A Note on Blanquette

This is not a recipe or even a detailed description. But there’s enough here to start you thinking about how you might adapt this dish to ingredients you have on hand. Perhaps at some stage I shall offer a formal recipe.

Blanquette de veau is a classic veal (or occasionally lamb) stew of great delicacy and a very particular flavor. In the versions I have in mind, the chunks of veal are not browned, and traditionally no stock is used, at least when the dish is made at home rather than in a restaurant: The meat and aromatic vegetables simmer in water until the veal is tender. This creates the veal broth from which a sauce is made, first, slightly thickened with a butter-and-flour roux, then finished at the last minute with a liaison of egg yolks and cream. It is a little old-fashioned, though it is seen occasionally and there are hints of a revival.

Jackie and I had a yen for blanquette last week but, shamefully, had no veal in the house. In the freezer, we did have a chicken breast, and we also had a carrot, a celery root and a few mushrooms, plus herbs. Crucially, we also had some chicken stock. That’s what made our blanquette-like dinner possible: Chunks of chicken breast would poach in five minutes, nowhere nearly enough time for them to turn water to broth. Simmering the vegetables, then the chicken in that stock did indeed enrich it, and it ended up beautifully flavorful.

Something like a blanquette, with chicken breast

Once all the ingredients were cooked, I set them aside, made a flour-and-butter roux and whisked in the strained broth to form a lightly thickened sauce base. I simmered this for a few minutes and checked for seasoning. When it was the dinner hour, by which time I’d made a pot of rice, I reheated the chicken and vegetables in the sauce. In a bowl, I whisked together an egg yolk and about 1/3 cup (80 ml) cream, stirred in a bit of sauce hot from the saucepan and returned the mixture to the pan, stirring it to combine over very low heat, then off the heat, for 20 seconds or a little longer, enough time for the egg yolk and cream to enrich and further thicken the sauce slightly. I finished it with tarragon.

Somehow, even though it took only about 20 minutes to make, this provided a satisfying blanquette experience and opened the door to all sorts of other dishes using the technique. Looking ahead a few months, I’m thinking of spring-summer vegetables (possibly still using chicken stock, but maybe just vegetable stock).

Astair in Paris: A New Brasserie/Bistrot in an Atmospheric Old Setting

When the central Paris food market, Les Halles, was razed in 1971 and replaced by a grim shopping mall, it became that much harder to find places that evoke the everyday side of the city as it used to be. Curiously, some of the most evocative of those places are in fact shopping malls: the “passages” and “galeries” built for all-weather shopping, mostly in the nineteenth century. Those that escaped Baron Haussmann’s rethinking of the city’s plan and survived subsequent development schemes are a mixed bag of chic and slightly shabby: You find a jumble of businesses such as second-hand bookshops, stamp dealers, cafés and upmarket and downmarket clothes merchants. The passages themselves vary in impressiveness too: The aisles of, say, the Galerie Colbert and the nearby Galerie Vivienne are broad and ornate, while others remain pleasantly ramshackle.

The Gallerie des Panoramas on a cold, rainy night. Photograph by Edward Schneider

The oldest of the genre is the Passage des Panoramas, built in 1799 or 1800. Its long (133 meters / 435 feet) aisle and its few cross-passages are narrow and the night-time lighting low. It has charm - and, with a number of popular and well-regarded restaurants, it has become something of a gastronomic destination, as Paris resident Alexander Lobrano has written. Indeed, it was on Mr. Lobrano’s blog that I first read of Astair, a new modern brasserie (or is it a bistrot?) that proved to be just the ticket for the evening before the big-deal dinner of the trip (an exquisite meal at Eric Frechon’s three-Michelin-star Epicure in the hotel Le Bristol). Astair provided the easy-going contrast we needed, serving mostly classic brasserie/bistrot dishes with canny twists of innovation, careful cooking and high-quality ingredients in a comfortable, stylish but not especially luxurious environment.

(I take the terms "modern bistrot" and "modern brasserie" to mean restaurants whose menus have a solid basis in the cooking of old-fashioned bistrots and brasseries but which, first, dare to buck entrenched practice in small and less-small ways and, secondly, take greater care in their choice of ingredients and the way they are cooked. For it is a sad fact that it's pretty easy to eat tedious, disappointing food in an unreconstructed restaurant in Paris and elsewhere in France.)

