project

The fish poacher with rack is usually a very large utensil of elongated oval form, with two handles and a lid, equipped with a removable rack which can be fitted inside at different heights. Although it goes back centuries, and is even mentioned in Scappi’s 1570 treatise on culinary art, the fish poacher with rack did not win the recognition it deserved until it was included among the kitchen utensils used in French cooking in the middle of the nineteenth century when, depending on the type of food to be cooked, a number of variants were to be found: rectangular with short curved sides, oval, rhomboidal...Like many other utensils analysed in the course of our research, the fish poacher has at different times in its history been produced in many different materials: at one time ceramic and copper fish poachers were very widely used and - more recently - aluminium and stainless steel ones. In addition to being an impressive item in any self-respecting kitchen and indispensable on certain occasions, the fish poacher with rack has developed more in relation to the size of the food to be cooked (large fish, shellfish, but also small hams or zamponi - pig’s trotters) than to the method of cooking. It is equally suitable for Boiling, Simmering, Steaming or Braising. As Roger Vergé reminded us, a utensil in which food of more than ordinary size can be cooked is an essential requirement in a sophisticated kitchen. This is why our fish poacher is 60 centimetres long. The body is in bilaminate (thick copper coating and 18/10 stainless steel lining);the handles, lid and rack are in 18/10 stainless steel. The shape of this fish poacher, as far as we know, is a real novelty; rather than oval, it is elliptical. Besides being a pure geometrical form the ellipse, thanks to the width of the meridian (20 centimetres), enables this utensil to be used for cooking fish of very different sizes, from sea bass, salmon or gilthead up to a weight of three and-a-half kilos, average-size turbot (when it can be used instead of the rhomboidal poacher known in France as the turbotière), to very large shellfish. Again, thanks to its shape, it can be used to solve the typical Italian problem of cooking zamponi. An important feature is the rack, which can be fitted at three different heights: at a centimetre from the bottom for Boiling, Simmering or Braising, at four centimetres for Steaming, and at the top to allow the food, once cooked, to drain.