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Filet of Sea Bass, Ravigote
Cut off fins and scale a three-pound fresh sea bass. Cut head off and split in two through back. Remove spinal bone, tear off skin from filets, then cut each filet in three slanting, equal pieces. Season with half teaspoon salt and three saltspoons pepper, then lightly roll in flour, dip in beaten egg, roll in bread crumbs, arrange in a frying basket, plunge in boiling fat and fry ten minutes. Lift up, drain on a cloth, sprinkle a little salt over. Dress on a hot dish with a folded napkin, decorate with a little parsley and six quarters lemon and serve with a ravigote sauce separately.
A straightforward breaded fry, with one instruction that will ruin it if followed literally. The fish is filleted, crumbed and deep-fried, and the sauce is served alongside.
- Ten minutes is far too longSix slanting pieces cut from a 3 lb bass will be fairly thin, likely under an inch, and cook through in only a few minutes at frying temperature. Ten minutes gives dry, cottony fish inside a scorched crust. Fry until the crumb is deep gold and the flesh flakes.
- "Boiling fat"Fat does not boil; the term means fat hot enough to bubble furiously when food goes in, about 350-375F. Below that the crumb absorbs grease, above it the coating browns before the fish sets.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so three saltspoons of pepper is three-quarters of a teaspoon, which is assertive but correct for six pieces of fish.
- Ravigote sauceThe book assumes you know it. In French practice there are two: a cold ravigote, essentially a sharp vinaigrette with capers, onion and chopped tarragon, chervil, parsley and chives; and a warm one built on a velouté finished with shallot-vinegar reduction and herb butter. Either suits fried fish, the cold one better.
- Buying the fishAsk the fishmonger to scale, gut and fillet a 3 lb whole bass and to leave the fillets skinless; expect roughly a pound of flesh, give or take. Black sea bass, striped bass, branzino or any firm white fillet will behave the same way in the crumb.
- The crumbingFlour, then beaten egg, then crumbs, patted firm and rested ten minutes before frying so the coating sets and does not slide off in the fat. Dry fine crumbs, not panko, give the smooth surface the period expected.
- The frying basketBreaded food can stick to a basket and tear when lifted. If that worries you, lower the pieces straight into the fat and retrieve them with a spider; drain on a rack or paper rather than the cloth specified.
- ServingSix pieces serve three as a main course or six as a fish course. The folded napkin on the platter absorbs some fat and helps keep the crust from steaming, though it was also simply the conventional way fried food was dressed.
Ravigote comes from the French ravigoter, to revive or invigorate, and the name is a fair description of a sauce whose job is to cut through fat with vinegar, capers and a heavy hand of fresh herbs. It belongs to the classical repertoire codified in nineteenth-century French kitchens, where it existed in both a cold vinaigrette form and a warm velouté-based one, and a chef writing for an American audience in the 1900s could still assume a reader would recognise the word without explanation. That assumption is the tell: The International Cook Book was compiled by Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and it is written in the shorthand of a professional kitchen — season, flour, egg, crumb, fry, dress on a napkin, sauce apart. The garnish instructions, down to the six lemon quarters and the sprig of parsley, reflect a period when a plated fish was expected to arrive looking composed on a silver platter rather than assembled in the kitchen on individual plates.