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Smelts Saute, Meuniere
Wipe dry twelve medium-sized very fresh, fat smelts. Season them all over with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper, then briskly roll in flour. Heat one and a half teaspoons melted butter or fat in a frying pan; lay in the pan, one beside the other, and fry on a brisk fire for five minutes on each side. Remove, drain well, dress on a hot dish; dry the pan in which the smelts were fried, place in it one tablespoon melted butter; briskly heat until a good brown colour, then squeeze in the juice of half a sound lemon, add a teaspoon chopped parsley, toss well for a minute, pour over the fish and serve.
A straightforward sauté with a brown-butter finish; the only real difficulties are a fat quantity that reads short and a frying time that reads long.
- The butter is not enoughOne and a half teaspoons will not film a pan holding twelve fish, and the flour coating will scorch in patches. Use enough clarified butter or a butter-and-oil mix to cover the pan floor by about an eighth of an inch, roughly 3 to 4 tablespoons.
- Five minutes a side is too longA medium smelt is four to six inches and cooks through in 2 to 3 minutes per side over medium-high heat. Go the full five and the flesh dries and the little fish collapse when you lift them.
- "Brisk fire" means medium-highHot enough that the flour sets into a crust the moment the fish touches the pan, not hot enough to brown the butter before the fish is turned. Fry in two batches rather than crowding.
- Flour at the last momentDredge the smelts as the pan comes up to heat. Seasoned fish left sitting in flour weeps and the coating turns pasty instead of crisp.
- Buying and cleaningSmelts are sold whole; they are often gutted through a small slit, with heads left on, and the fine bones are eaten. Twelve medium fish is roughly a pound to a pound and a quarter, which serves two generously or three as a first course.
- The brown butter is the hingeWipe the pan clean of burnt flour before adding the fresh tablespoon of butter, or the sauce tastes bitter. Butter goes from foaming to hazelnut brown to black in well under a minute; pull it off the heat, then add the lemon and parsley, which will spit.
- ServingSauce the fish at the table's edge and eat at once. Brown butter congeals and the crust softens within a few minutes of being poured over.
Meunière means "miller's wife," the name generally traced to the light dusting of flour that defines the method: fish floured, fried in butter, finished with browned butter, lemon and parsley. It is one of the most portable techniques in French cooking, applied in American kitchens to whatever small fish came in cheap and fresh. Smelts were exactly that fish. They run in enormous schools into coastal rivers and, later, the Great Lakes, and were dip-netted and sold by the bucket in spring, which is why twelve of them could be treated as a single serving. The recipe calls for wiping the pan and starting the butter fresh.