It happened again.

The second appearance of this astonishing dish was as delicious, simply assembled, and good looking as the first.

I had used the same lotte recipe for the preparation (in the U.S., it’s usually called ‘monkfish’) just a few weeks ago, but yesterday at the Greenmarket I was seduced by two perfect ‘tails’. Then while telling my fish monger how I had cooked them the last time I bought Monkfish, I decided I had to do it again.

The basic, quite simple preparation outline, which I think I altered only with the addition of a bit of a fresh seasoning pepper, comes from the women of the London River Cafe, specifically, their book, ‘Italian Easy London River Cafe’, a brilliant guide to cooking with few ingredients, simple techniques – and spectacular results.

Even the accompaniments were similar to those of the earlier dinner, but I decided to publish it anyway, if only for the photo of the lotte inside the au gratin before it went into the oven.

• two 8-ounce monkfish tails, which is a fish also known as Lotte in France, Rape (pronounced “rah-pay”) in Spain, Coda di rospo in Italy, or Teufelfisch in Germany, from Pura Vida Seafood Company, placed inside an a tin-lined copper au gratin pan that had first been heated inside a 425º oven, with olive oil drizzled on the surface, a number of small sections of a rosemary branch arranged on the bottom and the fish placed inside on top of the herb, covered with thin slices cut from most of one lemon (the lemon had been separately seasoned with sea salt, black pepper after it had been cut), sprinkled with a tiny finely chopped orange aji dulce seasoning pepper from Eckerton Hill Farm and given a drizzle of olive oil, each tail topped with one salted Sicilian anchovy that had first been rinsed well, then filleted, and the fish itself seasoned to taste, the pan returned to the oven and cooked until the lotte was done, meaning, until the juices were opaque [about 15, maybe 20 minutes, although it’s important to check, maybe using a reliable instant read thermometer to show a 145º temperature at the center, but using that gauge alone can be tricky with a small piece of fish], removed from the oven and arranged on two plates (again, without a garnish, because it already looked spectacular)
• twelve ounces of Yukon Gold potatoes (described at the market as “new potatoes”, but this is January) from Norwich Meadows Farm, boiled, halved, tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper, garnished with micro red sorrel from Two Guys from Woodbridge
• a bunch of beautiful tender rainbow chard, also from Norwich Meadow Farms (again, this is January!), wilted in a little olive oil where a halved clove of rocambole garlic had first been heated until softened and fragrant, seasoned with salt, pepper, and a small glug [Brit.] of olive oil
• the wine was a Spanish (Rías Baixas) white, Albariño “Xión”, Bodegas y Viñedos Attis 2019
• the music was Vivaldi’s 1733 opera, ‘Montezuma’, Alan Curtis directing the Ensemble, Il Complesso Bar (noting that the incomplete manuscript of this opera was only discovered in Berlin only in 2002, and the ensemble’s Vivaldi scholar and violinist, Alessandro Ciccolini, restored or completed it for a performing edition)

It was my first stab at this wonderful, shockingly simple dish, and the recipe had been sitting on our bookshelf for over 15 years. It’s from ‘Italian Easy London River Cafe’ (page 131 in my copy), one of my favorite cookbooks. It also ended up looking far more interesting than the formula would have suggested (I almost passed it by for that reason: for being too basic). And it was incredibly delicious.

This is my slightly revised version of the text in the book:

• monkfish tail, also known as Lotte, Coda di rospo, or Teufelfisch (last night I had four 4-ounce pieces after cutting the largest of 3 in half) from American Seafood Company placed inside a roasting pan that had first been heated inside a 425º oven, olive oil drizzled on the surface and a number of small sections of a rosemary branch arranged on the bottom, the fish then covered with thin slices of lemon that had been cut from most of one fruit and seasoned with sea salt, black pepper, a finely chopped tiny Grenada seasoning pepper from Eckerton Hill Farm, and a drizzle of olive oil, a Sicilian anchovy fillet (2 salted anchovies) arranged on each of the four, which were then seasoned themselves, the pan placed inside the oven until the fish was done, that is, until the juices were opaque [this time it took about 15 minutes, but it’s important to check (Note: an instant read thermometer would read 145º at the center, but using that gauge can be tricky)], the monkfish removed from the oven and arranged on two plates (no garnish this time, because it already looked exciting)
• nearly a pound of Yukon Gold potatoes from Gorzynski Farm, boiled, halved, tossed with olive oil, salt, pepper, and chipped bronze fennel
• a mix of fresh greens (green mustards from Norwich Meadows Farm, a small mix of several kinds of tender greens from Windfall Farms, a few leaves from a head of radicchio from Manhattan Fruit Exchange in the Chelsea Market, and a little arugula, also from Norwich Meadows) wilted inside a medium antique tin-lined copper pot in a little olive oil where a halved clove of garlic had first been heated until softened and fragrant
• the wine was a French (Bordeaux/Graves/Cérons) white, Chateau de Cerons Graves Blanc 2017, from Bottlerocket
• the music was Rossini’s 1823 opera, ‘Semiramide’, Mark Elder conducting the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Opera Rara Chorus

