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Whiting with Anchovy Sauce
(Merluzzo alla Palermitana) Take one whiting, one pound or a little more, and trim all the fins, leaving the tail and the head. Split it to remove the bone, and season with a little salt and pepper. Turn it on the back, grease with oil, season with salt and pepper, dust with bread crumbs then lay it with two tablespoonfuls of oil on a fireproof plate or baking tin.
Take three or four good sized anchovies, bone and clean them, chop them and put on the fire with two tablespoonfuls of oil, but do not allow it to boil. With this sauce cover the back of the fish and dust it all with bread crumbs, putting also some leaves of rosemary. Bake in the oven, allowing a little crust to form over, but see that it doesn't dry up, pouring over to this purpose more oil.
Before removing from the tin squeeze half a lemon over.
This dish can be served surrounded by little toast with caviar, or anchovies and butter. with caviar, or anchovies and butter. 118
A whole fish, butterflied, crumbed and baked under an anchovy-and-oil sauce. The recipe assumes you can bone a round fish yourself and that you will keep the pan wet with oil.
- The fishMerluzzo in Italian usage covers hake and small cod as well as whiting, so any lean white round fish of about a pound works. Ask for it gutted, scaled, fins trimmed, head and tail left on, and split along the backbone so it opens flat.
- Oven heatThe original gives none. A moderate-to-hot oven, 400F, suits a one-pound butterflied fish: about 15 to 20 minutes, until the crumbs are gold and the flesh at the thickest point flakes.
- The sauce must not boilThe recipe is explicit about this. Anchovies warmed gently in oil melt into a smooth paste; cooks generally hold that boiling them makes the sauce grainy and harsher in flavour. Keep the pan barely warm and stir until the fillets dissolve, then take it off the heat.
- Anchovies"Three or four good sized anchovies" probably means whole salt-packed fish, hence the instruction to bone and clean them. If you use oil-packed fillets from a tin, six to eight is closer. Salt-packed ones need a rinse and a short soak first.
- OilOlive oil throughout, and more of it than seems necessary. The repeated "pouring over more oil" is what keeps a lean fish from drying under a crumb crust; baste once or twice during baking.
- RosemaryLeaves only, stripped from the stem, and used sparingly. A pound of delicate white fish is easily overwhelmed; a scant teaspoon of leaves is enough.
- CrumbsThe recipe does not specify. Dry, fine breadcrumbs suit this better than fresh or the coarse commercial sort, forming a thin sealing layer rather than a heavy coating.
- Yield and servingOne pound of fish serves two as a main course. The garnish of small toasts with caviar or anchovy butter is optional and belongs on the platter, not in the oven.
Palermo cooking leans hard on the salted anchovy, and dishes labelled alla palermitana commonly involve breadcrumbs, olive oil and anchovy in some combination. Breadcrumbs there are a serious ingredient rather than a leftover, used to build a crust, thicken a sauce and stretch a small piece of fish; they are sometimes called the poor man's cheese.