For 4 people: 4 catfish chops (3-5 cm thick, depending on size), 4 carrots, 4 leeks (only the white and light green), 3 onions, 2 garlic cloves, 1 bunch flat-leaf parsley, 1/8 l vinegar, 1/4 l dry white wine, 4 tbsp butter, 1 tbsp pimento seeds, salt, pepper, 1/2 tsp sugar
Cut the carrots and leeks into narrow, thin strips ("Juliennes"), the halved onions into rings; chop the garlic. In a large, shallow pot (with a lid) that can hold the pilchard slices side by side, and that you can also put in the oven, sweat everything well in 2 tablespoons of butter over low heat, stirring constantly, but do not let it brown.
While this is going on, salt, pepper, and add the sugar to it. After about 5 minutes, add the vinegar, wine, and pimento seeds. Put the lid on and simmer for another 5 minutes. Season again. Preheat the oven to 150°. Salt the pilchard slices on both sides, not too gently, place them on the vegetables and spread the remaining butter in flakes on top. Cover again and put them in the oven, which you now turn down to just below 100°. Let steam for about 25 to 30 minutes.
Take them out (aesthetes may now remove the skin) and serve with the vegetables and broth. Serve with nothing more than boiled floury potatoes and white wine. A Franconian Riesling or Silvaner fits best.
The giant fish from the Main tastes best in the root broth: There is talk of catfish or catfish
What do we know of the doings and goings of fish at the bottom of often murky rivers and ponds? Coral reefs are probably better explored. So old fishing books, mainly of British provenance, are haunted by all sorts of horror stories about the misdeeds of giant pike, which would have plucked ducks from the surface, even attacked swimmers.
The catfish, on the other hand, plays no part anywhere else but in this country. The Larousse gastronomique doesn't even mention it; in Anne Willan's Complete Guide to Cookery, only the catfish appears in passing, the catfish of the Missisippi familiar to all Mark Twain readers. To what extent it is related to our catfish I have not been able to fathom. The catfish is also only popular in the south of Germany, more precisely: in the southeast, in the catchment area of the Main and Danube rivers. In the past, there were also scare stories about the catfish or Waller (as the fish used to be called only in Franconia and the Alpine foothills). From a monster fish was there for example the speech, which a bathing boy with skin and hair ate, tells Magister Elsholtz.
Ist the Waller nevertheless the largest inhabitant of our rivers, again and again anglers up to 2 meters large journeymen go to the hook. The fish consists for the most part of head and mouth, but has no scales and, similar to the monkfish, almost no bones. Its flesh is quite firm and does not dry out easily, but it is not suitable for feats on the stove.
The Burkards also know that anglers sometimes pull huge catfish out of the Main, but they themselves have only ever once caught a really heavy lump weighing 25 kilos and 1.20 metres long. Catfish weighing 16 or 17 kilos are more common. But they are not often to be found in the river, which is why the Burkards usually get them from the Franconian lake district near Neustadt an der Aisch. They cost €13 per kilo, and you will usually have to buy the whole fish. It is advisable to pre-order Waller.
The fishermen's guild came into being in 1546, and the Burkards have been practising fishing in the Main ever since. However, they earn their bread primarily with trout and carp from breeding ponds.
As the river itself has changed, so has its fauna. In the 70 or so years Adolf Burkard looks back, no salmon has been sighted in the Main, but Burkard can well remember the allis shad, or Alse, a herring-like fish that used to spawn in bright flocks in the Main and its tributaries. It was popular because of its tender, tasty flesh. Shad no longer exist in the Main, not so much because of insufficient water quality as because of the many barrages and locks. Father Burkard and 42-year-old Franz-Georg, a master fisherman, believe it is possible that salmon will one day be caught again in the Main.
The river still contains 23 species, mostly white fish. They are edible and even taste good, but their many bones make them unpopular, the barbels, noses, chubs, roach and what they are all called. Eel, pike, perch, zander, carp and tench swim in the Main. And catfish. It tastes best in root broth. Here is a recipe from neighbouring Franconia, it represents the best home cooking.
Fischzucht und Fischerei Adolf und Franz-Georg Burkard
Mauergasse 2
63500 Seligenstadt
Phone: 06182-25605
Fax: 06182-897853
Öffnungszeiten: Shop in Seligenstadt: Mon-Fri 8.30-12.30, 14-18.30, Sat 8.30-13.
Sale in the basement of the Frankfurt Kleinmarkthalle: Fri u. Sa from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
from Waldemar Thomas