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Red Snapper
- Red Hen Press
- Chapter
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18 Red Snapper Out of the sea it has the shape of a flattened pocket watch, staring with one eye the time of the last tide, still tinkling for bright waves’ cynosure. Home you wash it in the sink scale its flanks with a knife snapping ivory lunula that sticks to the fingers. Clean, it regains pinkness undulant of its spriter days before, plumpy, it became the school master. Dressed with bouquet garni bay sticks out its gills, garlic teeth spikes its skin and a lemon wedge shows a bright crescent under its belly. Once the onion browns you stew in peeled tomatoes to juice their boiling redness, calm the sea with white wine, herbs, and saffron. You lay the snapper in an oval dish cover it around with the daube till it basks flat on its back eyed by pearl onions. 19 In the oven, it slowly relishes wine through its white flesh goldens on top to become a promising presence at the table. Most palatable guest the snapper is a tender conversationalist who makes no bone less equivocating than its sad brother the lank herring we persistently pursue to drown in the sea. ...