Scorpion of the sea with cuttlefish-“Bolognese”

When I talked to David Kinch of Manresa on the phone the other week he mentioned that he had been doing a Bolognese kind of sauce using cuttlefish instead of meat. It sounded intriguing and caught my attention. I asked him for the particulars, but he just responded, got to run Mikael, talk to you later. In a sense it was good he did not have time to elaborate. It is more fun to play around with my fantasy not being influenced by too detailed instructions. Afterwards, it is always interesting to compare how in this case David had done his Bolognese.

This idea sounded great. Yes, indeed another one of those “why did I not think of that before”-moments. I have done similar sauces with finely diced shrimp and fish but cuttlefish or any cephalopod had never occurred to me. It would of course be interesting with pasta, especially with paccheri but I am only eating pasta on the very odd occasion. The other interesting alternative would be to use a fish that would be a good companion to such a tasty and powerful sauce that I had in mind to do. The flavors of the sauce would be cuttlefish, chicken stock, bay leaves and diced tomatoes. Nothing more. Perhaps a few leafs of basil in the end. This type of sauce would outshine most fish. But there are some types of rockfish that in theory seemed perfect to match this sauce. I decided to give it a try with a scorpion fish.

For several reasons I wanted a small scorpion fish, that is to say maximum weight of 500 grams. And I wanted it ultra fresh.  The small scorpion fish can be gently grilled and the resulting flavor is quite tasty. It goes through rigor mortis relatively quick and later the same day as it is caught the texture is translucent, yet firm and correctly cooked it won’t lose much liquid and stay moist and almost gluey. It took a few days before I found one to my liking. Like much of the truly great stuff it came from Joker’s catch. I put a finger in the gills and smelled my finger. It was a fantastic pure smell. When I gutted it, likewise the smell inside the belly was pure with no bad odours.

I never scale small scorpion fish. I just gut it, clean it and stuff it with a quarter of lemon and salt. Then I grill it on a grilling pan. I grill it slowly moving it once on each side. Then I finish it in the oven at 130C until it is ready. I check readiness with a small thin and sharp knife that I stick in the back by the bones down to the spine and let it stay for a few seconds. If the knife is warm it will be ready. You want the fish meat to just let go of the bones. Not too easily, but it must not be stuck to the bones either.

The Bolognese was simple. I minced the cuttlefish and seared it in clarified butter. I added a bit of chicken stock, lemon and a bay leaf and let it simmer under cover for a while. Before serving it I added some chopped confit tomatoes that were leftover from the day before.

A great and simple dish. Now I just need to know how David does his Bolognese.