Around My French Table (57 page)

Pour out the butter remaining in the skillet and give the skillet a quick wipe with a paper towel. Return the skillet to medium heat and drop in the remaining 6 tablespoons butter. Cook the butter, swirling the pan, until it starts to turn a light brown—you might just catch the scent of hazelnuts. Add the vinegar and swirl the pan, then stir in the mustard, cornichons, and capers. Pull the skate out of the oven, spoon over the sauce, and head for the table.

MAKES 4 SERVINGS

SERVING
It's always nice to give the skate a soft pillow to rest on: think mashed potatoes (
[>]
) or Celery Root Puree (
[>]
). Choose something on the subtle side, and don't go for anything salty, since the vinegar, cornichons, and capers have enough to carry the plate.

STORING
Eat the skate as soon as it's sauced, and don't give a thought to leftovers.

BONNE IDÉE
Poached Skate and Beurre Noisette.
Put the skate in a high-sided skillet or a Dutch oven and cover with cold water. Slice 2 peeled carrots, 1 onion, and 1 celery stalk and add them to the pot, along with a couple of black peppercorns, 2 bay leaves, and a pinch of salt. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer gently until the skate is cooked through and opaque; check after 10 minutes. Carefully lift the skate with a slotted spatula onto a heated platter and cover lightly. To make the sauce, melt 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter in a skillet over low heat until it bubbles and foams and turns a light nutty brown. Pour in ¼ cup sherry vinegar. Swirl and drop in 3 to 4 tablespoons rinsed capers. Spoon the sauce over the skate and serve immediately.

D
ISHES LIKE THIS ONE—
a light, elegant fish mousse filled with lemony spinach, rolled into a chubby sausage shape, and steamed—used to be prepared by chefs in tall white toques working in grand French restaurants surrounded by scores of apprentices, who could do the kind of tedious work once required to get the mousse perfectly smooth. Now we press the button on the food processor, and in under five minutes, it's done . . . not that you have to tell anyone.

I make these roulades with cod, but you can use any mild-flavored white fish. I stuff them with a quickly made mix of fresh spinach (you can use frozen), onion, garlic, and the peel from a small preserved lemon, but, again, you can play around with this. Because the mousse is so light and its texture so smooth, you don't want anything that can't be pureed, but you do want something with a little personality. Chard, basil, arugula, roasted peppers, sun-dried tomatoes, even tapenade are all good starting points for the filling.

This recipe is in the spirit of Lyon's famed pike dumplings,
quenelles de brocket,
which are poached and then finished in any of a number of ways: with Nantua sauce, based on béchamel; classic béchamel; or beurre blanc.
Chez moi,
I use a very thin sauce of fresh tomatoes and lemon, but just a drizzle of fruity olive oil or a bit of pesto is fine too. If you want something gorgeous, use a few spoonfuls of Cheating-on-Winter Pea Soup (
[>]
) as the sauce.

TO MAKE THE OPTIONAL SAUCE:
Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium-low heat. Add the tomatoes and garlic and cook, stirring, for about 8 minutes, until the tomatoes are softened.

Spoon the sauce into a food processor (a mini will work for this) or blender and puree until it's as smooth as you'd like it—it can be a little chunky, if that's your preference. Toss in the preserved lemon peel and pulse briefly, then season with salt and pepper.
(The sauce can be made up to 1 day ahead and refrigerated.)

TO MAKE THE FILLING:
Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Toss in the onion and garlic and cook, stirring, just until they soften a bit, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the spinach and water and continue to cook and stir until the spinach wilts and softens, about 2 minutes.

Using a slotted spoon or a skimmer, lift the spinach out of the skillet, allowing it to drain, and onto a cutting board. Finely chop the spinach, then put it into a bowl, stir in the preserved lemon peel, and season with salt and pepper.

TO MAKE THE ROULADES:
Cut the cod into small pieces and put them in a food processor, along with the egg whites and cream. Pulse and then process, scraping down the sides of the bowl frequently, until you have a thick, smooth, but very sticky mousse. Season with salt and lots of pepper.

For each roulade, tear off a piece of plastic wrap that's about a foot long and position it with a long side toward you. Using a rubber spatula, put one quarter of the fish mousse in the center of the plastic and spread it into a rectangle about 3 × 5 inches (long side toward you). It will be pretty thin and it probably won't be very even, but that's okay. Spoon one quarter of the spinach filling lengthwise across the center of the mousse, cajoling the filling into a band that fills the center third of the rectangle. Using the plastic to help you, roll the package into a sausage. Because the mousse is so sticky, you probably won't be able to completely hide the filling inside the sausage, but it's fine if you can see a strip of spinach peeking out the ends of the mousse. Draw the plastic up around the roulade and tighten and twist it at the ends, like a firecracker. Repeat with the remaining mousse and filling, making 4 roulades.
(The roulades can be made up to 4 hours ahead and refrigerated.)

