Pawaru-Grahmata

№ 81III. nodaļa

Skalas, kamas, grabas, butes jeb lestes vārīt

Poached flatfish with sorrel sauce or lemon sauce

  • Serves 4
  • about 45 minutes
  • Melnraksts · vēl nav izmēģināts

1796Skallas, Kammas, Grabbas, Buttes jeb Lestes wahriht.

Modernizētslpp. 177–178 · PDF 191–192
4 porcijas

The book gives 2 egg yolks for the sorrel sauce and 4 or 5 for the lemon sauce; everything else below is ours.

Method

5 soļi
  1. Clean the fish: gut it if the fishmonger hasn't, rinse it and cut off the fins with scissors. If you can, pull off the dark skin on the upper side; on plaice and flounder it often won't come away raw, and the book says you can do it after cooking instead. Cut large fish, such as turbot, into portions through the bone.
  2. Bring a wide pan of water to the boil with the salt, lower the heat until the water barely trembles and slide in the fish. Poach for 8–12 minutes, depending on thickness (fillets 4–6 minutes), until the flesh is opaque and just comes away from the bone, about 60 °C in the thickest part. Don't let it boil hard, or the fish breaks up.
  3. Meanwhile make the sauce. Sorrel sauce: wash the sorrel well, strip out the tough stalks and chop the leaves finely. Put them in a small covered pan over low heat for 3–5 minutes, until they collapse in their own juice and turn olive-green. Add the butter, flour, yolks, water or stock, mace, sugar and currants and stir over low heat until the sauce thickens and just begins to bubble. Taste for sugar and salt.
  4. Lemon sauce: put the butter, yolks, flour, bay leaf, mace and lemon zest in a small heavy pan and stir them together with a spoon. Stir in the water, vinegar and lemon juice. Set over low heat and stir all the time until thick, 5–8 minutes; don't let it boil hard. Take out the bay leaf.
  5. Lift out the fish with a slotted spatula and drain it. If you haven't skinned it, peel off the dark skin now. Lay it in a warm dish and pour the sauce over, or serve the sauce separately.

Notes

What the book says vs. what we added

the book has you clean the fish, cut off the fins, pull off the black skin (after cooking if it won't come off raw), cut large fish into pieces and boil them in salted water. For the first sauce, sorrel is stewed in a covered pot in its own juice, then washed butter, a little flour, 2 yolks, a little water or meat broth, mace, sugar and currants go in and it boils until thick. The second sauce stirs washed butter, 4 or 5 beaten yolks, flour, bay leaves, mace and lemon peel together and adds water, wine vinegar and lemon juice until thick. The amounts, times and temperatures are ours.

The fish

the five names in the title are all flatfish. Bute and leste mean flounder; skala is a dialect word for plaice (plekste); kama, a dialect word for "stone flounder", is probably turbot; and graba is a dialect word for flounder, especially a lean one caught in spring. Any flatfish works: plaice, flounder, dab, brill or turbot.

Washed butter

the book uses butter kneaded in cold water to rinse out salt and buttermilk. Unsalted butter is the modern equivalent.

Yolks and boiling

both sauces are thickened with egg yolks and a little flour. The flour helps keep them from curdling, which is why the book can let them boil; still, keep the heat low and stir all the time.

Sweet and sour

sorrel with sugar and currants is a typical 18th-century sweet-sour sauce for fish, not a mistake.

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