It’s October – late October – the time of year that Nagle goes fishing for Striped Bass off Long Island. The call came Friday, “I have stripers, come get some …” I got there this morning after a trip to the Hastings Farmers Market to pick up the end of season vegetables. I loaded a cooler with some venison and plowed down to the city.

Nagle gave me a side of stripper and what looks like an equal amount of blue fish. Blue fish is a favorite of mine, but Nagle-caught striper almost straight from the ocean is something rare. He asked what I planned to do with it. I got the feeling that if he didn’t approve I would have to give it back. I said I would do a couple of things, one of which was to poach some of it as a soup sort of thing.

He looked pained. “You’re gonna make soup with fish like that?!”  I hesitated and he said, “At least expose some of it to hot steel right now – for lunch.” I allowed as how I had planned to do that as well with salt and pepper and butter. He didn’t like the butter idea and recommended that the fish be rubbed with a little tasteless oil like rapeseed and then treated to some salt pepper and garlic and then to the sauté pan.

I didn’t want the garlic with it just yet, so when I got home, I cut the belly piece loose, rubbed it with some peanut oil and seasoned it with salt and freshly ground pepper. This went into a HOT pan and relaxed for two and one half minutes whereupon I turned it over. The cooked side looked really nice and brown and I rubbed a little butter on it while it was still hot. After another two and half to three minutes, I turned it over again and rubbed that side with butter.

The little butter that ran off each side turned brown in the pan and I turned the fish every thirty seconds for the next two minutes. Yes, it was obsessive, but the heat penetrates more evenly with the frequent turning. I added a tiny bit more butter each time.

Out of the pan and onto the plate and it was Proust and Madelaines all over. I had to tell everyone about it. Sometimes when I was a little kid eating breakfast on Edisto there would be fresh caught, pan sautéed white fish with nothing but salt and pepper and butter. Here it was again.

I think some things just don’t get better. They get different, but the archetypal form of freshest fish sautéed in a little oil and butter with salt and pepper defines the form.

Maybe I won’t make soup. Maybe I’ll just do the rest the same way and try not to salt it with tears of joy.  The blue fish is going into the smoker later tonight ….  after we have a little piece of that done in a similar manner, of course. The wife don’t like bluefish. Oh poor, poor thing.