a flavorful sauce.) Fish don’t require long
cooking to dissolve their connective tissue
and become tender. The purpose of any given
technique is to get the center of the fish
promptly to the proper temperature without
overcooking the outer portions.
Handling Delicate Flesh Its delicate and
sparse connective tissue means that most
cooked fish is troublesomely fragile to work
with. It’s best to manipulate fish as little as
possible during and after cooking, and to
support the whole piece when moving it,
small ones with a spatula, large ones on a rack
or a stretcher of foil or cheesecloth. Neat
individual portions should be cut before
cooking, when the tissue is still cohesive;
after cooking, even a sharp knife pulls flakes
and shreds from the weakened matrix.
Grilling and Broiling Grilling and broiling
are high-temperature techniques that cook
mainly by radiant heat, and are well suited to