Name: San Pietro in Salsa (John Dory in a Balsamic Vinegar Sauce)
Yield: Serves 4
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 1 carrot, roughly chopped; 1 onion, quartered; 1 celery rib, roughly chopped; 4 garlic cloves, peeled; 1 cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley; 2 bay leaves; 4 cups water; 5 black peppercorns; 2 slices of lemon; ½ teaspoon salt; 1 cup extra-virgin olive oil; Sea salt; Freshly ground black pepper; 2 pounds John Dory fillets or fillets of cod, haddock, scrod, petrale, or whole trout; 6 tablespoons balsamic vinegar; 8 anchovy fillets under oil, drained and well rinsed and cleaned; Leafy tops of 2 celery ribs

Preparation info

Serves
4

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

In Nonna's Kitchen

By Carol Field

Published 1997

About

Pike is the fish traditionally used in this dish when it is made in the countryside around Mantua, but Vanna Corbellani Camerlenghi assures me that when city-dwelling Mantuans can’t get pike, they use delicate white-fleshed San Pietro, John Dory, instead. And a good thing too. Pike are full of tiny bones and are extremely difficult to scale. If John Dory, a saltwater fish, should prove difficult to track down, substitute cod, haddock, or scrod. I’ve even used trout with ver