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Planked Shad (Procure a fine fresh shad)
Procure a fine, fresh shad of three pounds. Scale, wash well and wipe dry. Cut off the head, as well as the tail, then split it open through the stomach with a knife, without separating. Detach the spinal bone; season both sides with a light tablespoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Have two tablespoons flour on a flat dish; repeatedly turn over the shad in the flour. Heat in a large frying pan three tablespoons melted fat or sweet oil, lay the shad in the pan, split side downward, and rapidly fry for five minutes, or until a nice brown. Carefully turn it with a skimmer and fry for five minutes on the other side. Have a nice, clean oak plank (board), lightly oiled on the surface with a tablespoon oil; then carefully lift the fish with the skimmer, lay it on the plank skin side downward. Spread half a tablespoon melted butter over the shad. Place in a hot oven and bake for twenty minutes. Remove, spread a light maitre d'hotel over. Decorate with quartered lemon and parslev greens and serve on the plank.
A straightforward two-stage method — pan-sear, then finish on wood in a hot oven — that stands up well, provided the plank and the oven timing are handled sensibly.
- The plankIt must be untreated hardwood, oak or maple, with no varnish, glue or mineral oil finish; a cutting board from a kitchen shop is fine, a laminated one is not. Soaking it in water for an hour before oiling will slow scorching in a hot oven, and put a sheet pan on the rack beneath it.
- "A hot oven"Read that as roughly 425-450F; the book gives no numbers. At that heat a split three-pound shad that has already had ten minutes in the pan may well be done before the twenty minutes directed, so check it early at the thickest part rather than trusting the clock. Standard guidance for finished fish is an internal temperature of 145F.
- Sweet oilPeriod shorthand for olive oil, usually a mild refined one rather than the peppery green oil sold today. Any neutral high-heat oil works for the frying stage.
- SkimmerA flat perforated lifter. For a whole split fish, two wide fish slices used together will save the fillet from breaking when you turn it.
- The bonesShad has a notorious lattice of fine intramuscular bones that the spinal bone's removal does not touch. Buy it boned by the fishmonger if you can — proper shad boning is a specialist skill — or accept that diners will be picking.
- Maître d'hôtel butterAssumed knowledge in 1906: softened butter worked with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Roll it in paper, chill, and lay coins of it on the hot fish so it melts at the table.
- SourcingAmerican shad runs are much reduced and several rivers are closed to the fishery, so fresh shad is a short spring window and a regional one. Bluefish, mackerel or a whole butterflied trout take the same treatment.
- YieldA three-pound fish, head and tail off, serves four as a main course. Serve it on the plank as directed and set the board on a folded cloth or trivet.
Planked shad belongs to the spring runs of the Atlantic rivers — the Connecticut, the Hudson, the Delaware, the Susquehanna — where Alosa sapidissima, the "most savory" herring, came up to spawn in such numbers that shad was cheap food before it was a delicacy. The plank itself is generally traced to Native American practice along those rivers, fish split and pinned to a board set slanting before an open fire, a method colonists adopted and which survives in the ritual shad planking, an outdoor dinner still held annually in Virginia. What Filippini gives here is the restaurant version of that: the plank has become as much a serving vessel as a cooking surface, the open fire has become a range and an oven, and the finish is a French compound butter. It is a fair picture of how an American river dish entered a professional international repertoire in the first decade of the twentieth century, just as the great shad runs were beginning their long decline.