Good morning. I took to The New York Times Magazine this week to write about a remarkable 20th century restaurateur named Henri Charpentier , who was raised in the kitchens and dining rooms of the French Riviera, labored under Auguste Escoffier and César Ritz in Paris, and moved to New York in the early 20th century, where he opened his restaurant Henri’s, in Lynbrook. One of the dishes Charpentier served there showed up in a cookbook my friend Julie found in a used bookstore in the Midwest a few years ago: fluke au gratin (above).
It’s a remarkable, elegant dish, and a simple preparation appropriate to any firm, mild white-fleshed fish. Make a buttery sauce with chopped shallots, garlic, chives, parsley and mushrooms, and brighten it with lemon juice and white wine. Spoon some of it into a shallow roasting pan, place your fillets on top, then add the rest of the sauce, some bread crumbs and dots of butter. Roast it for a few minutes until the fish has just cooked through. Serve with rice and asparagus , maybe? It’d be a lovely meal on Saturday night.
Charpentier was a raconteur (his memoir “ Life à la Henri ” reads a bit like a first draft of “ A Gentleman of Moscow ”), and he long insisted that he invented the dessert crêpes Suzette at 16, while serving a dinner for the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII. In his telling, a beautiful French girl named Suzette was there. While making tableside crepes for dessert, he accidentally flamed them with brandy, but passed it off as intentional. The prince thought the dish tasted superb. Charpentier offered to name it in his honor. But the prince told him, “We must always remember that the ladies come first. We will call this glorious thing crêpes Suzette.”
Historians quibble with this story. But maybe you could make the crepes for dessert all the same.
Other things to cook this weekend: recipes to celebrate Juneteenth on Saturday; recipes to celebrate Father’s Day on Sunday.
Source : food
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