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Yellow Perch, Tartare
Scale, cut off fins and neatly wipe six medium-sized yellow perch. Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, rub with a little oil, then broil over a brisk charcoal fire for six minutes on each side. Remove, place on hot dish, decorate with a little parsley greens, six quarters lemon, and serve with a tartare sauce separately.
A plain charcoal-grilled panfish with a cold sauce on the side. The only real decisions are how long to cook it and how to keep it from sticking.
- The fishYellow perch (Perca flavescens) run small; a "medium-sized" one is probably something in the 8 to 10 inch range whole, a few ounces of fish each. Six of them might stretch to six light portions, or serve three or four generously.
- Cut the time downSix minutes per side will dry out a fish this thin. Whole perch of that size need about 3 to 4 minutes a side over direct heat; pull them when the flesh at the backbone turns opaque and slips from the bone.
- "Brisk charcoal fire"Coals burned down to an even grey ash with no flame, hot enough that you cannot hold a hand six inches above the grate for more than a couple of seconds. A gas grill on high or an oven broiler with the rack near the element does the same job.
- Oiling"Rub with a little oil" is about the fish releasing cleanly, not about flavour. Oil the grate as well, or use a hinged fish basket — perch skin tears easily and a broken fish spoils the point of serving them whole.
- Scaling and finsPerch scales are small, tight and stubborn; scale under cold running water or in a sink of water to keep them from scattering. The dorsal fin is genuinely spiny, so take it off with shears before handling the fish further. The recipe does not say to gut them — do that too.
- Seasoning quantityA teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of pepper is for all six fish, inside and out, not each.
- Tartare sauceThe book assumes you have it elsewhere: mayonnaise with chopped capers, gherkins or pickle, shallot or onion, and parsley. Make it ahead so it is cold against the hot fish.
Yellow perch is a North American freshwater fish, abundant in the Great Lakes and the rivers and ponds of the northeast. Its appearance in a book that ranges across national cuisines says something about how such collections worked: a local, everyday fish is dressed up by pairing it with a French sauce and a garnish of lemon quarters, which is the difference between supper and a menu item. Sauce tartare is a cold mayonnaise-based sauce whose name is generally traced to the French use of à la tartare for dishes served with a sharp, mustardy or pickled accompaniment; by 1900 it was so firmly attached to fried and broiled fish in restaurant cooking that a recipe could simply call for it and move on.