An old French Proverb has it: “C'est la Sauce qui fait le poisson,” testifying to the importance of the sauce where fish is concerned. I think all gourmets will agree with this and will be considering it not only during these days of Lenten meals but also when looking ahead to those gifts of the sea which are at their best in spring and summer.
Unfortunately, some people believe that a fish sauce must necessarily be elaborate—like sauce normande, which is flavored with fish and shellfish essences and mushroom liquor and is rich with cream and egg yolks, or the carefully blended lobster-tomato-cognac-white-wine combination of sauce américaine. Well, elegant sauces do have a place, and a very important one, in fish cookery, but there are just as many instances where a beurre meunière, the simple brown butter sauce named by Napoleon I, is a better choice. It is, for example, with the freshly caught trout that anglers are enticing out of inland streams right now when they are swollen to overflowing turbulence with spring's melting snows. Or with the fragile, delicate shad that we await so patiently when the nets in our Eastern rivers pop into view. Both these species of fish are so fine and sweet, so utterly delightful in flavor and texture, that many devotees consider it almost a sacrilege to serve anything but a very simple sauce with them, little more than the extra fat and acid that most fish require. Thus, butter cooked to hazelnut-brown and finished with the merest trace of lemon juice and a soupçon of parsley is perfect. So Napoleon, a great gourmet as well as a great soldier, found out when he was served freshly caught trout many years ago at La Belle Meunière Inn at Royat.
If you want to sauté these fish, or in fact any fish, keep these tricks in mind: Use a pan large enough so that the fish won't be crowded, otherwise they will steam and not acquire a tempting golden-brown. And use salad oil in the pan. Oil can stand the high heat better than butter, which is apt to burn, and the butter sauce which is finished in the pan will have a fresher, more delicate flavor than when the fish is cooked in the butter that also sauces it.
Truite Sautée Belle Meunière (Santéed Trout Meunière)
Clean 6 brook trout and dip them in milk and then in flour seasoned with salt. Cover the bottom of a frying pan generously with salad oil and heat until very hot. Add the fish and sauté it until golden-brown on the underside. Turn and continue cooking until brown on the other side. When well browned this way, the fish should be cooked through.
Remove it and pour off all the oil but do not wash the pan, In it cook 6 tablespoons butter slowly until it takes on a good hazelnut-brown color. Pour it over the fish and sprinkle with a little lemon juice, chopped parsley, and freshly ground pepper.
A delicate fish like shad, particularly if it has been boned, is usually difficult to turn while cooking. But both sides can acquire a golden-brown if the top of the fish is browned under a broiler or in a hot oven after the underside is browned in the fat in the pan.
Although fish filets, so popular because there are no bones to struggle with, can be sautéed or broiled, I think they lend themselves admirably to white wine and other sauces. But in la haute cuisine the bones are always cooked with the fish in order to add flavor to the sauce; some chefs believe that enough substance is extracted from the bones to give the sauce a belter texture, too. Of course, fish can be cooked whole in the liquid and seasonings which form the basis of the sauce and then carefully fileted after cooking. But it is usually more convenient to have the fileting done beforehand. In fact, it is essential when a large quantity is to be cooked because there isn't lime to remove all the bones in the interval between cooking and serving. The trick often resorted to is to lay the bones that have been removed in fileting on top of the fish while it is cooking and to lift them off before making the sauce. And this is a good idea for a recipe that requires fish stock because these bones produce stock while they cook with the liquid in the pan.
Another trick in making sauces for fish filets is to have as many of the ingredients as practical in the pan while the fish cooks—for example, mushrooms, tomatoes, shallots, onions, carrots, and so on—along with the butter and wine. This gives a savory blending of flavors produced in no other way. And, finally, to insure that these flavors penetrate the fish and also to have the top of the fish cook without being submerged in too much liquid, the simple trick is to place a circle of paper on it before covering the pan.
Coming down to specifics, in making most sauces for fish filets, the same general procedure can be followed with any one of a number of sauces, such as white wine, bonne femme, Véronique, paysanne, or tomato. First the butter is spread in a large, shallow pan like a frying pan and the chopped shallots or onion are strewn over the butter. Then any special ingredients typical of the dish, such as mushrooms for bonne femme, carrots and onions for paysanne, or tomatoes or other ingredients that require some cooking, are put in the pan. The fish filets, seasoned with salt and a little pepper, are laid in, with any bones that are available on top of the fish. Wine, water, fish stock, or tomato juice are the usual liquids, sometimes combinations of them. The liquid is sprinkled over all, then a cover of paper is put on, and the pan is covered to hold the steam and flavor while the fish cooks. When it is done, the paper and bones are discarded and the fish is lifted to the serving dish with a broad, flexible spatula.
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