Snapper cooked in salt crust, with baby beets cooked… in
salt!
Is there any mineral more symbolic than
salt? Salt is an ingredient the preserving and disinfecting quality of which,
before any seasoning purposes, made it a necessity of life since ancient times
in many cultures, more valuable than gold or silver. As such, it became a
component of ceremonial offerings, a religious symbol and, also, a unit of
exchange. Thus, the word salary comes from the Latin salarium, which is
itself derived from the Latin sal (salt), as all or part of the wage
received by the Romain legionaries was a ration of salt. In some countries,
like France, China or India, salt trading was subject of a tax. The French salt
tax was name Gabelle and is tightly associated to the history of the
country, as the establishment, the increase and, paradoxically, the suppression
of the Gabelle gave rise to some of the most famous rebellion and/or
civil war episodes of the French history.
In cooking, salt is obviously used to
preserve the food and to enhance its taste. But it is also used as an actual
cooking method. By actual, I mean excluding the different methods such as curing
a meat or brining a fish. Although cooking in a salt crust appears to be a
relatively ancient technique, it was not that common. It is easy to understand
why. Salt was a precious mineral and the quantity of salt necessary to build a
crust is important. The earliest mention of this technique for meat is
relatively recent (salt-baked chicken technique used in China during the Qing
Dynasty), although it is said that the Mongols used this technique to cook the
meat tenderized under their saddle (the famous “steak tartar”), but like for
the steak tartar, it is difficult to separate the legend from the reality. The
salt-crusted fish technique has been long known in many different countries
such as France, Italy, Spain and China. It is mentioned in a Muslim cookbook
originating from the 13th century. However, the earliest recipe
found for salt-baked fish was found in the gourmet poem Hedypatheia (translated
by “pleasant living” or “life of luxury”) written in the 4th century
BC by the Greek-Sicilian gourmet writer Archestratus. Archestratus was somehow
a pioneer of the Nouvelle Cuisine, as he was advocating ways of cooking enhancing
the gustatory qualities of the cooked product. In his salt-baked fish recipe, the fish, “a whole, round white fish such as
sea bass, snapper* or sea bream that was cleaned then gutted. The fish is
seasoned with thyme being inserted into the cavity of the fish prior to the
salt crust encapsulating it in two pounds of salt glued together with water and
egg whites”. Which is more or less the same recipe as that commonly used today!
So, today, I propose you to casser la croûte**, figuratively
and literally, for what is, in my humble opinion, the best way to prepare and
to enjoy fish like branzini, snappers, porgies/daurades… First thing: the
fish should not be scaled, so that the scales constitute a carapace that
prevents from over salting the fish and that facilitates the crust removal. The
principle is to make a crust with, mostly, coarse salt, completed with flour, egg
whites and a small quantity of water, to cement the salt. Thus, the fish is
wrapped like in a sarcophagus. Too bad that this term is already used for the
quail recipe featured in the movie Babette’s Feast!
1) this is very healthy, as you don’t use any fat to cook the fish, and yet, this is delicious,
2) the fish remains moist and melting in mouth, even if you cook it a bit longer than necessary,
3) last but not least, it preserves all the flavors of the fish and the aromas of the herbs, spices… associated.
The beauty of this recipe is that it optimizes the advantages of most of the recipes using a crust (pastry, clay…) or a papillote. Those advantages are, at least, threefold:
1) this is very healthy, as you don’t use any fat to cook the fish, and yet, this is delicious,
2) the fish remains moist and melting in mouth, even if you cook it a bit longer than necessary,
3) last but not least, it preserves all the flavors of the fish and the aromas of the herbs, spices… associated.
* this is probably a
mistranslation as the snapper is, and was not, a species endemic to the
Mediterranean sea. Archestratus probably referred to the porgy, aka Daurade/Dorado.
** Casser la croûte is a French expression that generally means
eating a sandwich or a snack, but it literally means "breaking the
crust", the bread crust probably…
Levels of
difficulty
|
Cost
|
Preparation
|
Resting
|
Cooking
|
n
|
$$
|
30 minutes
|
15 minutes
|
25/40 minutes
(just for the fish)
|
Ingredients 2 servings
§
1
red snapper (or snapper, branzino, porgy…) of 1.5/2.0 lbs., gutted, fins and tailed
cut, but non-scaled
§
4
lbs. of coarse salt
§
1
full cup of AP flour
§
2
eggs
§
approximately
1 glass of water
§
celery
leaves, green onions, parsley, cilantro, lemon grass… or any other available
fresh or dried herbs and spices
§
1
organic lemon puréed with its rind (optional) or lemon/lime segments
§
Olive
oil
§
Salt
and Pepper (or piment d’Espelette)
For the beets:
§
6
baby non-peeled beets (3 per serving): yellow, pink and red, of about the
same size
§
½
pound of coarse salt
And for the fish
and for the beets, aluminum foil
|
Instructions
§
In
a stand mixer equipped with the dough hook, make the dough for the crust: mix
the salt with the flour, the eggs, and add the necessary quantity of water so
that the dough starts to make some kind of a ball around the hook. Finish
mixing the dough with your hands (I advise to put gloves, specifically if you
have some allergies, skin irritations or mini cuts) in order to roughly
agglomerate the whole, given that you are not making a real “dough”,
§
Salt
lightly and pepper the inside of the fish, and fully stuff the fish belly and
head with the herbs and the lemon,
§
Cut
an aluminum foil of a size 4” longer than the fish, place it on an oven sheet,
and take a part of the “dough” to make a "bed" of around the length
of the fish. Position the fish on this bed, vertically or on its side*, and
cover it with the rest of the salt. Use the sides of aluminum foil and/or an additional
piece of aluminum foil to stick, tap and shape the salt around the fish, so
that the latter is totally covered by a coating of salt… like a sarcophagus!
§
Place
the fish in a 400 F preheated oven and bake it for 25/30 minutes (1.5
lb. fish) to 35/40 minutes (2.0 lbs. fish),
§
When
done, take the fish out of the oven and let it rest 15 minutes in its salt
crust before the best part of it: breaking the crust and smelling all those fabulous
aromas imprisoned into it.
§
Served
here with beets, baked for 75/90 minutes (depending on their size – test with
a knife) in a pile of salt wrapped in aluminum foil, and with a sauce made of
olive oil marinated and warmed up with the stuffing, and strained…
* In case of a
branzini or similarly shaped fish, you can, and it is recommended to, position
the fish vertically, on its belly. But in the case of a snapper or porgy,
their height makes it, first, difficult to stand vertically, but also this
would require twice as much salt as if you position it on its side.
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Gallery
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