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Grilled Swordfish Rémoulade

Rémoulade is an all-purpose fish sauce, a super spicy, chunky variation on mayonnaise and perhaps the Platonic ideal of tartar sauce. You can use it with poached, baked, fried, even leftover fish, but I think it’s best with grilled fish. Swordfish is the most obvious candidate, but you can grill steaks of cod, mahimahi, mako, salmon, or tuna and serve them with rémoulade; monkfish is also good. This combination is pretty rich; I’d be satisfied with a decent bread and a salad or steamed vegetable dressed with no more than lemon juice.

Recipe information

  • Yield

    makes 4 servings

Ingredients

1 cup mayonnaise, preferably homemade (page 602)
Salt and black pepper to taste
1 small garlic clove, minced
2 tablespoons chopped drained capers
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley leaves
1 teaspoon chopped fresh tarragon leaves or a pinch of dried
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 anchovy fillets, minced
1/4 teaspoon cayenne, or to taste
1 1/2 to 2 pounds swordfish, in 1 or 2 steaks

Preparation

  1. Step 1

    Start a wood or charcoal fire or preheat a gas grill (or broiler); the fire should be quite hot and the rack about 4 inches from the heat source. While it’s heating, make the mayonnaise and combine it with all the remaining ingredients except the fish. (If you’re making the mayonnaise in a food processor or blender, you can save yourself some mincing by adding the garlic at the beginning and pulsing in the other solid ingredients while the sauce is still in the machine.)

    Step 2

    Grill the fish, turning when nicely browned, about 4 or 5 minutes, then cook for 4 or 5 minutes more. The fish is done when just a bit of translucence remains in its center; use a thin-bladed knife to check. Serve hot or cold, with the rémoulade sauce.

The Best Recipes in the World by Mark Bittman. © 2005 by Mark Bittman. Published by Broadway Books. All Rights Reserved. MARK BITTMAN is the author of the blockbuster The Best Recipes in the World (Broadway, 2005) and the classic bestseller How to Cook Everything, which has sold more than one million copies. He is also the coauthor, with Jean-Georges Vongerichten, of Simple to Spectacular and Jean-Georges: Cooking at Home with a Four-Star Chef. Mr. Bittman is a prolific writer, makes frequent appearances on radio and television, and is the host of The Best Recipes in the World, a 13-part series on public television. He lives in New York and Connecticut.
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