The inviting façade of Astair. Photograph by Vincent Leroux

Astair was established in 2018 by three young and successful restaurateurs - Jean Valfort, Charles Drouhaut and Jean-François Monfort - with Gilles Goujon as consulting executive chef. Mr. Goujon is the chef-proprietor of the three-Michelin-star Auberge du Vieux Puits in southern France, and some dishes on the diverse and appealing menu are identified as his, though he is involved in all that emerges from the kitchen.

Astair. Photograph by Vincent Leroux

The night we were there, the clientele was diverse as well: A couple of grown-up couples like us; a young pair with a little baby (I love seeing kids exposed to dining out so long as they are reasonably well behaved, as this one was); a guy on his own eating a steak; a big table of, mostly, men in their twenties or thirties. We weren’t the only foreigners, but it was a mostly French crowd, which made us irrationally feel as though we were in on some sort of Parisians-only secret. There were comfortable red banquettes and a circular bar with red stools. There were big windows looking out into the Passage. There was music, but it wasn’t loud enough to annoy us. (Our annoyance threshold is pretty low, so it can’t have been too intrusive.)

Our plan had been to start with a dish of squid fritters, but appalling weather had affected seafood deliveries (not just at Astair), so there were none. It wasn’t hard to find alternatives, and we ordered two of the Gilles Goujon starters (not because of the “Gilles” label, but because they sounded so good): a “carpaccio” of calf’s head with a lightened, brightened sauce gribiche. The gelatinous calf’s head slices were well seasoned and, happily, were served just below room temperature, so they did not get rubbery with cold; coarsely chopped hazelnuts added toastiness and textural interest, something often lacking in dishes of this kind. An “oeuf parfait” was indeed perfectly cooked (at low temperature for a long time); the egg was set on a base of brioche and was surrounded by a true-flavored, slightly frothed mushroom soup/sauce strewn with wild mushrooms. This was all about the mutual support of the inherently complex flavor of mushrooms and the richness of soft-cooked egg - especially the yolk. Both were gently and successfully tweaked brasserie/bistrot standbys.

Oeuf parfait de poule fermière aux champignons des bois. Photograph by Edward Schneider

Grilled main courses at Astair include steaks - rib eye for two or strip loin for one, both from Galician cattle aged for six weeks (right on trend, but no less promising for that) - and charcoal grilled sole. Sauces for these, if you want one (for me, salt is the best sauce), are chosen separately. If I’d been eating a steak and had been forced at gunpoint to pick one, I’d have plumped for the confit shallot sauce.

The main dishes we ordered, however, required no extra sauces: Jackie had been tempted by seared calf’s liver with a vinegar-based pan sauce, but a greater temptation was boudin noir from the south-west French producer Christian Parra, beautifully served on just-right potato purée (very but not ludicrously buttery) and topped with picture-perfect lightly caramelized apple wedges. The casing-less (and hence easy to eat) mixture was uncommonly complex, with a well rounded spice blend setting off multiple organ meats, blood and not-too-finely chopped pork. If you needed to convince a timid dining companion to eat blood sausage, this might be just the version to help you make your case.

Boudin noir Christian Parra. Photograph by Edward Schneider

I ate fish. Or rather I ate glazed root vegetables (légumes de couleur as the menu had it), such as carrots and beets with perfectly sautéed monkfish cheeks. The fish was delicious - tender but with considerable structure - but I’d have been no less happy with just the glistening vegetables in their short, intense tarragon-scented sauce.

Sauté de joue de lotte aux légumes de couleur. Photograph by Edward Schneider

Our desserts were two that we cannot refrain from ordering: a rum baba with citrus; and floating island. The first did not please: the citrus-rum syrup was strangely bitter and strangely un-rummy. But the floating island ranked with the best: in addition to the usual drizzle of caramel, around the meringue “island” were little slabs of crunchy almond nougatine. A clever addition.

Île flottante et nougatine. Photograph Edward Schneider

The night was cold, and it was pouring rain. So imagine how nice it was to emerge from Astair not into the wet chill of the Boulevard Montmartre but into the atmospheric low light of the Passage des Panoramas and to stroll along, window-shopping and looking at other people finishing their dinners. The magic was short-lived: to get into the Metro there was no way to avoid the rain above and the puddles below. Such a pity, but that was not Astair’s fault.

