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Kingfish, Bercy
Scale, trim off fins, cut heads off and split in two through back and remove spinal bone from two very fresh kingfish of one and a half pounds each. Lightly butter a baking dish, strew half a finely chopped, sound onion in the dish, lay the fish over, one beside another, squeeze juice of a sound lemon over fish and keep aside till required. Place trimmings of fish in a saucepan with three-quarters of a pint water and boil ten minutes. Place in another small saucepan half a medium, sliced carrot, half ditto onion, branch parsley, branch chervil, one sprig thyme, one bay leaf, one clove and a tablespoon melted butter, then briskly fry five minutes. Pour in a gill white wine, let it reduce nearly to a glaze, strain half of the fish broth into the glaze, lightly mix and reduce again until nearly dry. Then strain in the rest of the fish broth, lightly mix and boil six minutes more. Place fish on the fire five minutes, strain sauce over the fish, season with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper; boil five minutes. Set in oven twenty minutes. Remove, sprinkle a little chopped parsley over and serve.
A classic fish Bercy built in stages: a quick fumet from the trimmings, a wine reduction with aromatics, then a short bake. The instructions telescope the cooking times, and read literally they will overcook the fish twice over.
- Which fish"Kingfish" was applied to several unrelated fish in American usage: the northern kingfish or whiting, sold whole at about a pound; king mackerel, far larger and oilier; and, on the Pacific coast, yellowtail. Which one this book meant is not certain from the text. If your counter offers king mackerel, buy a portion rather than two whole fish. Branzino, small striped bass, black sea bass or porgy all behave the same way here.
- UnitsA gill is half a cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so "two saltspoons pepper" is half a teaspoon. Three-quarters of a pint is 1 1/2 cups.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given at all. Use 400F; the dish is already hot from the stovetop and wants to finish quickly rather than stew.
- The timings do not add upFive minutes on the fire, five minutes boiling in the sauce, then twenty minutes in the oven would leave a 1 1/2 lb fish dry and fibrous. Bring the sauced fish just to a simmer on the burner, then bake 10 to 14 minutes until the flesh at the backbone is opaque and pulls cleanly from the bone.
- The hinge: the double reductionReducing the wine to a glaze, adding half the fumet and reducing again, then adding the rest is what gives Bercy its depth without flour. Do not shortcut it to one addition, and do not let the pan scorch at the glaze stage or the sauce turns bitter.
- Straining and finishingThe sauce is strained over the fish, so the carrot, thyme, bay and clove are flavouring only. A modern Bercy is finished off the heat with a knob of cold butter whisked in for gloss, which this version leaves to the butter already in the pan.
- Onion versus shallotThe chopped onion strewn under the fish and used in the sauce base is shallot in French practice, and shallot gives a rounder, less aggressive result. Either works; keep the dice fine so it softens in the short bake.
- YieldTwo fish of 1 1/2 lb each, boned and split, serve four as a main course with the sauce spooned over.
Bercy takes its name from the Bercy quarter on the eastern edge of Paris, for most of the nineteenth century the city's great wine depot, where barrels arrived by river and the surrounding cafés built their cooking around what was to hand. The name attached to a family of white-wine-and-shallot preparations, one for fish and one for grilled meat with marrow, and by the time this book was compiled it functioned as shorthand in restaurant French for exactly this sequence: shallot, white wine reduced hard, fish stock, butter. That the recipe insists you make the fumet from the trimmings of the same two fish belongs to a way of cooking in which nothing arrived ready-made and the head and bones were the sauce.