The street markets in Paris will ruin me sooner or later, they’re my personal Las Vegas in a way. Addicted as I am to good food I’m always tempted by excellent products, too – and so I spend far too much money on our family lunches and dinners. But I can’t help it. When I see, say, a perfect daurade on the rocks of a fish monger, I can’t resist.
Take the fish I bought this morning: beautiful in shape and size (4 pounds), it had a striking aura of freshness, a weird charisma almost, a beast with crystal clear eyes, healthy red gills – a perfect fish which almost looked as if still alive. How could you resist? It had been caught in the Atlantic off the French coast but not by one of these industrial trawlers but by some rough guys who go out on small boats – they work on having their own label of excellence, and I hope they’ll get there soon.
Anyway. To get the most fun out of my prey, I cleaned and prepared the daurade myself at home, filleted it, put off the skin even, pulled the last remaining bones – and then I pan-fried it cautiously, basted it with a self-made thyme-citrus-butter-mix, put into the medium-hot oven for 95 seconds or so – and served it with bread and a green salad. It turned out to be an expensive, yes, but perfect Sunday lunch.
I love Daurade, I completely agree about buying your fish whole and filleting at home – part of the experience and you get loads of great bones for stock afterwards! 🙂
Thank you, Victoria, to use leftovers (of any kind) for preparing stocks is underrated, isn’t it?
Completely underrated! We’ve got a tuppaware box in the fridge for sad looking veg and broccoli stalks etc. and we just boil them up when the box is full! Means we always have fresh stock in – love the blog by the way 🙂
This was great. Love your blog!
You’re welcome, Joseph. Thanks for stopping by!
I like the idea of buying whole fish but never do it, you’ve made it sound easy. Maybe next time?