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Filet of Blackfish, Equatorial
Pare off fins and scale two blackfish of one and a half pounds each. Cut off the heads, split them in two through the back, remove the spinal bones and skin, cut each half in two lengthwise pieces. Season with a light teaspoon salt and half teaspoon of paprika. Roll them in flour, dip in beaten egg, then roll them in finely shredded cocoanut. Arrange in a frying basket, plunge in boiling fat to fry for eight minutes. Lift them up, drain, sprinkle a very little salt over and dress on a hot dish, one overlapping another crown-like. Fill the centre with fried parsley, decorate with six quarters of lemon and serve with one gill of tomato sauce separately.
A coconut-crusted fried fish from the era when "equatorial" on a menu meant little more than a tropical garnish. The whole dish turns on frying temperature and time, both of which need adjusting.
- Eight minutes is too longTwo one-and-a-half-pound blackfish yield eight thin strips of filet that cook through in three to four minutes in fat at 350-360F. Held for eight, the coconut blackens and the fish dries to cotton.
- Coconut scorchesUse unsweetened desiccated or finely shredded coconut. Sweetened flaked coconut, the standard supermarket product, burns well before the fish is done. Press the coconut on firmly after the egg dip and let the coated pieces rest ten minutes so the crust holds in the fat.
- BlackfishThis is tautog, an Atlantic wrasse with dense white flesh, still caught recreationally and sold in some Northeast markets. Any firm lean white fish substitutes: black sea bass, grouper, or thick cod loin cut into strips.
- A gillHalf a cup of tomato sauce, served on the side. In this period that means a smooth cooked sauce thickened with roux or reduction, not a chunky pasta sauce.
- Frying basketA basket lets the delicate coating stick to the mesh. Lower the pieces in loose with a spider or tongs and turn them once.
- Fried parsleyWhole sprigs, thoroughly dry, dropped into the same fat for about fifteen seconds until they stop sputtering and turn brittle. Wet parsley will spit violently.
- YieldFour servings of two pieces each, as a plated fish course.
"Blackfish" here is the tautog, a homely, bull-headed Atlantic fish that was cheap and abundant along the Northeast coast in the early twentieth century and appears often in American cookbooks of the period. The interest is in the treatment: a dish given a geographical name on the strength of one ingredient, coconut, which by the 1900s was reaching American kitchens in shredded, dried form and turning up in savory cookery as a signal of the tropics. Books calling themselves "international" in this era generally organized the world's cooking by such gestures rather than by any documented regional practice, and the name is best read as a restaurant flourish, with the filets arranged "crown-like" around a fried parsley center and the sauce sent separately in a boat.