March 6th

Fancy Fish

Every time I make this dish I feel like the name of it sounds so fancy.  However, it's really not...it could just be called fried lemon butter fish.

Sole Meuniere
recipe from: The French Kitchen Cookbook

This is one of my favorite fish dishes.  It's fried, it soaked in butter, and it has capers (well, the recipe actually doesn't have capers, but I add them because hello...they're delicious!) Plus, even though it's easy to make, I feel like it sounds impressive.

Ingredients:

• 4 sole fillets about 6 oz each, skinned (I buy frozen fillets from Trader Joes)
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 6 tbs butter
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• salt and pepper
• chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley to garnish
• lemon wedges to serve
• capers (not in the original recipe, but really good with it)

Directions:

1. Rinse the fish under cold running water and pat dry with paper towels.  Pour the milk into a flat dish at least as large as the fillets and put the flour on a plate.  Season each fillet on both sides with salt and pepper.
2. working with one fillet at a time, pull it quickly through the link then put it in the flour, turn once to coat all over, and shake off any excess flour.  Continue until all fillets are prepared.
3. Melt half the butter in a saute pan or skillet, large enough to hold the fillets in a single layer over medium-high heat. Add the fillets to the pan, skinned side down, and cook for two minutes.
4. Turn over the fillets and cook for 2-3 minutes, or until the flesh flakes easily.  Transfer to warm serving plates and set aside.
5. Reduce the heat to medium and melt the remaining butter in the pan.  When it stops foaming, add the lemon juice and stir, scraping up the sediment from the bottom of the pan.  Spoon the butter mixture over the fish and garnish with parsley (or capers).  Serve with lemon wedges.

Grades:

Megan - A+ (So lemony, so buttery, so capery, so good.)

Doug - A

Noelle - A- (Noelle didn't like the brown bits of sauce on her fish [I think it was too concentrated of a lemon flavor for her] and she didn't like the capers.  However, once that was all off, she devoured the fish.)