Monday 5 December 2011

Fish is the Dish: Lemon Sole

You might remember from the last time I posted how excited I was to receive a box of delicious fish in the post from John Milne at Delish Fish and the people at Fish is the Dish. Well after seeing how good the fish was last time I was probably even more excited this time, in fact the only time I've been more excited recently is when I  got Blondie Boy got a Lego advent calendar.


Anyway, this time the box contained some lemon sole. Which interestingly is neither a fruit or a sole, it's actually a type of flounder. It's a fish I remember eating a lot as a kid, it has a really delicate flavour so it's ideal for kids who might be fussy, or even fussy adults. Who could that be?... 


Also in the box was a little bonus: some of John's delicious hot smoked salmon. We're a smoked salmon kind of gang in this house anyway, hot or cold, so when I say this is pretty much hands down the nicest you'll find, that's high praise. We ate it as a starter, just with some bread and it was so good. Blondie really enjoyed it, it had a flavour of honey about it that she thought reminded her of really good honey baked ham. Blondie Boy snacked on it and kept coming back for more.


There were two recipes with the sole, a recipe for lemon sole goujons, which is how I always ate it as a kid so it sounded ideal for the boy, although he hasn't tried it yet: his is still in the freezer. I'll report back on that at a later date. The "adult" recipe was for a pan fried lemon sole in butter, a kind of meunière I guess. Like last time it was really easy.

Ingredients:-

Lemon Sole Fillets (1 per adult)
Chopped Almonds
Green Beans
Flour (For Dusting)
80g Butter

How to Cook:-

Cook your green beans, I blanched mine in a pot but if you're feeling lazy you could microwave them.If you've bought whole almonds toast them under the grill for a little, until they start to darken. Cut the the beans in half and chop the almonds.



Take the skirt off of the sole fillets (the easiest way is with scissors although you can do it with your hands) and dust them with flour, then shallow fry in a medium/hot frying pan  

Please ignore the flour spill, I cleared that up later.  By which I mean my Mum cleared it up later. Don't feel too bad for her, she got to eat the fish after all her hard work.

Take the fish out when cooked and place it on a warm plate. I covered it in tinfoil to keep it warm.

Whilst this is cooking brown the butter in a pan at a medium heat, then add in the green beans and the almonds. 



Serve the fish and spoon the butter, green beans and almonds over the top.



I served with boiled new potatoes, in more butter (I don't believe there is ever such a thing as too much butter), some more green beans and baguette. It would appear that I cooked it in my well out of date but still cool green Red Sox jersey. NBH being NBH.



It was amazing, such a good result for so little effort. My brown butter, as you can probably tell, was not so brown. When I do it again I'll give it a little longer in the pan. It's pretty easy to burn, and if it does it's pretty foul, so you just have to keep an eye on it and keep stirring it. Nobody complained so I may have got away with that, until now at least, but even with slightly less than brown butter the lemon sole was delicious. Like I mentioned before, it's such a delicate fish that cooking it simply like this with a light sauce is the way to go.

It's sustainable too, a 2 on the sustainability scale where one is the best and 5 is worst. I reckon this might be a good recipe for entertaining: it's so easy to make but still delicious and pretty impressive. Your guests would think you've been slaving for hours in the kitchen, when actually you've been back there playing with your your son's Lego advent calendar. Living the dream.

7 comments:

Melaina25 said...

This fish was great. We loved this one. You are right the light sauce goes a long way. x

Melaina25 said...

check you out making fish :) It took me a long time to warm up to fish dishes. By the way, are your plates from Pier 1?? I had similar ones

Melaina25 said...

I love the fact that we can all eat together and you know what the more you try it, the more it happens.  We had mussels this weekend and they were delicious.  The Fish is the dish campaign is a revelation to me,  Shows just how fast and delicious fish can be

Melaina25 said...

It has been great for us since I "didn't like cooked fish" before we started! NBH really wants to try cooking mussels. I lurve them :)

Melaina25 said...

Super tasty :)

Melaina25 said...

I completely agree; you can never have too much butter!  That fish looks wonderful :) I used to be quite phobic of fish, but I love it now!  I drooled at your fish pie recipe too, in an earlier post (that's right, I lurked for a while); it looked beautiful!

Melaina25 said...

NotBlondeHusband made the fish! I generally say I do not like cooked fish but I am really coming around! The lemon sole was so good and easy. You should try it! No idea about the plates they are my mother-in-law's :)