Mullet

I went fishing again on Monday; a pastime that has the ability to make me feel uniquely foolish. In spite of this – or maybe even because of it – I came home with a couple of beauties!

The grey mullet looks like a softy. Seaweed eating, with big rubbery lips, and the nice but dim expression of a clodhopping puppy, it’s difficult to imagine a more benign fish. They are beautifully striped along the length of the body, and look a bit like a divvy version of the American striped bass.

Here in France they have a reputation for being terrible to eat, as they are the fish one sees mooching around the port eating chips and sewage pipe sea lettuce. Fair enough, I don’t think I’d eat one of them either, but my fish were caught, with a bit of bread on a hook, on an inlet, just 100 yards from the open sea. The first was beautiful, with a flavour and texture very similar to bass. Raw, I could taste the seaweed diet, but once cooked it was delicate, with deep white flesh, and really superb. We’ll have the other one tonight! Yum! It will be interesting to see if there is a disintegration in quality of the flavour between the first, eaten before rigor mortis even had chance to set in, and the second, eaten 2 days later, after the rigour has waned (I hope. As I write it’s still stiff – is that bad?). It’s still spanking fresh by the standards of shop-bought fish. I’m sure fish mongers often deliberately store fish before sale. Is this because they develop flavour, like beef? I’m afraid it’s a bit of a mystery to me...

Of course I didn’t actually catch them. Have you not been paying attention? I stood by the water, not knowing what I was doing, doubtless with a particularly amusing choice of bait for the situation. A man who’d been set up nearby came over and offered me a share of his catch – his wife would moan if he came back with too much! Haha! What a nice man. (He must have had his eye on me. Did he take pity because I looked like a tool?) I sheepishly but gratefully accepted. He told me about the bread as bait, and that the mullet puts up a spiffing fight, making the fishing a crack-a-laugh! Combined with their dim-witted appearance, this made me feel a bit sad to be bopping it on the head, slicing through its gills to drain the blood before taking it home in a carrier bag. Not sad enough to not do it, I might add, but still...

I can't not make cevice when I get a bit of fish as fresh as this - lemon, cumin, garlic, chillies, shallots and corriander. I've not tried it with grey mullet before: it worked a treat!

Main course was the thick end of the fillet fried in some bacon fat and served with some simple greens. Briefly boiled brouttes*, dressed with some warm olive oil and softened garlic. Clean and tasty - a top way to welcome the beginnings of spring. 

Two days later: no noticeable deterioration in flavour.

Dot said she fancied ginger. It turns out a ginger mullet can be a winner! A few slivers of chilli, garlic and shallots to acompany the ginger, sandwiched between the fish, which was steamed for maybe five minutes. Plonked on top of some moroccan-style chick peas with olive oil and cumin. We had a little sweet and sour dressing made from white vinegar, sweet soy, a drop of nam pla (fish sauce), a scattering of the aromatics that stuffed the mullet, plus some herbs for freshness - mint, basil and corriander.

All of these dishes would be great with bass, but honestly I thought mullet was at least as good.

I might go fishing more often!!

* Young shoots of cabbage. They are pleasantly similar to purple sprouting brocolli. Yum!

A bit nipsville

We’ve had a fortnight of serious cold, which as I sit down to write about warming food, appears to have abruptly ended. The beautifully odd frozen fountain on the 18^th century square where we live has melted without me having got round to taking a photo. It grew, splash by splash, as the cold days passed, to a spectacle of ogreish deformity. It was a sight to see... Sorry.

Red cabbage has helped keep us warm. Always cheeringly colourful, it can do sharp, spicy and crisp as a counterpoint to a calm, warming stew; or still spicy but less sour, sweet with apples and a tickle of muscovado – warming on its own, but at its best with the magnificence that is a confit duck leg; or enriched with duck fat and onions, and simmered with wine or beer. Served in a great steaming mound with smoked sausage, spuds and bacon, all cooked in the same pot. A dish to warm like a bonfire on even the most nippy of nights.

The latter is a choucroute for people who don’t like choucroute or sauerkraut, as the germans call it. It is my way of not needing to buy the perfectly white, fermented cabbage from Alsace, which is a strange taste I’ve only recently, gradually, acquired. I served it with some great cheap bits of confit duck at my last cave soirée. Still flavoured with juniper and cloves, it is sweet where the proper choucroute is sour. And, whereas the cooking liquor is traditionally strained off, I like mine, so I include it as a thin but rich and tasty gravy. It's almost garbure, the  thick stew/soup from the Bearn region, made from duck and cabbage. Whatever you call it, it'll warm the cockles of your heart!

Red Choucroute

½ to 1 whole red cabbage, depending on the size and how many you want to feed), thinly shredded

3 or 5 onions

A couple of cloves of garlic

An extremely large dollop of duck fat

1 bottle of cheap, very dry white wine. Or continental-type lager, 750ml.

Some kind of stock, homemade is best, obviously, but a cube will do. Failing that, a bit of water.

