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Halibut Steaks, Anchovy Butter
Procure two and a half pounds fresh halibut. Cut into three even steak-like pieces; oil them lightly, season with a teaspoon salt and a saltspoon white pepper. Arrange them on a broiler and broil for six minutes on each side. Lay them on a hot dish. Neatly spread the anchovy butter over the dish and serve.
A three-line recipe that assumes you already have anchovy butter on hand and know how to manage a gridiron. Both assumptions need filling in.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. So the seasoning here is 1 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon white pepper spread across 2 1/2 lb of fish.
- "Broiler" means the grill surfaceIn this period a broiler was a hinged wire gridiron set over coals or under a gas salamander, with the fish close to the heat. Use an oven broiler with the rack about 4 inches from the element, fully preheated, or a hot grill pan.
- Six minutes a side is for thick steaksSix minutes a side suits thick steaks -- dividing 2 1/2 lb into three will tend to give fairly substantial steaks, and the timing reads as written for something around an inch thick. Thinner supermarket halibut will be dry at twelve minutes total; if you prefer it just set, many cooks pull it at 130-135F at the centre, when the flesh just parts from the bone, though 145F is the standard food-safety figure for fish.
- Halibut dries outIt is very lean, and the light oiling in the original is doing real work. Oil generously and do not move the steaks until you turn them once.
- The anchovy butterNot given on this page, and the book expects you to know it: soften butter and beat in mashed anchovy fillets or anchovy paste, roughly 1 part anchovy to 4 parts butter, with lemon juice and a little cayenne. It goes on cold and melts against the hot fish, so warming the platter matters.
- Skip further salting if you likeAnchovy butter is salty. With a teaspoon of salt on the fish as well, taste the butter before you decide how much to spread.
- YieldThree steaks of about 13 oz each serve three generously, or six if you divide them after cooking.
Anchovy butter belongs to the French repertoire of compound butters, the beurres composés, that late nineteenth-century professional cooking codified as a quick way to finish a plain grilled fish or steak — the same family as maître d'hôtel butter and beurre de crevettes. Anchovy in particular had a long English life alongside it, in essence and in bottled sauces, and is often said to have been a common savoury seasoning for fish. Filippini's book gathers dishes of this kind under the banner of a world cuisine, but the technique is straight hotel-kitchen practice: cook the fish plainly, let a flavoured butter do the seasoning as it melts, and get the plate out hot. Halibut was an obvious candidate, being firm enough to hold together on a gridiron and lean enough to want the butter.