butter and a cold one that is essentially a seasoned vinaigrette, and cold trout takes the latter. The dish itself belongs to the standing repertoire of the grand hotel and restaurant kitchens whose recipes filled American cookbooks around the turn of the twentieth century, where a whole fish poached in court-bouillon, cooled in its own liquor and set out on a folded napkin with a little parsley was a buffet and luncheon staple. The instruction to cool the fish in the broth is the professional part: it is the difference between trout that stays succulent and trout that dries as it chills.