I'm not going to complain, again, about the quality of fish I find in Jena. If you read this blog often you'll agree that I've done this more than required to just get my message across. Not that I wouldn't want to... sometimes I think all fishmongers here are direct descendants of Ordralfabetix, the dreaded fishmonger from the Asterix series. Instead let me be happy about my fish for once. A few days ago, walking around for some food shopping I saw some fresh (and not frozen and thawed, for once!) char. Char are fishes from the salmon and trout family which can be found either at sea or in sweet water lakes and can grow up to a respectable size, up to 8 kilo. The ones on sale looked good, glistening eye, red gills, firm flesh (after a quick and hidden poke), all the things a good fresh fish should be. I didn't do the classic smell test since the fishmonger started giving me a bad look, so I chose the two best looking fish (each around half a kilo) and took them home with the plan of cooking them straight away. What is it with shopkeepers these days? No touching, no smelling, no (god forbid!) squeezing or poking. Just buy your food based on looks, seems to be the idea. Sure: beauty is only skin deep but taste isn't. Good for me that when it comes to fish looks CAN give some hints about freshness. I've moaned and complained once more about fishmongers, I notice... I'll stop here... I promise ;-).
I toyed a bit with the idea of making something new with the char but decided to go modify a classic preparation I love, almond trouts, and make this with the char, which after all belong to the same family. I have a sentimental link to almond trouts, It's the first dish I can remember eating in a restaurant, somewhere in the Abbruzzi National Park in Italy, as a kid on holiday with my parents. The dish, as I know it simply uses gutted and scaled trouts which are dredged with flour and browned on both sides before being dressed with the almonds. I decided to prepare my char in a different way, removing the spine and bones before cooking. I used a somewhat old fashioned technique, at least as far as presentation comes, from Jacques Pepin's La Technique Complet. If reading about flesh, bones and blood makes you dizzy or sick, call me Darla and skip the next paragraph.
The technique I used removes the fish bones while living it intact, apart from the opening used to gut the fish, which is then folded as a book letting the tail of the fish emerge from the mouth. It looks a bit gross, even sick, but it does leave the flesh juicier than when pan roasting the fish on both sides. My fish was luckily already gutted and scaled, which saves a lot of work. First thing I removed the gills and cut off the fins, except the tail, using scissors. I washed the belly cavity and head again to remove eventual blood traces,dried the fish with a kitchen towel and proceeded to remove the bones. It is actually easier to show than to explain, but I'll try. First, holding the fish belly up, I slid my filleting knife between ribs and flesh and slid the blade upwards to separate ribs from flesh on both sides of the ribcage. Then I worked along the spine with the knife to free the bones from the flesh without piercing the skin on the back. To do this, I slid the knife along both sides of the spine, keeping the blade touching the bones, till I almost reached the tail. At this point the spine and bones of the fish were free except for the first and last joints of the spine, attached to head and tail respectively, which I severed with my scissors. I then opened the fish as a book so that the skin is on the working surface and the filets are exposed, salted and peppered it, and folded the fish in the middle letting the tail fin exit through the fish's mouth. Maybe I should make a movie next time ;-).
To cook the fish I slightly modified Pepin's method using a tip I probably read in Larousse Gastronomique. The folded fish received a very light sprinkling of flour and went, top side down, in a pan in which I had heated some butter till foamy. After five minutes I flipped the fish and let it cook another four minutes on the bottom or tail side. Meanwhile I dry roasted some almond sliver till browned. As much as I stirred, I still managed to slightly burn a couple of almond slivers. Once the fish was done I removed it from the pan, which I deglazed with 2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar. I added the almonds to the pan juices and poured the "sauce" on the fish.
The end product looked a bit scary but it tasted...mmhh..deeeelicious. The char in itself was a very pleasant surprise. firm flesh, tasty, but without that lightly earthy not trout sometime has. The cooking method, or better the fish preparation had also had its positive effect. The meat was tender and juicy throughout with no part drier than the other. The only regret is that I didn't get to taste any of the fish's cheeks, which IMO, are the tastiest morsels. I gave the first to Saami and he ended up wanting all four. At least I hope it served to educate his taste.
Wow! I've never, in all my life, seen a fish prepared with the tail coming out of its mouth. Thanks for the education.
Posted by: karleen | July 14, 2004 at 07:02 PM
karleen, I hadn't either till I read Pepin's book. I think it is a somewhat old-fashioned preparation, at least from the looks point of view, coming from the traditional French haute cuisine. It doesn't exactly fit my taste when it comes to look but I see now that it has a good reason on the taste side.
Posted by: Alberto | July 15, 2004 at 12:09 PM
Very impressive. I like the look of both your blog and your food, though I must ask: how do you keep your camera clean while photographing and cooking at the same time?
Regarding fresh fish: recently I was lucky enough to be in Hong Kong. The fishmongers there pretty much do everything to the fish while it's alive. The sight of a live fish being descaled is not pretty. Then they chop it into fillets leaving the bladder, or is it air sac, intact and full of air to demonstrate just how fresh it is. That's not something German authorities would approve of. I'm not sure if I do either.
Posted by: David | July 15, 2004 at 03:45 PM
David, thanks for the compliments. I do get my camera dirty at times but not that often, only when I take pictures during actual cooking. I bought a large pack of camera lens tissues for this purpose. Actually on average my 2 year old son gets the camera dirty more often using his little fingers than I do cooking.
You're absolutely right about German health authorities, they'd probably get a stroke if they only saw such a thing :-)).
Posted by: Alberto | July 16, 2004 at 11:53 AM