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Matelote of Fish
(Normandy.) Skin and slice 2 pounds of fresh fish, either all one sort or several kinds mixed. Fry it in 2 ounces of butter with 20 white and very small onions till brown. Add 1 1/2 ounces of flour, salt, and pepper, 6 sliced mushrooms, and a spoonful of lemon juice, a bunch of herbs, 1/2 pint of red wine, and 1/2 pint of consomme. Cook 1/2 an hour, season it to taste, and serve in the casserole. It is a sort of northern bouillabaisse.
A Normandy fish stew in red wine, written in the shorthand of a cook who assumed you knew how long fish takes. The half-hour cooking time is the one number to ignore.
- Cook the sauce, then the fishHalf an hour will reduce 2 lb of sliced fish to threads. Brown the onions, build the flour-wine-stock sauce and simmer it 20-25 minutes until it thickens and loses its raw wine edge, then slide the fish in for the last 6-10 minutes depending on thickness.
- The pintsIf the book follows British measure, a half pint is 10 fl oz, roughly 1 1/4 US cups; on US measure it would be 8 fl oz. Equal parts red wine and stock is the point; a cup of each works.
- "Serve in the casserole"The casserole is the cooking vessel, not a baked dish. Use a wide, shallow braising pan you are happy to bring to the table, and choose one just large enough that the liquid comes up around the fish.
- ConsommeA clarified meat broth. Fish stock or a light chicken stock both do the job; avoid anything heavily salted, since the sauce reduces.
- The onionsTwenty very small white onions means pearl or button onions, peeled whole. Frozen peeled pearl onions are an acceptable shortcut, but brown them properly in the butter before the flour goes in.
- Bunch of herbsA bouquet garni: parsley stems, thyme, a bay leaf, tied so it can be lifted out. Remove it before serving.
- Choosing fishTraditional matelote leans on eel and freshwater fish, which hold together in wine. Firm-fleshed choices behave best here; delicate flatfish will break up. Thick slices of monkfish, hake or cod loin keep their shape.
- FlourAn ounce and a half of flour to a pint of liquid gives a distinctly thick, coating sauce. Whisk it into the butter and onion fat before any liquid goes in, and add the wine gradually to avoid lumps.
- YieldServes four as a main course with bread or boiled potatoes. Fried croutons are a traditional accompaniment to matelote.
Matelote comes from matelot, sailor, and the name is generally traced to the boatmen of the Seine and Loire, who cooked their catch in whatever wine was to hand. It is a river dish rather than a coastal one, which is why it takes red wine and not the saffron and olive oil of the Mediterranean, and why eel is its classic ingredient: cheap, fatty and abundant in the northern French waterways. Regional versions abound, from the cider-based matelotes of Normandy to the matelote au vin jaune of the Jura. The compiler's closing note that it is "a sort of northern bouillabaisse" is exactly the kind of gloss this book trades in, translating an unfamiliar continental dish for English and American readers by way of one they had already heard of.