Recipe - Pike In Galentyne

3 pound Middle cut of pike
Or similar large fish
1 One fourth cup White wine
2 tablespoon White wine vinegar
3 Parsley stalks
Salt
3 Slices brown bread
Crusts removed
One fourth teaspoon Ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon Ground white pepper
4 ounce Onions, peeled and chopped
Oil for frying
Gelatine (optional)

Put the fish in a pan, add the wine, vinegar, parsley stalks and enough
salted water to cover the fish and poach gently for 15 minutes. Turn off
the heat; if necessary, the fish will finish cooking in the liquid as it
cools. Cover the pan and cool to tepid before finishing the dish.

Carefully lift the fish out of the pan. Reserve the cooking liquid. Put
the bread in a bowl and add enough of the liquid to cover it.

Skin the fish and take out the spine and other bones; pike has a line of
thin bones through the middle of the body flesh on each side. Cut all the
flesh into small pieces both to get at them and to make a manageable dish.

Strain the remaining cooking liquid into a clean pan. Put 425 ml/15 fl oz/2
cups of it into an electric blender with the soaked bread, cinnamon and
pepper; process until smooth. Return the mixture to the liquid in the pan.
Fry the onions in a little oil until soft, and add them to the liquid too.
Taste for seasoning, add the pieces of fish and reheat gently to serve.

If you want a cold dish, keep the fish pieces and fried onions aside while
you measure and taste the liquid, then reheat it with enough gelatine to
stiffen it; if you had cooked a whole fish, it would have jellied without
help. Add the fish pieces and onions, turn into a mould and leave to set
in the refrigerator. Auter pike in Galentyne. Take browne brede, and stepe
it in a quarte of vinegre, and a pece of wyne for a pike, and quarteren of
pouder canell, and drawe it thorgh a streynour skilfully thik, and cast it
in a potte, and lete boyle; and cast thereto pouder peper, or ginger, or
of clowes, and lete kele. And then take a pike, and seth him in good sauce,
and take him vp, and lete him kele a litul; and ley him in a boll for to
cary him yn; and cast the sauce vnder him and aboue him, that he be al
yhidde in the sauce; and cary him whether euer thou wolt.

From Gemini's MASSIVE MealMaster collection at www.synapse.com/~gemini