These are the fish we’ve found most available, delicious, and receptive to our repertoire of accoutrements.  Salmon, of course, is the richest, and halibut, with its tendency to seem, as Mrs. Fisher put it, a “strong, meaningless fish,” asks for the richest or most elaborate garniture.  But there are no hard and fast rules as to which goes with which: you won’t be hauled into court for combining salmon and avocado vinaigrette.

Wipe dry and flour fairly generously:

1. Whole Trout

or

2. Salmon steaks

or

3. Halibut steaks

Pan-fry the fish of your choice in a very hot skillet in a tablespoon of canola oil, longer and over a higher flame on the first side than the second, and between sides you can briefly stand up steaks at right angles to the pan so the heat gets to raw places not otherwise so well zapped.

Then serve your fish with — or, more likely, under — one of the following, bearing in mind that mashed potatoes compliment vinaigrettes very nicely and sliced-boiled are the better accompaniment for butters . . .

 

TOMATO BASIL VINAIGRETTE

A 2-to-1 olive oil to red wine vinegar dressing with chopped tomato and fresh basil to taste — but don’t stint.

 

DICED AVOCADO VINAIGRETTE

The same dressing as above with diced avocado

 

                                                                                RAVIGOTE DE LUXE

A mustard vinaigrette with chopped egg, parsley, onion & capers.

 

SICILIAN SALSA

A salsa of roughly equal amounts of minced red onion, toasted pine nuts and raisins, plus a heaping teaspoon of orange zest and a tablespoon of red wine vinegar for moistening.  Make this salsa an hour before serving if not inconvenient.

 

BROWN BUTTER WITH LEMON, GARLIC, AND PARSLEY . . . not to mention optional “Grenobloise” capers — or a good splash of white wine or dry vermouth

2 or 3 tablespoons of butter browned with lemon juice, minced parsley and pressed garlic, none of them added timidly.  Early insertion of the parsley will, of course, result in crispy greens: I can swing either way on this decision.

 

BROWN BUTTER AND SAGE

2 or 3 tablespoons of butter browned with a good crinkling of sage.

 

CILANTRO PESTO

An odd but wonderful notion is to serve halibut with this or the red pepper sauce below AND a poached egg.

This is our basic pesto with coriander leaves (cilantro) in place of the fresh basil. Note also the first cousin of this sauce: puréed salsa verde.

 

RED PEPPER PUREE SANTA FE

Don’t forget this purée has another identity: sunset-colored swirl in a green or yellow cream soup . . . and should you be having eight or ten for dinner: offer three, count ‘em, three sauces, this one and the above pesto and salsa, to accompany a boned and horizontally split salmon sprinkled inside with thyme, stuffed with a few lemon and garlic slices, bathed in previously reduced white wine (1/4 cup, say, from 3/4 cup) and baked in foil until tender, probably not much longer than an hour in a moderate oven.

Mince 4 medium-sized shallots and soften them in a good tablespoon of olive oil; also roast 2 cut-up sweet red peppers with 2 pressed garlic cloves in a light coating of olive oil (3 or 4 tablespoons, say) for 30 or more minutes in a moderate oven.  Then in a blender or food processor purée the peppers with the shallots and 2 tablespoons of minced parsley.  Pour the resultant sauce into a pretty bowl and stir in balsamic vinegar to taste: play with half to a whole teaspoon.

AND A SPUD NOTE:   With halibut steaks and this purée you could serve baked sweet potatoes, contrasting white with two shades of orange.

 

PISTACHIO NUT SAUCE

These nuts will smell like pastry as they’re toasting!  A versatile sauce, this one, it’s lettuce-friendly and good on pasta, too.

Spread almost 1/2 a cup of shelled pistachio nuts on a baking sheet and toast them in a 375° oven for 8 to 10 minutes; cool a little.  Then purée the nuts (you want a sandy texture) in a blender or food processor and stir them into a “dressing” of 1/3 cup olive oil, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and 1/4 cup of orange juice, plus the grated zest of an orange.

 

RHUBARB CREAM BROTH

This was inspired by a tart and rosy salmon preparation we ate at Giovanni Leoni’s Buca Giovanni at the foot of San Francisco’s Russian Hill.  This was an Upstairs, Downstairs restaurant: one ate in a cave, the kitchen was up at street level, and the chef, like a captain on his bridge, kept in contact by the latest in tele-communication.

Wash a large stalk of rhubarb and cut it into 1/4-inch slices. In a saucepan almost cover it with water and boil it for 5 minutes, then add 1/4 cup of white wine or dry vermouth and cook the brew for another 2 minutes, stirring and mashing all the way.

Next, remove the saucepan from the fire and stir in 2 tablespoons of cream, then several sprinkles of sugar (don’t be too shy about this!) and after that, 3 teaspoons of balsamic vinegar: you must nurse the seasoning along at this point, because this sauce is terminally taste-deficient until suddently it erupts in a surge of flavor, piquant yet rich. Poached halibut would be my first choice to surrender to the racy charms of this sweet-and-sour coating.

 

ORANGE SAUCE CATALONIA

In case you’re not in the mood for a night flight to Barcelona: a sauce for scallops, tilapia, bluenose bass . . . and note that the citrus element here can be dramatized by replacing juice-and-sugar with kumquats soused for the day in an orange liqueur and dry vermouth.