A teaspoon of juniper berries, crushed up

A couple of whole cloves

A tablespoon of coriander seeds (if you have them – you can do without)

A bay leaf

Salt and pepper

A firm-fleshed potato per person

3 or 4 carrots

Some or all of the following including at least one smokey thing:

A chunk of smoked or unsmoked pork belly (streaky bacon)

Smoked sausages

A ham hock (simmered separately for an hour or so – in water with a bay leaf, onion, carrot, peppercorns, a few fennel seeds and a bit of garlic. This will make great stock. You can use some of it below, and make soup from the rest)

Confit duck (I use wings and neck -cheap-, but leg is great, gizzards wouldn’t go amiss...)

Just make sure there is enough meat for everyone to have some of everything. Bearing in mind that this is a meal for greedy people.

The long bit is shredding the cabbage. Try to slice as thin as you can, but don’t chop your fingers off... It’s a good exercise in knife skills, actually. If you’re including the ham hock, get it cooking before you attack the cabbage.  Slice the onions similarly, chop up the garlic a bit and gently fry these two in a large, deep pan (with a lid) in much more duck fat than you think is necessary.

When the onions have softened, add the juniper, bay leaf, cloves, coriander and lots of pepper. Give a stir and add the red cabbage. Mix it all thoroughly so that the duck fat has coated all the cabbage. Turn the heat up. Try the wine/beer. If it’s nasty put it all in the pot. If it’s drinkable pour yourself a glass, the cabbage will have to cope with what’s left.

Add stock to nearly cover the cabbage. Nestle in your bacon and ham hock if you are having one, add a little bit of salt if you’re not. Cover with a snug lid, bring to a simmer, lower the heat and cook, ploof... piffle... plip, for half an hour.

Take off the lid and have a nose. Make sure there is still some liquid. Push your remaining meat into the cabbage. Lie spuds on top of the lot, to cook in the steam. Replace the lid and simmer for another hour or so, adding the carrots on top of the potatoes with half an hour to go.

Open up the pot and have a taste. Is it salty enough? The juices should be sweet, spicy and delicious. The cabbage still a deep purple. Remove all the meat and veg to one side. Pile the cabbage onto a giant serving dish, add a bit of the gravy and arrange the garnish on top. Bring to the table still steaming hot and munch, slurp and sloop with plenty of crusty bread and prodigious quantities of wine*.

*Interestingly, both red and white are good. For our wine and food evening we had:
Rully 1er cru La Pucelle 2009 Domaine Jacqueson (white Bourgogne)
Trousseau Grands Vergers 2009 Domaine Gahier (Red Jura).
Faugères Tradition 2010 Domaine Binet Jacquet (Red Languedoc), The Borgogne won for me, hands down, bringing out the corriander and complimenting the sweetness of the duck and cabbage brilliantly. The reds were quite different, the Languedoc rich and round, with a bit of spice, which complimented the meat and the smokey flavours nicely, whereas the Jura was in direct contrast to the sweetness of the dish, supplying a sharp side to cut through all the richness, and, let’s face it, fat... Anyway, plenty of good choices on the booze front!!

The void

The void is supposed to be filled by purple sprouting broccoli; I live in south west France, and it seems no-one has ever heard of it! Winter is over and spring is bouncin but not yet jizzing out produce all over the shops. I spent an unnaturally long time trying to work out how French people have named one of my favourite treats – the broccoli that actually tastes nice. Calabrese in Italian, perhaps that’s a clue... Ah, of course! It’s not French. Silly me. Why would a French shopper be interested in something that his great-great-great-great grandmother didn’t cook? Bref, I can’t find it bloody anywhere.

Of course, though, French people do like food, and redemption is available if you’re prepared to dig a bit. I had a fantastic false dawn at our brilliant daily farmer’s market: it looked like green sprouting broccoli, it was fresh and cheap, and they call it brouttes.  Innit! I thought to myself, bought a couple of bunches and headed home. A bit of pre-dinner googling calmed me down; it wasn’t calabrese at all, but the young flower shoots of an already-harvested cabbage. Still, they tasted delicious when briefly cooked in salty water and went down very well with my rabbit stew, and the Pinot Noir we drank with it. Like a cross between the purple sprouting stuff and spring cabbage – a distinct success. Better allotmenters than me might already be among the cognoscenti, but none of my French foodie-type guests had heard of it either, though they assured me that I wouldn’t just be fighting with the grannies to get it before it’s short season is spent. Also, it seems that there is a silver lining when your cabbages fail to heart and spitefully bolt: chop the shoots off before they flower and munch them steamed, with a bit of nice olive oil. Mmmmm... Yeah! Fuck you cabbage!!

I was at the market this morning and there were none left. It seems that in the blink of an eye, the season is gone (ho hum), but so is the void, and I came home with some new season white asparagus and baby, snooker-ball radishes with lovely bright greens. Oh, and it’s 28° outside... Woohoo! To say it might make me distastefully smug, but down here we start bouncin a bit earlier than at home! Boing!