Astair. 19 Passage des Panoramas, 75002 Paris; Metro Richelieu-Drouot or Grands Boulevards; +33 (0) 9 81 29 50 95; www.astair.paris. Open every day from mid-morning (for late breakfast) till after midnight (11:30 p.m. Sunday and Monday); our dinner for two with a bottle of nice wine cost €140 ($160) including tax and service but not optional tip. Lunch prix-fixe from €15 to €25.

Cooking Off the Cuff: What To Do With Leftover Leftover Shepherd’s Pie

Leftover leftover shepherd's pie makes terrific patties/rissoles. Photo by Edward Schneider

When Jackie or I order shepherd’s pie in a restaurant - as we occasionally do at London’s The Ivy - we get a nicely composed portion with neat tiers of well-sauced meat filling and potato topping, sometimes in an individual baking dish. When I make it at home for several people, it is baked in a large oven pan or gratin dish and scooped out onto each diner’s plate, making something of a mess. I don’t care much about the way it looks; what has long annoyed me is that once you broach the pie the under-layer - the meat, vegetables and sauce - oozes out from under the potatoes, undermining the whole construction. Eventually, especially after a second meal of leftovers, this leaves Jackie and me to face a collapsing stratum of mashed potatoes with a little bit of under-gravied filling clinging to its nether surface.

We would usually shove this into the refrigerator or freezer half-hoping that we’d forget about it. But the other day I made a nice shepherd’s pie using Felicity Cloake’s good recipe and another mushroom one for a non-meat-eating guest. We served and enjoyed them with our friends, and served and enjoyed them again the next day with a different friend, then finally were confronted with a tub of mashed potatoes enriched with chopped lamb, vegetables and mushrooms. Staring at this unpromising mass, I realized that if potato croquettes could be made from old mashed potatoes bound with eggs and cheese, then something even more flavorful could be made of this lamb-and-mushroom-enhanced mishmash.

Something like a patty or rissole that would make a fine dinner for two.

It was a cinch: Using one hand (the other I kept as clean as I could), I gently kneaded the leftovers (which measured about 2-1/2 cups - 600 ml - by volume) into an almost homogeneous mixture, leaving occasional pockets of potato and of pie filling. I incorporated a big egg (a double-yolker, as it happened) and a fistful of plain breadcrumbs from the freezer. Of this I made four patties almost an inch (2.5 cm) thick, which I refrigerated until it was time to cook them.

I suppose I could have simply fried them as they were, but as the remaining lamb and mushroom sauce heated through it would liquefy and I’d have had a hard time keeping the four patties from merging into one. So I breaded them using the same breadcrumbs I’d used as a binder (no egg wash was needed; they adhered to the patties perfectly well). This would not prevent the patties from getting very soft as they warmed, but it would provide a crisp surface I’d be able to slide my spatula under to turn the discs.

I pan fried them in a good 1/4 inch (7 mm) of neutral oil, starting with medium heat, and turning it down to medium-low immediately to slowly crisp the coating while warming the patties through. After about 6 minutes, I carefully turned them, fried for another 4 or 5 minutes, then turned them again for just another minute. I drained them on a rack then served them on warmed plates, to be adorned with a little sauce. Many sauces would do (ketchup, steak sauce / brown sauce, tonkatsu sauce), but we used our favorite Momofuku Ssäm sauce, which had the sweet-tart virtues of those other sauces plus sufficient chili to keep us on our toes.

This wasn’t merely better than hiding the leftovers in the freezer; it was a fine lightish dinner on its own terms, with just enough lamb and mushroom flavor to remind us where it had come from.

Restaurant Review: Kerridge’s Bar & Grill, London

Tom Kerridge is one of those chefs who are famous in their home countries but not well known beyond their borders. So the arrival of his first London restaurant made a fair splash in the UK but hasn’t generated much ado elsewhere, except among travelers who follow the British dining scene – and who may have seen Mr. Kerridge on television or traveled 35 miles west of London to one of his Michelin-starred pub-restaurants in the town of Marlow.