oiled and seasoned

grilled and plated

 

We both really like herring in virtually any form. This disposition, grilled fresh fillets, is probably less familiar to most fans of clupea harengus (Atlantic Herring) but it’s one of the most satisfying – and it makes a wonderful entrée.

The dinner we enjoyed this past Saturday almost duplicated this one from three years ago, where I wrote:

Barry and I are very lucky to live in a part of the world where there are an extraordinary number of varieties of seafood in local waters, where most are judged plentiful enough to be harvested by smaller operators, where those fishers want to make them available fresh for retail purchase by ordinary people in a central public market within a short but healthy walking distance, and where I enjoy the time needed to seek them out and prepare them using the best of my skills and some good kitchen tools.

It still works, even during a pandemic, which of course is when it becomes even more important, for everyone engaged in these pleasures and rewards.

• eight small Atlantic herring fillets (a total of 12 ounces) from P.E. & D.D. Seafood in the Union Square Greenmarket, rinsed under running cold water, drained, dried, brushed with a little olive oil and seasoned lightly with sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper, arranged on a double cast iron grill pan which had gotten very hot over 2 high burner flames, grilled, skin side down, for l to 2 minutes, turned over and cooked for 1 to 2 minutes more, drizzled with a little olive oil, arranged on 2 plates and served with a sauce which had just been mixed in a small bowl, of mustard (half whole-grain Maille ‘Old Style’ whole grain Dijon, and half Domaines des Vignes ‘extra forte‘ Dijon), the leaves, chopped, of a bunch of fresh oregano from Stokes Farm, a teaspoon of pine blossom honey from Tremblay Apiaries in the Union Square Greenmarket, the zest and juice from one lemon, and a bit of olive oil, garnished with micro red sorrel from Two Guys from Woodbridge one pound of red potatoes from Norwich Meadows Farm, boiled with a generous amount of salt until barely cooked through, drained, halved, dried while still inside the large still-warm vintage Corning Pyrex Flameware blue-glass pot in which they had cooked, tossed with a tablespoon or so of olive oil, sprinkled with sea salt, freshly-ground black pepper, and garnished with bronze fennel from Windfall Farms, arranged on a small bed of leaves from a small head of purple bibb Rosaine lettuce from Norwich Meadows Farm that had been lightly seasoned with salt, pepper, olive oil, and lemon juice
• the wine was a South African (Western Cape) white, Babylonstoren Chenin Blanc 2020, from Bottlerocket 
• the music was Beethoven’s ‘The Creatures of Prometheus’, performed by the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Leif Segerstam

It’s not that I don’t appreciate the incredibly huge variety of local seafood available through the seasons from the fishers in New York’s Union Square Greenmarket four days of the week. It’s just that I’m an obsessive for anything new.

Yesterday, long after I made it home with a ‘catch’ that I had never come across anywhere, at least on the eastern seaboard, I began to doubt whether I would be able to bring it to the table in an edible form.

Needlefish.

It was labelled, ‘billed eel” at the Seatuck Fish stand, but I was more than skeptical of the appellation. I know a little about eel, and I’ve prepared it both fresh and smoked, but these teethy silver pencils did not look at all like they belonged to the order Anguilliformes, and there was noting snaky about them.

I had already bought swordfish steaks for our dinner, so I deliberated with myself for a while about whether to go for these absolutely beautiful creatures in addition, I didn’t know what they were, they were so very small, and there were only four left (today I’m wondering who had bought the others, and what they had one with them). Eventually, deciding to take a chance, and thinking they might make an interesting small appetizer, I scooped them up.

