Don't Sweat the Aubergine

the butter, add more, then add a tablespoon or two of rinsed capers, and 1 tbsp red or white wine vinegar. Bubble this sauce for a minute or so to soften the raw, vinegary taste.
    You can cook whole flatfish or mackerel in this way, too. There’s no point in flouring them first ( see here ). Cook them on a moderate heat, to avoid scorching the skin before the inside of the fish is tender. You can fit several mackerel into a large frying pan, but only one flatfish, which one person will happily consume. So you’ll need either to cook one sole or plaice at a time, keeping the first one warm in a low oven while you tackle the second, or to use two pans – if your hob is large enough to accommodate them.
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WHY YOU DO IT
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    1 • Dredging . Cooks give fish a light dusting of flour in order to protect the tender flesh, and to provide a crispy surface. I’m not sure that the flour does much protecting: Tom Stobart (
The Cook’s Encyclopaedia
) insists that it doesn’t. So this stage is optional.
    2 • Oil with the butter . Elizabeth David tells us that the fish in sole meunière – the proper name for the recipe above – should be fried in clarified butter, which doesn’t burn as readily as does the normal stuff. A simpler way to avoid burning is to add oil to the butter. When butter is alone in the pan, the liquid evaporates from it; the solid material in the remaining butter gets very hot, and burns. The addition of oil, which retains its liquid consistency on heating, thins out the butter, and makes burning less likely. The oil will have only a small influence on the flavour, because your sauce will be based entirely on butter.
    3 • Skin side down . The skin protects the delicate flesh, and crisps as it fries. Fry the fish on the skin side until only a brief cooking on the flesh side will bring it to readiness.
    4 • Skin side up . Is serving fish with the skin confronting the diner a ridiculous restaurant affectation? Not entirely. The skin will go soggy if the fish is turned over. But if you don’t want to eat the skin anyway, this serving method is redundant. If you do want to eat the skin, don’t pour the sauce over it – unless you like your fish skin soggy.
Fry and bake
    Chunky steaks of cod or other fish will spend too long in the pan, and dry out, if you try to cook them through by frying. Instead, you start them on the top of the stove, to crisp the skin, and complete the cooking in the oven.
    Melt a layer of butter and oil in a roasting pan, or any other pan that will go in your oven, until the butter starts foaming.
    Put in the fish, seasoned with salt and pepper if you like, skin side down. Fry it for a minute or so until the skin starts to crisp, then turn it flesh side down and put the pan in a gas mark 6/200°C oven. The fish may take 8 to 10 minutes to cook; you’ll be able to see that all the flesh has turned milky white.
    Once you’ve removed the fish from the pan, you can follow the meunière method above: pour away the cooking fat, and melt more butter in the pan (which will be hot, so you probably won’t need to return it to the hob), along with lemon and parsley if you like. A tablespoon of rinsed capers would be nice, too.
    The flesh side of the fish will have more protection in the oven if facing downwards than if facing upwards, when it would be exposed to the radiant heat.
    You may not want to throw away the butter and oil in which the fish has cooked. As long as they haven’t burned, they’ll make a fine sauce themselves.
Fish in batter
    When I have made battered cod, I’ve infected the air of the house for several days. The fish has tasted great, though.
    Make a batter (according to the recipe here ) with beer (any kind) as your liquid, but use half the amount that you would in the normal recipe: in other words, 224g flour, 1 egg and 280ml beer. That should be plenty for 2 decent-sized fillets. The liquid is meant to be so thick that only a little of it falls off when you move the fish from batter to oil.
    Pudding and pancake batters benefit from a rest before cooking. However, Harold McGee tells us that coating batters for frying will be crisper if used immediately.
    In a fryer or deep saucepan, heat enough sunflower or vegetable oil to cover the fish, to 175°C. If you don’t have a thermometer, drop in a small piece of bread, which should sizzle vigorously.
    Salt your fish fillets; that will make their surfaces sticky. Then dredge them in flour, which will help