L. *064. 1 I L .frioNL *L. Imperative cooking: how to shop
for fish: number 2
A MEDLEY of dos and don'ts. Do not buy bass, turbot and brill until you are tired of snappers, herrings, dogfish, sardines, octo- pus, cuttlefish, mackerel, plaice, shark and a host of the cheaper fish. The most expen- sive varieties of fish are as much as ten times the price of cheaper varieties and not ten times better.
Don't be mean. Buy enough. Fish can always be used up in stocks and in risottos, croquettes, and countless hors d'oeuvres. Most books say half a pound a person. Unless you are cooking for work-shy layabouts or the infirm, I'd make it three quarters of a pound of fish flesh. With heads that can take you over the pound (for main courses). Serve a pound of mus- sels per person. No one eats fewer than a dozen oysters. If they are small, make it two. Some Wong fish such as anchovies are better served earlier on in the meal in smaller quantities. But don't overdo it. There is nothing more pathetic than seeing one anchovy, still worse, one anchovy fillet sitting on a plate on its own except for a sprig of parsley or a quarter of a tomato. By the way, buy anchovies fresh, frozen, whole in brine or in dry salt or even dry salt and chillis. Why anyone buys those mean but expensive little bottles of fillets in oil, I cannot understand.
Avoid various fish. English fish shops sell a lot of dull white things pretending to be cod. Avoid them. I avoid most squid. Cuttle fish is better value and so much squid has been frozen and discharges pints of water when fried, so it sort of steams. The same thing seems to happen with much monk. And it is now overpriced here anyway. This is because the ghastly people who used to eat tasteless pre-boiled prawns with indus- trial mayonnaise and ketchup mashed up out of wine-glasses have been told by cook- ery writers that monk makes a good alter- native to prawns. They now stuff it into wine-glasses and have put the price up. Curiously, they eat brown bread and butter with this concoction as with smoked salmon. Imperative cooks do not allow brown bread in the house and never serve butter with bread. They do cook with but- ter and oil. Buy good butter — and clarify it, possibly mixing it 50/50 with oil — or ordinary olive oil for frying and grilling fish. Don't use cheap oils.
Also avoid cockles and mussels in vine- gar or acetic acid, indeed frozen cockles and mussels. Buy them and clams and crabs and lobsters live. Eels should be bought live too. Buy fish as unprocessed as possible. That means buy fresh fish ungut- ted: it keeps better. Buy haddock and kip- pers on the bone. The warning against processing does not necessarily apply to freezing. Many excellent fish such as swordfish and usually snappers and red mullet will be frozen anyway. And some frozen fish, that frozen on board the ships, is paradoxically fresher than some 'fresh' fish which has had to last a long journey. But buy frozen fish frozen and defrost it yourself.
Build up a stock of fish preserved in other ways. I always bring back various dried fish such as tuna from Spain but the
Chinese shops sell a range of dried and cured fishes. All serious fish kitchens regu-.
larly use salt cod and maintain a stock. But most of the English, if they can be persuad- ed to consider eating it at all, think it must be a second best to cod, are therefore shocked at the price and buy too little and that of the bony and fatty bits. On the con- trary, it is better than cod and usable in many more ways, but buy a lot and of the best. Salt cod belongs, of course, to that large group of fish which needs things doing to them, sauces, amalgamations and the like. There is another large group which not only does not need doing things to but which is best not messed about. The good cook is the one who knows which is which. In general, most oily fish are best left fairly simple and so are the expensive qualities, the brills, turbots and lobsters. At the opposite extreme fish such as pike demand elaborate treatment.
And remember at the fishmonger you are not just looking for fish for dinner tonight. You are on the look-out for a few cheap fish heads for stock. Cod, hake, con- ger and the large white fish are best but plaice heads and skeletons will do.
I am bound to get tedious letters com- plaining that fish is expensive. True it is, but one second-rate dinner for two out would buy a wonderful six-course fish din- ner at home and with supplies for days to come. So go out less and buy more fish. For one thing is certain. Over the next three years, it will become much more expensive.
Digby Anderson
Previous page