In a small skillet reduce by a quarter 2/3 cup of white wine and the juice of a large orange plus a few grains of sugar. When you turn over your fish in its larger skillet add the wine/orange mix along with a tablespoon of butter and stir this lubrication vigorously while the fish finishes its quick voyage in the pan. Garnish the final product with slivered almonds briefly toasted in the skillet vacated by the wine and orange.

 

SUCCOTASH NOUVELLE

A very seductive succotash, very pretty with its yellow, brown and red on salmon’s pink, and if you use Japanese pottery plates and add a dab of mashed potato at the side you have a color symphony extraordinaire.

I’m reminded of other modern succotashes, that’s to say, without the lowly lima of olden times. The Rio Grill in Carmel, for instance, does a grilled pork loin with a succotash of corn, sweet red pepper and black beans, not to mention three platemates, Jarlsberg potato cake, roasted scallions and barbecue mayonnaise. Does all this give you ideas? . . .

Fry about a dozen smallish oblongs of thick cut or slab bacon or pancetta until they’re on the verge of crisp; then in the same skillet over low-moderate heat sauté the bacon with 1-1/4 cup of frozen corn, 1 diced sweet red pepper, some rosemary and a good splash of Madeira or dry sherry for 5 or more minutes, until all inhabitants of the skillet have grown, as Sylvia Townsend Warner would say, to love each other.

OR:   You could substitute peanuts for the bacon: they taste wonderful with corn and you’ll still have an impressive color combination.  Obviously they’ll need less cooking. (I counsel a sandwich of seared tombo tuna over this nut-succotash and under an artistic dribbling of the aforementioned cilantro pesto).

 

and

BACON VINAIGRETTE AND STEAMED CABBAGE

Steam a small trimmed cabbage cut into wedges, fry a dozen or more little oblongs of thick cut or slab bacon and drain them on paper towels, and make a dill Dijon vinaigrette by stirring 1 part red wine vinegar into a little Dijon mustard and adding 2-plus parts of olive oil and a sprinkle of dill weed. Combine the bacon with the vinaigrette and spoon the meaty dressing over fish and adjacent cabbage wedges (well drained!)

 

REMARKS:

        Sometimes when I serve boiled potatoes with fish I break them up a little: I call these “hash whites.” Another option is our frothy Quick Gratin: pile thinly sliced boiled potatoes into a ramekin, apply generous melted butter, chopped scallions and grated cheese and run under the broiler for 6 minutes. There’s also mashed potatoes with 2 or 3 tablespoons of pesto mixed in. Or forget potatoes altogether because steamed crookneck squash is wonderful with fish, it’s pretty as a Vermeer lute and not too rich. Remember, these days potato or veg (or risotto!) go under not next to your fish.

        And fish served with the pistachio or Catalonia sauces I like to accompany with oranges which you peel, trim thoroughly and bisect into handsome cartwheels. Meanwhile — heavens! — halibut’s been taking on more meaning, I really enjoy it just grilled with lemon.

        If one evening company announced by phone, fax or whatever its unexpected and imminent arrival on our doorstep in a state of gastronomic expectation, well then, I might run down to the fish market with a thought to throwing this into the oven. It’s an easy dish to prepare, quite stylish and even rather original. Almost any fileted white fish would do. Bear in mind the recipe here is for two servings and must be multiplied for those instant guests.

        And note that wasabi, Japanese horseradish that comes in a toothpaste tube, is a trendy alternative to the mustard. It has the zap of a Birgit Nilsson high C in Die Walkuere.

 

Butter quite generously an ovenproof platter and arrange butterfish filets or similar raw material — snapper, perhaps — thereon; spread the fish liberally with Dijon mustard, adding a little lemon juice and 1 pressed garlic clove, then sprinkle it with dill weed (fresh preferred!), add a light covering of breadcrumbs and dribble over all enough olive oil to moisten the gratiné lightly.

Bake your filets at 375° for about 20 minutes, basting occasionally with the accumulated juices, and serve with 1) just bread, and a light salad to follow, or 2) mashed potatoes, or 3) reduced portions of our pasta with beurre noir and balsamic vinegar. Yet another option: caponata (plats du jour chapter).

        A quintessential bistro bake: I see the filets rather haphazardly arranged on your plate in a nice fluffy bath of black-specked tomato sauce or our spicy-creamy Indian purée. The latter was inspired by a visit to a congenial Indian trattoria near 16th Street and Valencia in San Francisco’s latest Bohemia. This is the intersection of a gastronome’s dreams: within a few yards are Thai, Indian and Salavdorean restaurants (the last cum thumping Wurlitzer extraordinaire), a Breton crêperie, a Basque tapas house and a taqueria or two, all first class.

 

Make our house tomato sauce with cream and saffron to taste and add a dotting of 3 tablespoons of sliced or chopped pitted black olives. Pour your tomato/olive sauce over red snapper filets and bake in a buttered casserole at 350° for 20 minutes or a little less.

. . . For the Indian snapper-covering, brown lightly 1 chopped onion in a little olive oil, add 2 teaspoons of turmeric, a bit of ground cloves and cayenne to taste, cook for a minute, then add a near-purée of 2 cups of chopped tomatoes, 2/3 of a cup of yogurt, 1 large pressed garlic clove, 2 or 3 teaspoons of cumin and a little chopped ginger before simmering all for 10 or 12 minutes. Pour this sauce, cilantro-topped, over the fish and bake as above.

Serve either of these bakes alone or with rice; the Indian fish won’t sneeze at a chutney.