Speaking of Red Snapper
(Not that I promote fish-eating)
nytimes.com
When the Whole Is Greater Than Its Parts
By MATT LEE and TED LEE
WHEN a friend presented a 16-inch red drum fish along with the customary bottle of wine at our last dinner party, we were grateful, if slightly intimidated. The fish was glistening, freshly caught and expertly gutted, scaled and cleaned, but we had always perceived a whole fish to be a capital P production, a show-stopping centerpiece better left to the skilled chefs at a Chinese or Greek banquet hall. And it was looking us square in the eye.
As we would soon discover, cooking a fish on the bone — with its head and tail fin intact — is among the most rewarding ways to experience fish at home, producing a clarity of flavor and a texture unrivaled by the precut, disembodied fillet. Moreover, cooking a whole fish is a breeze, far easier than our usual Sunday pork shoulder and on a par with a typical Tuesday roast chicken.
There are in fact many reasons to forgo limp fillets and reach for the whole creature, but foremost among them is flavor. Sandwiched between the fatty skin and the gelatin-rich backbone, the flesh cooks to a subtle sweetness and delicacy that is instantly, recognizably superior to all home-cooked fish that have come before. It is a revelation as stunning as the first taste of a genuinely fresh egg yolk. Chefs who cook whole fish daily at their restaurants agree.
"The flavor of whole fish is as true as possible to its natural taste," said Rick Moonen, the chef at the Manhattan seafood temple RM. "So when you cook it, you want to season it as simply as possible: olive oil, salt, pepper and lemon."
Grilling a whole fish that has been brushed with olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper is a snap, and it achieves that perfect contrast of crispy skin and flaky flesh. But grilling outdoors in midwinter is difficult, particularly this winter, so we tried another, even simpler method: pan-frying whole rainbow trout that we had lightly dusted with cornstarch, salt and pepper. After just five minutes on each side (for a three-quarter-pound trout), the skin became beautifully blistered and golden while the meat within remained terrifically moist.
Oven-roasting a whole snapper at a low temperature over a bed of sturdy, aromatic vegetables like fennel, onion and carrots is another excellent way to ease into the whole fish fetish. And the vegetables do triple duty: they keep the fish from sticking to the bottom of the pan, they impart a hint of flavor to the flesh and most important, they soak up the juices the snapper releases, becoming a delicious side dish or garnish.
Steaming fish on top of the stove is nearly as easy, and the classic Chinese-style whole fish steamed with ginger, scallion and soy sauce is our preferred method.
No special steaming apparatus is required, said Anita Lo, the chef at Annisa in Greenwich Village, who offered us her home recipe. Ms. Lo, who often cooks locally caught black sea bass, simply uses a pie plate set in a covered pot large enough to accommodate the plate. She puts a thick ring of crumpled aluminum foil in the bottom of the pot to lift the plate a half-inch or so above a thin layer of boiling water.
Whichever method you choose, one cooking tip is universal. To ensure that the fish cooks evenly — so that the thin portions near the tail are not overcooked by the time the thicker parts are done — make a few diagonal slashes down to the bone, a couple inches apart, across the broad middle of the fish, on both sides.
Besides exposing the interior of the fish to the heat, these incisions serve as a convenient visual temperature gauge. You want to cook the fish only until the flesh nearest the bone turns opaque. While overcooking is a possibility with whole fish, you can always remove it from the oven and check the doneness of the meat closest to the bone.
Jasper White, the chef and an owner of Summer Shack restaurants in Boston and Cambridge, Mass., and Uncasville, Conn., told us, "Don't be afraid to peek." Compared to the vigilance required to cook a tuna fillet to medium-rare, cooking whole fish is nearly foolproof.
A fear of sharp bones may account for much of the intimidation home cooks feel about whole fish. Fear not, say the experts.
"Fish have such a simple, two-dimensional bone structure," Mr. White said. (He later excepted shad from the generalization). "A chicken is much more difficult to bone." And after boning no fewer than 12 fish in a single week, we found it to be, in fact, far easier to remove the flaky meat from a fish's flank than it is to get the good stuff off a sinewy chicken leg.
Three simple cuts help lift the fillet cleanly from the spine, leaving most — though not all — of the bones behind. The first is a vertical cut from a point just behind the top of the head down toward the belly. The second is a short vertical cut through the body of the fish just forward of the tail fin. The third is a shallow incision that traces the top ridge of the fish and connects the first two cuts.
Gentle pressure with a dull knife, a spatula or even the back of a spoon will release portions of the fillet from the flat bone structure. After removing one side of the fish, gently lift the backbone, head and tail, leaving the bottom fillet behind.
Picking the carcass clean is, to us, a large part of the appeal of preparing a whole fish. You discover that different areas of the same fish can taste as different as one variety of fish tastes from another.
There are two schools of etiquette for dealing with the inevitable bone in the mouth. One says you push the bone with your tongue onto a fork, then transfer it to your plate. The other holds that removing a bone discreetly with thumb and forefinger is acceptable.
Buying fish may be another source of the trepidation we once felt ("It's half the work of cooking whole fish," Ms. Lo said), but here again, whole fish has a distinct advantage over fillets. It is far easier to determine the quality of a whole fish because all of the indicators of freshness, particularly the eyes and gills, are intact.
"The gills are a giveaway," Mr. White said. "They should be shiny, bright red, and odorless. Eyes have a clear sheen when they're really fresh. After a couple days, they cloud over."
Mary Redding, the chef at Mary's Fish Camp in the West Village, advised that in addition to checking eyes and gills, consumers should "feel the pressure of the fish beneath your fingers; it should be nice and firm." Any "mushiness" in the body of the fish, she added, is a sign of age or that the fish was bruised when it was netted or in transport to market.
Now that we are familiar with it, we consider the ritual of purchasing whole fish to be its own reward, a minor victory in the daily struggle for self-determination. Simply make your choice and level your index finger, and the white-jacketed person behind the counter lavishes immediate attention on your selection, scraping the scales from the fish, gutting it, trimming the fins and finally cleaning it with a high pressure jet. We tip him or her a dollar for the pleasure. Wrapped and labeled, the fish is ready to party at your house, usually just a day or two after it was plucked from the ocean.
In terms of size, a relatively small 1 1/2- to 2-pound fish (before cleaning), a little over a foot in length, serves two adults and fits in most 10- to 12-inch household pots and pans (the tail may hang over the edge of the roasting pan or get tucked inside the steamer). Sweet and firm white-fleshed fish like branzino, snapper and trout, or the more robustly flavored black sea bass, orata, pompano or porgy available in the market now, are all great choices for winter steaming and baking.
A certain squeamishness inhibits some people from preparing whole fish, even if they would be otherwise inclined to enjoy it. Staring dinner in the eye, for better or worse, punctures the precious abstraction we have created to make our food — and us — seem less animal. In a restaurant setting, the added peer pressure and a desire not to appear too gluttonous (or too familiar with rusticity), may account for the low popularity of whole fish.
On this count, though, familiarity makes all the difference. To Ms. Redding of Mary's Fish Camp, who has seen countless schools of fish pass by on plates, the image of the whole fish is reason itself to serve it.
"It makes such a impressive presentation, compared to a fillet," she said. "It's exciting to bring it out. It's a fish, and it's just gorgeous." |