Photo by Cristian Barnett

His new restaurant could hardly be less like a pub: Kerridge’s Bar & Grill is in the splendid Corinthia Hotel, in a grand vaulted space the breadth of half a city block, adorned with columns and pilasters. Within this imposing hall, the décor by David Collins Studio contrives to be simultaneously spacious, clubby and cozy, with a good use of leather banquettes to mark off discrete areas in the dining room. A view into the busy kitchen (led by head chef Nick Beardshaw) with its impressive rotisserie, helps define the restaurant. The rotisserie in turn defines quite a lot of the food and yields meats including beef rib, saddle of lamb, stuffed quail and seasonal game.

Glazed lobster Thermidor omelette. Photo by Cristian Barnett

The food at our late-September dinner was mostly terrific. A first course of Glazed Omelette “Lobster Thermidor” caught our eye, and I’m glad it did: Composed in layers, it arrived in a little skillet. The foundation was soft, still slightly runny eggs, which were topped with tender, ocean-flavorful chunks of lobster meat and a lightly cheesed béchamel-cum-hollandaise sauce, all glazed and brown. The lobster was barely cooked: a daring way to present lobster outside of a sushi restaurant. I asked whether customers send it back as underdone, and the able, enthusiastic waiter said they occasionally do, which pains her – and the cooks who have worked hard to get the doneness just right. This dish was perfectly balanced and perfectly delicious. It was also perfectly rich, and we were right to order just one for sharing. (It would make a luxurious main course with a side of excellent french fries and rotisserie vegetables.)

Those vegetables are worth mentioning, in part because they are not actually vegetarian-friendly: They hang around under the roasting meats and grow intense and savory with their juices. Come to think of it, the fries are worth mentioning also: They’re big (so they retain an earthy potato flavor) and are almost uncannily crisp after multiple fryings.

We had them as part of an order of fish and chips, here made with a superior flatfish unavailable on the left side of the Atlantic: brill. Its meaty white flesh is perfect for batter-frying, though it’s too costly to be used in everyday neighborhood fish-and-chips shops (depending on the neighborhood, of course). In a stylish restaurant like Kerridge’s, though, it’s ideal. Along with the fries, the enduringly crisp battered fish comes with three sauces that are references to non-fancy fish and chips: tartare, natch, as well as a fluid version of pease pudding (made with dried peas) and a subtly zesty variant on the curry sauce that’s so popular with takeout fried fish.

Savory pies have always been part of British cooking but have sometimes been undervalued in the more ambitious sort of restaurant. This has changed: Pies are now a Thing, and the pig’s cheek pie by Mr. Kerridge and his chef de cuisine Nick Beardshaw is a beautiful object, if not a perfect one. It is a hefty spheroid whose core is long-cooked pork cheek encased in sausage meat, wrapped in Savoy cabbage leaves and finally enrobed in crisp golden-brown pastry with a whimsical lid that recalls a pig’s snout. There’s a drizzle of well-seasoned sauce and a little pot of creamed potatoes topped with crisp crumbs of black pudding (blood sausage). Despite its diverse strata, the pie grows monotonous half-way through; it comes across as unrelentingly uniform, and there’s a lot of it. More and brighter sauce might add a little needed sparkle, but some of that sparkle belongs in the filling itself. Now, half a pie wouldn’t be monotonous at all, so consider swapping plates with your dining partner at mid point – a companionable act in any case.

Tom Kerridge and head chef Nick Beardshaw. Photo by Cristian Barnett

When it’s time for dessert, though, you will not want to share your blackcurrant soufflé if it’s on the menu and you’ve been wise enough to order it. The fruit is of an intensity rarely encountered in a soufflé. The accompanying cream (made of blackcurrant leaves, an ingredient you don’t see every day) makes the dish smoother and creamier. The deep berry flavor is lifted by a fine lemon sherbet. A perfect dessert.

It’s a fact of life that the dishes that sing out from Mr. Kerridge’s menu are the richest ones. If you’re determined to eat less overwhelmingly, there are a few first courses from which you could compose a satisfying meal, such as salmon with apple pancake and caviar or perhaps coronation chicken terrine with mango and celery. But, no: I wouldn’t have wanted to forgo that lobster omelette – or indeed the first half of that pig’s cheek pie.