When you're ready to cook the roulades, set up a steamer: put a little water in the bottom of a pot and place a rack or steaming tray above it, or use a pasta pot with an insert, and bring to a boil. Place the quartet of roulades on the steamer, cover the pot, and steam for 10 minutes, at which point the mousse will feel springy to the touch.

Meanwhile, if you made the sauce, reheat it over gentle heat or in a microwave oven.

Gently transfer the roulades to a board (they're pretty fragile) and use scissors to snip the plastic so that you can peel it away. With a sharp knife and a gentle motion, slash each roulade diagonally into quarters, taking care not to cut all the way through.

If you're using the sauce, spoon a thin layer of it into the bottom of four warm shallow soup plates, gently fan the roulades out, and place them on top of the sauce. If you're using pesto or olive oil, fan the roulades and drizzle the pesto or oil over them.

MAKES 4 SERVINGS

SERVING
I don't usually serve anything on the same plate as the roulades or even alongside them. They're so dramatic that they can hold center stage on their own.

STORING
You can make the roulades a few hours ahead of time and keep them refrigerated until ready to steam. Leftover roulades can be chilled and served over salad the next day.

W
ITH ITS TRANSLUCENT WHITE MEAT
and firm texture, monkfish has sometimes been called "poor man's lobster." (Because of its diet of shellfish, it even tastes faintly like lobster.) An ugly fish, it was almost never found on restaurant menus in America and only rarely in France, where chefs, like home cooks, might prepare it for their families, but not their guests. Now, a decade or so later, monkfish, or
lotte,
is so popular that it costs more than lobster!

Like lobster,
lotte
takes to gentle cooking and works well with vegetables and herbs. Here medallions of monkfish, cut from the tail, are quickly sautéed and served with a light carrot sauce, an accompaniment that's really good with other kinds of fish and shellfish, including shrimp, scallops, and even flounder fillets (see Bonne Idée).

While chefs vie for monkfish cheeks and liver, it's the tail that's the meatiest and most prized part of the fish. It should not be cooked until it has been skinned, and trust me, you don't want to be the one doing the skinning—ask your fishmonger to take on the task.

TO MAKE THE CARROTS:
Put the carrot juice, 1 tablespoon of the butter, the olive oil, and rosemary in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Add the carrots, season with salt and pepper, cover the pan, reduce the heat to low, and cook at a simmer for 10 minutes.

Remove the lid and, still over low heat, continue to cook the carrots until they're tender enough to be pierced easily with the tip of a knife. Take the pan off the burner.
(The carrots can be made to this point up to 3 hours ahead, covered, and refrigerated.)

MEANWHILE, MAKE THE MONKFISH:
Place the bacon in a large skillet over medium heat and cook until the bacon is browned on one side. Carefully turn the strips over and cook until browned on the second side. Lift the bacon onto a plate lined with a double layer of paper towels, and blot away as much fat as you can (set the skillet aside). Cut the bacon into thin strips or crumble it.

Pour off all but about 2 teaspoons of the fat from the skillet. Add the butter and put the skillet over medium-high heat. When the bubbles from the melted butter have subsided, slip in the pieces of monkfish. Cook for 4 minutes, then flip the pieces over, season with salt and pepper, and cook for another 4 minutes or so—you want the fish to be brown on the outside and opaque in the center. Remove the fish from the skillet and keep it lightly covered in a warm place while you finish the carrots (a matter of minutes).

TO FINISH THE CARROTS
: Cut the remaining tablespoon of cold butter into 3 pieces. Bring the carrots back to a boil, then, using a slotted spoon, transfer the carrots to a bowl. Remove the saucepan from the heat and, one by one, swirl in the pieces of butter. Taste for salt and pepper and remove the rosemary sprigs.

Divide the carrots among four warm dinner plates. Spoon over some of the sauce, top the carrots with the monkfish, drizzle with the remaining sauce, and finish with the bacon bits.

MAKES 4 SERVINGS

SERVING
If you want to make this special dish even more special, start with a spoonful of Celery Root Puree (
[>]
) or mashed potatoes (
[>]
) on each plate, then add the carrots, monkfish, sauce, and bacon.

STORING
You can make the carrots a few hours ahead of time and then, right before serving, reheat them and finish the sauce with the last tablespoon of butter.

BONNE IDÉE
Scallops, Shrimp, or Flounder with Double Carrots.
You can replace the monkfish medallions with sea scallops—figure 4 scallops per person and cook them for just 2 minutes on a side; with jumbo shrimp—figure about 5 per person—cook for about 2 minutes on a side; or 4 flounder fillets, 4 to 5 ounces each. For flounder, pat the fillets dry, dredge them in flour seasoned with salt and pepper, and sauté them until they are golden on both sides and just cooked through, about 3 minutes on a side.