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Pickerel Saute with Curry
Cut the head off, split in half through the back and detach the spinal bone from a fine, fresh two-and-a-half-pound pickerel. Sprinkle half teaspoon good curry powder on each cut part of the fish, rubbing it in well with the fingers. Season with a teaspoon salt all around, then lightly roll it in flour. Heat in a large frying pan two tablespoons oil, lay the fish in the pan and fry for five minutes on each side; then bake in the oven for five minutes. Dress on a hot dish. Squeeze the juice of half a sound lemon over the fish, decorate with parsley greens and serve.
A straightforward pan-fry finished in the oven, written for a whole butterflied fish. The only real gaps are the oven temperature and how much curry powder the original actually intends.
- The fish"Pickerel" is ambiguous: in parts of the US it denotes a small pike, while around the Great Lakes and in Canada it commonly means walleye. Either reading points to a firm, lean freshwater fish; walleye, perch, small pike, or farmed trout all work. A 2 1/2 lb fish, split, serves two generously or three modestly.
- Butterflying itSplitting through the back and lifting out the spine leaves the two fillets joined at the belly, skin on. Ask a fishmonger to do it, or run a flexible knife along either side of the backbone from the dorsal edge. Pin bones can stay; they pull easily after cooking.
- Curry quantityHalf a teaspoon on each cut surface, so a teaspoon total for a fish this size, plus a teaspoon of salt for the whole thing. That is a light seasoning by modern standards. Commercial curry powders have varied a great deal in strength and blend, so taste yours before scaling up.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives none. A hot oven, 400-425F, for the five-minute finish; the fish is already mostly cooked from the pan and the oven is only there to set the thickest part through.
- TimingFive minutes a side plus five in the oven suits a fish of this weight, but go by the flesh: it should be opaque to the bone, and 145F at the thickest point is the usual recommendation for fish. Fillets under an inch thick need considerably less, perhaps three minutes a side and no oven time at all.
- Flour and fatRoll in flour just before frying, not in advance, or the coating turns pasty. Two tablespoons of oil is the minimum for a pan this large; add more if the fish looks dry, and get the oil shimmering before the fish goes in so the flour sets rather than sticks.
- ServingLemon and parsley are the whole garnish, and they are enough. Plain boiled potatoes or rice absorb the curried oil from the pan, which is worth spooning over.
This is a saute meuniere with curry powder standing in for the usual plain seasoning, and the substitution tells you a good deal about how curry often functioned in American and Anglo-French cooking: not as a cuisine but as a single jarred spice, used the way one might use paprika, rubbed onto a fish that is otherwise treated entirely in the French manner. Commercial curry powder had been sold in Britain since the late eighteenth century and was thoroughly domesticated by 1900. The choice of pickerel places the dish in North America, where walleye and pike from the Great Lakes and inland waters were common market fish.