Kerridge’s Bar and Grill, 10 Northumberland Avenue (Corinthia Hotel), London WC2N 5AE; +44 (0) 20 7321 3244; https://www.kerridgesbarandgrill.co.uk/. Open for lunch and dinner every day; bar open all day from noon. Dinner for two, including a nice bottle of wine, about £220 ($280)

Originally posted at The Daily Meal (https://www.thedailymeal.com/recipes/tuna-braised-ratatouille-recipe) and reposted here for EU readers who are unable to view that site.

 Tuna Braised In Ratatouille

By

Edward Schneider

Cooking Off the Cuff: some noble uses for summertime leftovers

Edward Schneider

When summer squash (zucchini; courgettes), eggplant (aubergines), tomatoes (tomatoes) and peppers are at the apex of ripeness, it’s hard not to think of Provençal-type vegetable stews fragrant with olive oil, onions, garlic and herbs. Let’s call them ratatouille, though that will expose us to outraged criticism by people with strong (though differing) opinions about the precise use of that term. Anyway, I’m not going to tell you how to make ratatouille: Open up a cookbook or a Web browser and you’ll soon have a nice recipe. Just be sure to use plenty of good oil and to cook your onions long enough to rid them of harshness.
Whatever recipe you use, and no matter how small you try to keep the quantities, you will surely have leftovers, and leftover ratatouille is a wonderful thing. At room temperature, deposited onto grilled bread, it is one of the best of summer dinners. Even a little bit can be eked out with pasta, or reheated with scrambled eggs – or simmered down with extra oil and some smoked paprika to form a sofrito as the underlay of a not-so-traditional paella.
But when we saw some really nice tuna at the farmers’ market, Jackie and I simultaneously thought how good it would be with the last of our leftover ratatouille from a few days earlier. In Mediterranean mode, it would not be served rare, much less raw in the center: For maximal flavor, it would be cooked though, but cooked with care so that it would not become dry, and once it was lightly browned it would braise gently in that oily, juicy ratatouille with just a splash of wine to add acidity and another layer of flavor.
It worked just as planned – as, I confess, we knew it would, because this is a dish we eat almost every summer, sometimes replacing the tuna with swordfish.
So next time you make a panful of ratatouille, throw in an extra few handfuls of vegetables to guarantee that there will be enough left over for this fish dinner.
(Note that other stewed summer vegetable mixtures can work well too: South-Western French piperade and Hungarian lecsó to name two that lean on tomatoes and peppers for their deliciousness.)

2 Servings

Ingredients

• A 1-inch-thick tuna steak – 8 to 10 oz should suffice for two portions, but feel free to use a larger piece if you have a keen appetite
• Extra-virgin olive oil to coat the cooking surface of a 9- or 10-inch skillet
• 1/4 Cup white wine
• 1-1/2 cups ratatouille or similar summer-vegetable stew
• 1/3 Cup chopped parsley (approximately)
• 1 Teaspoon chopped fresh thyme leaves
• Optional: a handful of pitted olives, halved
• Salt and black pepper

Directions

Trim the tuna if necessary; pat it dry and season it with salt and pepper. Heat the oil in a 9- or 10-inch skillet over medium-high heat. Add the tuna and cook 2 minutes on each side, until lightly browned.
Off the heat (to minimize splattering), add the wine; return to the heat and cook until the wine no longer smells raw, 15 to 30 seconds.
Add the ratatouille, distributing it around the fish; lift the fish with a spatula to allow a little of the juices to slip underneath too. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cook for about 4 minutes, partially covered. Start checking for doneness after 3 minutes: pierce the fish with a cake tester or thin toothpick; for tuna that is cooked through but still moist, catch it at the moment when the cake tester meets little resistance as it enters.
Remove the fish to a plate or cutting board and cut it into two portions. If you find it underdone (which, truth to tell, would be no sin, though not my preference in a dish like this) return the fish to the simmering ratatouille for another minute or so.
Check the ratatouille (which is now your sauce) for seasoning and stir in the parsley and thyme, and the olives if you’re using them. Divide the mixture between two warmed plates and set a portion of fish atop each. You can finish the fish itself with a sprinkling of crunchy sea salt if you like. Corn pancakes are a good accompaniment; you can make them in advance and reheat them in a skillet or in the oven. Steamed new potatoes (simply salted, with no butter or oil) would be lovely too.

