However much these long-lived carp may be valued for sentimental reasons, the best size for eating is around one and one-half to two pounds. Small carp achieve a beautiful flavor when sautéed in oil and served with browned butter, à la meunière. Larger carp, weighing three pounds or more, are usually braised and often stuffed. Carp roe is also very tasty, either sautéed and served à la meunière or crushed and combined with other ingredients and used to stuff the fish itself. To prepare carp effectively, the trick is to be very thorough in removing the scales, as they are so very large and coarse Then, before the fish is served, the skin must also be removed.
A lovely river fish is perch, fresh tasting and succulent. It possesses all the fine qualities of small fish and of fish which live in running water. When you clean perch, however, you must take care to cut off the sharp fins.
Picketel, which seldom weighs more than one pound, is one of the best of the small fish. It is excellent sautéed or broiled and is almost always included in matelote, a fresh-water fish stew very popular in France.
A larger fish is lake trout, sometimes called salmon trout—truite saumonée— usually prepared by braising or baking, methods suitable for most large fish. It is so much like salmon that all the ways of cooking salmon arc equally good for lake trout. Lake trout may be substituted for salmon on the cold buffet. The truite saumonée from the Loire River is especially famed in France for its delicacy and flavor; do not fail to order this fish at dinner sometime when you are traveling in France.
But the real prizes of fresh-water country, delicacies which cannot be matched anywhere, are brook trout and crayfish. Sports fishermen usually favor trout, probably because it takes such skill to catch them. There are many different varieties of this fish; the kind I remember best from my native countryside was marked with little red spots and had flesh of a pinkish color.
The two most popular ways of cooking brook trout are both simple: The trout can be sautéed and served à la meunière, or cooked in water au bleu. In our Bourbonnais cooking at home, we favored a trout specialty à la crime, which is a little out of the ordinary and exceptionally fine.
Fresh-water crayfish take the place of lobster in sections of France where lobster is not available. Some people consider them better tasting than lobster, sweeter and more succulent. There is quite a variation in size and for each size there is a suitable method of preparation. The small crayfish are best in bisque; the medium size adapt themselves well for use in garnishes; and the large ones generally go into main dishes. In America. we often begin a meal with shrimp cocktail. In France, it is common to start dinner with écrevisses en buisson (literally, crayfish in a bush), whole boiled crayfish supported on a three-tiered serving dish and generously garnished with parsley. I must add that to me the red upright crayfish and the green fluffy parsley do make a bush almost as pretty as any I have seen in gardens.
Crayfish are not widely eaten in America because they arc found in so few places and the season for them extends only from July to October. In France, where they abound, they arc served in the shell unless used for bisque, and only the tail and claw are eaten. To avoid a bitter taste, it is important to take out the end of the intestinal tract under the tail before they arc cooked. To cook them to their best flavor, white wine is almost essential. Lemon juice may be added to the water as a substitute, but the result is not the same. Here are a few recipes for preparing crayfish and the other fish I have been describing.
Calico or Lake Bass au Gratin
Cook 1 teaspoon chopped shallots in 1 teaspoon butter until the shallots are soft but not brown. Remove the stems from 6 large mushrooms and set the caps aside. Chop the stems with 6 or 8 whole mushrooms, add to the shallots, and cook until most of the moisture from the mushrooms is cooked away. Add 1 teaspoon chopped parsley and ½ cup thick brown sauce or tomato sauce (see January, 1953), bring to a boil, and simmer for a few minutes. Spread the bottom of an ovenproof serving dish with some of this sauce.
Season 6 filets of bass with a little salt and pepper and arrange them on the sauce. Cook the reserved mushroom caps in a very little water with a few drops of lemon juice for 5 minutes, drain, and place them on the filets. Cover the mushrooms with the remaining sauce. Add 2/3 cup white wine, sprinkle with 2 to 3 tablespoons fine bread crumbs and a little melted butter, and bake in a hot oven (425° F.) for 12 to 15 minutes, or until the fish is cooked and the crumbs on top are golden. Sprinkle the fish with chopped parsley and a little lemon juice and serve from the baking dish.
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