A metaphorical postcard for you

Citrus, monkfish and pine

West Berkshire, July 2024

I’ve struggled to focus these last few weeks.

I’m going to try something different.

Short postcards that celebrate a moment in time.

I hope for now there will be a couple throughout the week until I can find my focus once again.

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Citrus and pine-cured monkfish

Ribbons of thinly pared citrus rinds, cut from a handful of bright green limes, thin strips of saffron yellow skin, peeled away from the scarred outer rind of Italian lemons, great fat fruits that have grown in the sun, swollen to bursting point, the dark stained bottle green leaves from the lime trees added to the mixture, fragrance from a different place when crushed between your fingertips. The needles from soft balsam fir, pulled upwards from their branch so they gum to my fingers, sticky and resinous, placed in a pestle, and crushed with a mortar.

Sharp and alluring together, perfumed with the rich oily scent from the citrus trees that will be mixed with crushed salt and sugar, the zests beaten with the back of a wooden mallet to bruise the skins, releasing the oils that will give scent to the crystalline mixture that will cure the fish, rubbed into the long fillets that run parallel down the bony tail of the monster with the gaping mouth, the Anglerfish.

Citrus cure

Cut from the long cartilaginous tail of a monkfish, pearly white flesh with traces of blood-red capillaries peeled away with the tip of a knife from under the membrane that covers the flesh. The bruised zests, fir needles and citrus leaves broken into into the grainy mixture, sweet and salty, packed over the fish on a tray, placed into the fridge for an hour or two. A brine forms as the salt and the sugar pull the juices from the fish, mixing together with the citrus and pine, firming the flesh from the tail of the fish as it rests in the cold and the mixture works its magic. After the hours have passed, the fillets are rinsed in cold water washing away the grains of salt, leaves and little twigs of the curing mix into the plughole, leaving the fillets gleaming, firm and white.

Monkfish

Ice cubes shatter and crack sharply, lustred with thin plumes of vapour as the frozen rectangles meet the warmth of my hands, popping noisily as I drop a cupped handful into a metal bowl of cold water. I immerse the cured fish for a minute, allowing the muscle structure to tighten in the chill of their bath before lifting them out to dry on a sheet of kitchen paper before slicing. The knife must be very sharp and I often challenge myself to hone the edge of this carbon steel knife so keenly, that sometimes if I run it upwards against the fine hairs on my arm, they collect in a cluster against the edge of the blade, small bare patches of skin on my arms, the result of fastidious obsessiveness.

Slanting the blade ever so slightly, I cut into the fish, working the tail into small neat slices, each one a third of a centimetre moving along the fillet, laying each piece next to the other as I work.

From the last of the broad beans that we have grown this year, I gathered a bowlful that were picked not more than an hour ago.

A great wooden raised bed made from railway sleepers, one of many in which our produce grows in this tucked away corner of nowhere, this one full of muted pale green leaves along with the black and white flowers and the masses of drooping pods of broad beans. Running my hand along the edge of the thin seam that seals them closed, I push in my thumb, opening them up and pick out a handful from their fuzzy nest. The soft interior of the tough green hulls that hide the little beans, encased further in the little grey skins that are bitter to taste though the flavour softens when they are blanched for a moment. I pop them out from the soft pale husks, little green gems in the bowl.

Dipping into my jar of preserved bergamot, with a spoon I scoop out a soft segment from last year, placing it flat on my chopping board I run a knife between the skin and the pith so I have a neat square of preserved rind, golden yellow, smoky and smelling of grey.

Lunch

I cut the sticky golden piece of rind into infinitesimal pieces, stirring a little of the pulp and the tiny squares into a slick of good oil, spooning the good stuff over the slices of fish, along with the little picked beans and a couple of cuts from the fermented young buds of red onions that I pickled earlier in summer.

A snapshot in time.

Until next time,

William