Once home I began to do some research, first to determine what they were. A quick search for “long narrow small ocean fish” gave me the answer: I had four small Atlantic needlefish on my hands.  The second thing? Eating them wouldn’t kill you. Then I learned that they belong to an entire group of fish described as perfectly edible, even delicious, but, because of the bones, almost impossible to eat.

I spent an inordinate amount of time checking what that would mean if applied to my tiny quartet. Try searching, “how small a needlefish must you have before you can eat the bones?” Not surprising, I never found anything definitive.

So I cooked them.

In the end we were easily able to remove the backbones after the fish had been fried, and the ribs turned out to be so small that we never noticed them. Yay for optimal size! Thank you Catherine, Everett, and all the Seatuck folks!

They were delicious.

We’d both recommend needlefish to any cook or diner with the considerations mentioned above, and the cleaning process was really sort of fun.

Many thanks to the people responsible for this reassuring video, in particular for the  portion showing the fish being cleaned, recorded in extraordinarily clear overhead images. Those needlefish are a little larger than the ones I had, and of course there were a lot more.

 

ADDENDUM:

I want to repeat that the flesh was really, really tasty, and the prep made it possible.

For the guidance of anyone reading this, I should make it clear that we were very lucky in the size of the fish we were presented with. They were neither too small nor too large. Smaller might have made the gutting more difficult, and would probably have complicated the removal of the back bones; larger would have meant the zillions of rib bones would have made eating the flesh impossible, or certainly not an experience you would want to remember.

I write that with the qualification that really small would mean they could be fried without gutting them like any really small fish, as smelts, or whitebait (a collective term for the immature fry of fish), and the much smaller backbones might have gone down with the flesh; really large would have made it practicable to cut them into fillets, eliminating all the bones, as described in this video.

 

This site provides some simple, accessible information about Needlefish, including a simple cooking suggestion that became the basis for my preparation last night.

• four small cleaned needlefish were splashed with fresh lemon juice and sprinkled with some local Long Island salt, from fisherman Phil Karlin of his family’s P.E. & D.D. Seafood Company, then dredged in lightly seasoned whole wheat flour from The Blew family of Oak Grove Plantation in Pittstown, N.J., the excess shaken off and the fish placed on a paper plate, while a shallow layer of sunflower oil inside a large, heavy antique very well seasoned Wagner Ware frying pan was heated until hot but not smoking, at which point the needlefish were placed inside, not touching, for a total of about 2 minutes, turning once, or until cooked and nicely crisped, removed and arranged on the plates, along with a salad of baby romaine lettuce from Quarton Farm and one sliced baby red onion from Hoeffner Farms, dressed with Whole Foods house Portuguese olive oil, lemon juice, freshly ground black pepper, and P.E. & D.D. Seafood salt, accompanied with slices from a She Wolf Bakery sourdough Bâtard

The main course was one we’re pretty familiar with, with elements that show up here frequently, always welcomed.

• two large, 9-ounce swordfish steaks, also from Seatuck Fish in the Union Square Greenmarket, marinated for more than half an hour in a mixture of a little chopped scallion from Willow Wisp Farm, a heaping teaspoon of pungent dried wild Sicilian oregano from Buon Italia, little more than a pinch of dried peperoncini Calabresi secchi from Buon Italia, and a couple tablespoons of olive oil, after which the steaks were drained, covered on both sides with a coating of homemade dried breadcrumbs (to help retain the moisture, and keep them from drying out), pan-grilled over medium-high heat for 3 or 4 minutes on each side, or until barely cooked all of the way through, removed, arranged on the plates, seasoned with a small amount of P.E. & D.D. salt, a good amount of lemon juice squeezed on top, drizzled with olive oil, and garnished with flowering fennel from Quarton Farm
• a nine or ten ounce mix of small tomatoes from Eckerton Hill Farm, halved, sprinkled on the cut side with sea salt and black pepper, heated gently on both sides inside a small copper skillet, arranged on the plates scattered with chopped leaves of pericón (Mexican tarragon) from Quarton Farm, garnished with micro cressida from Windfall Farms

 

• the wine throughout the meal was an Italian (Campania/Paestum) white, Fiano Kràtos “Paestum,” Maffini 2018, from Astor Wines
• the music throughout the meal was one of our favorite operas, ‘Mare Nostro‘ [more about] by a composer who is unaccountably almost unknown in the U.S., Lorenzo Ferrero

It was the 4th of July.

