365DOP: Poisson Fumé au Lentilles

Cross-posted from 365 Days of Peta

On Monday, le Boy went diving and came back with the most beautiful butterfish, which he brandished at me in all its Fishy Glory.

"What are you going to do with it?!" he demanded.

Five years ago, someone waving a fish at me and demanding that I cook it would have made me boil with rage. These days, I am a fishier woman, and have more desire to cook, especially with an ingredient as awesome as a whole fresh butterfish. In addition, I'd spent all morning reading of Fête Accomplie and had the answer to this age-old question. I was going to cook Poisson Fumé aux Lentilles (smoked fish with lentils - p. 78), a recipe from Peta's Rose Blues days (Rose Blues is the restaurant that she ran while in Paris during the 80s). It seemed very simple, and I had all the ingredients to hand either in the garden or the pantry.

The first thing to do was to smoke the butterfish. The Boy filleted the fish, sprinkled it with salt and brown sugar, and left it overnight. The next day, he hot smoked it with manuka. Beautiful.


The recipe calls for you to cook puy lentils (the little green ones) with All the Ingredients in the World - and then throw the ingredients out. In future, I would maybe just cook them in a pre-existing vegetable stock instead of having to turf so many vegetables at the end of the cooking process - or very simply cook them with garlic cloves, cloves, half an onion, parsley stalks and a bayleaf. The carrot, celery and two(!) onions seemed WASTEFUL BEYOND BELIEF.

The finished product:


The fish is sliced thinly, warmed through in a pan of milk and then placed upon a bed of salad leaves, warm cooked lentils and diced tomato. The whole thing is then drizzled with a vinaigrette made with lots of herbs and a bit of onion (or I guess, shallot if you have such a thing just lying about). The recipe recommended wine vinegar, but I only had rice wine vinegar which probably is a bit mild. In future I'd even go so far as to use lemon juice as the acid in the vinegar because fish + lemon = heaven.

CONCLUSION: Yes, I shall be doing it again, with the changes suggested. Also, people liked it - nay, they loooooved it. We ate it outside and drank glasses of viognier and beer.

Furthermore, I'm feeling smug in that I applied some Peta philosophy to the preparation in terms of the seasonality and locality of the food. The cos and all the herbs came from our garden, the fish was prepared and caught locally. The only ingredient that travelled any distance were the lentils. Which came from France. Quelle horreur!

The people enjoying the food in the sunshine.