Pasta With Buttery Pea-Tomato Sauce

Originally posted at The Daily Meal, and reposted here for European Union readers unable to access that website.

 

Pasta With Buttery Pea-Tomato Sauce

By

Edward Schneider

Cooking Off the Cuff: A small handful of ingredients for a quick summer dinner

Edward Schneider

As we pant in anticipation of height-of-summer produce, decent – sometimes just shy of excellent – greenhouse-grown tomatoes are plentiful in our local farmers’ markets, and so are shelling peas. I rarely cook peas with tomatoes, except in a South Asian dish like mattar paneer, and this confluence of crops would usually go by unremarked in our house. But it was precisely because Jackie and I had recently eaten a dish akin to mattar paneer that the peas in the fridge and the tomatoes on the countertop seemed to have been made for each other.
Peas and butter are made for each other too, and so are butter and tomatoes (once you can see beyond the Mediterranean olive-oil model): a smooth, delicate tomato sauce glossed and lightly thickened with butter is a delight with almost anything.
Use the best-tasting tomatoes you can find: Mine were a mixture of two big, gnarled heirloom varieties – lots of flesh and flavor – and a couple of handfuls of extraordinarily sweet-savory, thin-fleshed cherry tomatoes (the best I know are from Stokes Farm at the Union Square Greenmarket if you are shopping in New York). Together these made a bigger batch of juicy puree than I needed for this dish; it did not go to waste.
Once you’ve processed the tomatoes and shelled the peas, both of which can be done even a day in advance, you can finish the sauce in the time it takes to boil the pasta, so this lends itself to last-minute planning. Just make sure you have a suitable short pasta shape in the house: You’ll want something that can be eaten with a spoon so that every mouthful will have its share of peas.

2 Servings

Ingredients

• 2 portions pasta – a short shape rather than spaghetti or its kin
• 2 Pounds flavorful tomatoes (see head note)
• 1 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• 1 Cup peas, preferably freshly shelled
• A handful fresh mint leaves, rinsed
• 2 Tablespoons butter
• 1/4 Cup grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese
• Salt and (possibly) black pepper

Directions

Make the tomato puree. Start by putting a pot of water on to boil. (It can be your pasta pot if you’re not planning to make the tomato puree in advance.) With a sharp knife, cut a shallow X into the smooth end of each tomato. Lower them into the furiously boiling water (in more than one batch, most likely), leave them in for 15 seconds, then remove them with a skimmer or slotted spoon and place them in a bowl of cold water to cool – or right onto your counter if you don’t mind handling hot tomatoes. Slip the skins off, then chop the tomatoes medium fine, discarding the tough area at the stem end.
Put the chopped tomatoes into a bowl, sprinkle generously with salt and stir in the olive oil. Set aside for 20 or 30 minutes to let the juices flow, then crank the tomatoes through a food mill using the finest screen, which will create a seedless puree. This will be of a thin consistency but will be full of flavor.
Shell your peas. (I won’t say that frozen peas are a good alternative, but if you are going to use them behind my back they don’t need to be defrosted, much less shelled.)
When dinner time approaches, bring a big pot of salted water to the boil for the pasta. Put 1-1/2 cups tomato puree into a shallow saucepan or so-called chef’s pan (large enough to eventually hold the pasta) along with a few fresh mint leaves; bring to the boil, lower the heat and reduce to about 1 cup.
Put the pasta in to boil. Add the peas to the reduced tomato puree and simmer until not quite done. When the pasta is about a minute from completion, drain it and stir it into the sauce; simmer, stirring repeatedly, until the pasta is as you like it, 45 to 60 seconds probably.
Stir in the butter; it will combine with the tomato puree to yield a smooth sauce – not a lot of it, but sufficient to coat the pasta and leave a little puddle at the bottom of the bowl. Finish with a few more mint leaves and the parmesan; check for salt and pepper (I used no pepper, but you may miss it). Serve in warmed bowls; you can bring additional grated cheese to the table but probably won’t need it.

Bluefish with Beets and Rhubarb: Sweet without sugar; tart without vinegar

First posted at The Daily Meal, and now reposted for readers in European Union countries, where that website is unavailable.

