juice. Cut the cheese as best you can and distribute over
the salad in the bowl.
Whisk the salt, pepper and vinegar together in a bowl
until the salt is dissolved, then whisk in the olive oil. Drain
the pears of their lemon juice and distribute on top of the
salad. Pour over the dressing and toss the salad at the
table. Taste the leaves: they may need more seasoning or
a bit more oil for lubrication.
Serves four to six.
1 large head of Castelfranco
radicchio
3 large ripe pears
juice of 1 lemon
150g (5½oz) Roquefort cheese
½ teaspoon sea salt
½ teaspoon coarsely ground
black pepper
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
4 tablespoons best-quality
olive oil
WINE: A little caution is required. Like most fruit, pears
can strip out the fruitiness of a wine, making reds seem
astringent. Blue cheese is hardly better news, and will kill
delicate, mineral styles of white if they lack acidity. Staying
within the terroir, I suggest a richer style of Friuli white,
either a Friulano or a good ‘gris’ style of Pinot Grigio.
60
A Nice Skill
Griddled Mackerel with Rhubarb
Filleting a mackerel is a nice skill: ‘nice’ in the sense of
requiring precision, deftness and care, but also implying
a certain pleasure in the task. A sharp knife is required,
and two quick cuts behind the gills start the procedure.
With the fish on a board, you then need to make two long,
parallel cuts either side of the backbone, only as far as the
central vertebrae, on both sides. You then manoeuvre your
knife around each side of the backbone in turn, proceeding
to cut all the way through past the stomach cavity, thus
separating each fillet entirely from the bone. Thereafter
the knife should be slid under the ribcage, which must be
cut away before facing the greatest challenge, the removal
of the line of tiny pin bones that protrude at right angles
from the backbone down into the middle of the fillet.
As with other round fish such as salmon, sea bass or
red mullet, the traditional method is to pull out these pin
bones with tweezers, making sure you pull away at an
angle so as not to tear the fillet. With mackerel, the flesh
is quite soft and it is likely to pull away in great clods
along with the bones. The modern method is to cut a fine,
V-shaped channel down either side of the pin bones that
meets just below the skin and to simply lift the line of
bones out in one neat stroke. With this achieved, you then
have before you a mackerel fillet. A very good fishmonger
will be able to perform this task for you, but do not expect
the nice but nervous attendant at your local supermarket
to be able to do anything of the sort.
In the past, it was more usual to cook mackerel on the
bone, but filleting this fish transforms it. If you choose, you
do not have to cook the fillet at all – cut in thin strips at
an angle down towards the skin, it is excellent served raw
with wasabi and soy sauce – but the cooking process is
also simple. Fried with the skin-side down in a pan, it
becomes very crisp, and with the flesh only just cooked
the result is much more succulent than if the fish is on the
bone. It is a paradox that oily fish, such as tuna, salmon
and mackerel, become horribly dry when overcooked.
What with its sustainability, abundance in our local
waters and the health-giving properties of its high quotient
of omega-3 fatty acids, mackerel is the near-perfect food.
The only drawback is that it must be eaten when very
fresh: look for bright, prominent eyes, a moist shiny skin
and a glistening demeanour, then fillet at will.
61
February
GRIDDLED MACKEREL FILLETS WITH RHUBARB
The astringent note from rhubarb makes a brilliant adjunct
to any oily fish, fulfilling the same role as lemon or that of
gooseberries in a few months’ time.
Serves two.
2 large mackerel, weighing
about 300g (10½oz) each
1 tablespoon golden caster
sugar
3 star anise
6 cloves
6