We were about to enter the fourth month of the Coronavirus pandemic lockdown.

It wasn’t a cookout (it wouldn’t have been a cookout even without the virus), but it was a great steak and there were some luscious oven fries, very very good steak and very very good oven fries. Also some lovely friar’s beard.

I almost always buy locally-farmed meat, whatever the species, but there was good a reason for making an exception this week.

It was a Kansas steak (which seems to have a certain caché). That is, it was a steak from Kansas, specifically, a cut of eastern Kansas Black Angus beef, a prime strip steak, dry-aged. It would normally have been very expensive, but this particular steak, purchased from Eataly, was, at 19 ounces, enough for 2 generous portions, and it was hugely discounted. It cost us only $20, or less than half the conventional price.

I don’t think I had ever cooked a true dry-aged steak, or even eaten one. This may have been my first, but it’s unlikely to be my last.

It was wonderful, from first to last, from the scent that began almost the moment it began to warm in the oven, until the tastiness of the very last bite.

• two 9 1/2-ounce Creekstone Farms Prime Dry Aged New York strip steaks from Eataly, brought to room temperature, seasoned on both sides with local P.E. & D.D. Seafood Company sea salt and some very good freshly-ground black pepper, reverse seared, meaning they were placed on a small metal rack inside an oval La Chamba pan and placed, this time, inside a 275º oven for only about 25 minutes, or until an instant thermometer poked into the center read only 90º to 95º, for an ultimate medium rare, or a bit beyond that, noting that the steaks finish cooking inside a skillet and continue to increase in temperature [I would normally prefer a still lower oven temperature, but I was going to have to juggle the requirement of the steak with that of the potatoes, which would need a 450º oven for about half an hour; in any event I was surprised the steaks cooked so quickly, but the explanation, I now realize, was that they had been dry aged], the steaks then removed, allowed to wait on a warm plate, covered with tin foil, for, say, up to about 45 minutes, which helps in juggling the cooking of the accompanying vegetables, their preparation finished by being placed over high heat on the surface of a very well seasoned small antique cast iron pan that had been coated with a very small amount of cooking oil, an oil with a higher smoke point than olive oil (alternatively a bit of ghee, or a combination of butter and olive oil),  (I used Mac Nut macademia nut oil, from Whole Foods Market, by itself), and remembering that the steak was already fully cooked, and only needed to be inside the pan long enough to acquire some color, seared briefly (a minute and a half or 2 minutes on each side), removed from the heat, allowed to rest for up to 10 minutes on 2 warm plates, covered loosely with foil, some lemon juice squeezed on top, the steaks sprinkled with chopped epazote from Windfall Farms and drizzled with a Whole Foods Market Portuguese house olive oil
• three large “red potatoes” from Mountain Sweet Berry Farm, scrubbed, cut into wedges, tossed with a small amount of olive oil, roasted, once the steaks had been removed and the oven temperature increased to 450º, for about 30 or 35 minutes along with some crushed dried aji dulce pepper from Eckerton Hill Farm and several unpeeled mature garlic cloves from Westside Market, finished with a combination of chopped lovage and chopped parsley, both from Norwich Meadows Farm
• 8 ounces of agretti from Willow Wisp Farm, parboiled in a pot of salted water for 7 or 8 minutes, or until the thicker stems had softened, drained, then either heated in a pan with a little olive oil, adding most of the juice from half of a medium lemon, or, once parboiled, merely combined with the olive oil and lemon (in either case, it can be served warm or room temperature, and with the option of a small washed, rinsed, and filleted anchovy)
• the wine was a phenomenal Italian (Tuscany) red, Fattoria Montellori Salamartano Toscana IGT 1998, purchased from the mailing list of New York Vintners 

Gladys Swarthout, as Plentiful Tewke

 

• the music was a very American, neglected mid-century work, Howard Hanson’s 1935 opera, ‘Merry Mount’, in a performance by the Seattle Symphony, conducted by  Gerard Schwarz

 

[the second image is from the Hanson opera’s Wikipedia entry]