Bluefish with Beets and Rhubarb

Jun 28, 2018 | 10:26 am

By

Edward Schneider

Cooking Off the Cuff: sweet without sugar; tart without vinegar

Edward Schneider

Bluefish is a favorite in our house. It combines full flavor with more delicacy than it is given credit for, and it is fished in our Long Island waters. Jackie and I had our first of 2018 on the eve of the summer solstice, at a moment when our local farmers’ market also yielded abundant beets and no-longer-quite-so-abundant rhubarb. Since tart or sweet-tart accompaniments are a fine thing with tolerably fatty fishes, I wondered whether the sweetness of the beets and the tartness of the rhubarb would do the job without the use of sugar or vinegar/citrus.
I wondered too whether I’d be able to attain the texture I was imagining: rhubarb that hadn’t collapsed into a mush, and beets that retained some crunch but were tender enough to make a nice mouthful with the juicy fish. Of the latter I was confident: Years ago I learned that cut-up beets can be sautéed without prior roasting or steaming, and since then I’ve repeatedly used them, jazzed up with vinegar, alongside fish. The open question was the 3/8-inch dice of rhubarb, and a test run in a greased frying pan yielded the pleasantly surprising outcome that just over a minute on the fire would give me the crunchy but cooked rhubarb I was looking for.
A few other ingredients would be needed to round out the flavor: dill because of its Eastern European association with beets; mint as an herb that is marvelous with stronger-flavored fish; and fresh ginger for its own flavor and for heat to balance the sweetness and tartness. It worked as well as I’d hoped, and, although it was devised for fish, the beet-rhubarb mixture would be delicious with grilled or roasted chicken too.
The sauce/accompaniment should be prepared just before you cook the fish: if it sits around, the rhubarb will turn mushy in texture, though the flavor will be fine.

2 servings

Ingredients

• 2 portions fillet of bluefish, skin on (a 5 ounce portion of this substantial fish is ample), or substitute mackerel
• 1 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil or butter
• 3 Ounces rhubarb (preferably 2 thin stalks), ends trimmed
• A small chunk of fresh ginger, peeled and finely grated (1 or 2 heaping tsp, depending on how potent the ginger is)
• 2 Tablespoons white wine
• 1/3 Cup finely chopped fresh herbs: equal parts dill and mint
• 1 Tablespoon butter
• Olive oil for cooking the fish
• Water
• Salt

Directions

Run your fingers up and down the flesh side of the fish to check for bones; use tweezers or pliers to pull out any you find. Dry the fish well and keep cold while you make the accompaniment.
Trim and peel the beets. Cut them lengthwise into quarters or sixths depending on size, then crosswise into slices a little more than 1/8 inch thick. In a shallow saucepan or a skillet over medium-low heat, warm the oil or butter, add the beets, sprinkle with salt and, stirring from time to time, cook until crisp-tender, about 4 to 6 minutes.
Meanwhile, wash the rhubarb, dry it and cut it into 3/8-inch pieces: if the stalks are slim, simply cut crosswise; if thicker, first cut in half lengthwise. Add to the pan along with the grated ginger. Stir for one minute, until the rhubarb is hot but still crunchy (it will soften as the cooking progresses).
Add the wine and boil for 20 or 30 seconds or until it no longer smells raw and harsh. Stir in the herbs and enough water, about 1/4 cup, to create an intense beet-red sauce, then stir in the butter to give it consistency and gloss. Check for salt.
In a non-stick skillet over medium-high heat, heat enough olive oil to coat the bottom of the pan. Make sure the fish is dry, salt it generously, and cook it skin side down for 4 minutes, until the skin is crisp. Lightly pressing the fish down into the pan will enhance the crispness. Flip the fish and cook for another 2 to 3 minutes (or longer if your fillets are thicker than about an inch); check for doneness by inserting a metal skewer or cake tester into the thickest part of the filet; it should enter the flesh with minimal resistance. Bluefish should be cooked through but must remain juicy.
Reheat the beet-rhubarb mixture and check once more for salt; divide it between two warmed plates and top it with a piece of fish, skin side up.
If corn has arrived in your local market, you might make a few corn pancakes as a side dish.