fish with lemon & brown butter sauce

(Date: 3 February 2013)

The 22th recipe in 2013. And the 3rd from Rachel Khoo's Little Paris Kitchen, followed by Pistou soupe and MacNcheese. I made her creme brulee during Xmas too but that was in 2012 so it didn't count. 

The original recipe is "Poisson meunière (fish with lemon & brown butter sauce)" from Rachel Khoo's Little Paris Kitchen. I closely followed the recipe except the fact that I couldn't find any lemon sole (apparently Waitrose only carries it's posher cousin Dover sole). Hence I got some cod fillet instead.

What I used: (for 2)

1 fillet of prime cod fillet (340g total)

3 tbsp plain flour

1/2 tsp salt

2 pinches freshly ground black pepper

1.5 tbsp sunflower oil

45g butter, cut into cubes

1/2 lemon, juice only

some chopped parsley (flat-leaf)

What I did:

Mix the flour with the salt and pepper and spread out over a large plate. / Pat the fish fillets in the flour so they are evenly coated, and shake off any excess. / Heat the oil in a large frying pan over a high heat. When the oil is smoking hot, place the fish fillets in the pan and lower the heat to medium. / Cook for 3 minutes on one side (or flesh side if using flat fish) until golden-brown. / Turn the fillets over and cook for a further 3 minutes until the second side is golden-brown. / When cooked remove the fish from the pan & leave the fish in a warm oven (set at 80c) to keep warm. / Wipe the pan with paper towels and return to a medium heat. Add the cubes of butter and heat until they melt and become light brown. / Then turn off the heat and add the lemon juice. / Add the parsley, and swirl the contents of the pan around. / Return the fish to the pan, spoon over the juices and serve immediately.

How good was it? 9/10 -- it got a 10/10 from Hubbee but I'd give it a 8/10. I think it's pretty good but the lemon & brown butter sauce was slightly under-seasoned to me.

How easy was it? 7/10. Generally easy. Need a bit of extra work of patting flour and making sauce compared with normal sauteed fish. Adding lemon sauce into butter was not as daunting as I imagined.

How economical was it? Total cost should be about £5, mainly because the cod fillet just happened to be on discount with about 40% price reduction.

Will I make this again? Maybe be, maybe not. Though my Hubbee seems to like it very much.

Note to self? Just a piece of mental note for possible food allergy warning to my own self. It seems to cause some itch over my ears & limbs. I'm a bit worried. It's actually the second time that I seem to have some undesirable physical reaction to fish (followed the bacon-wrapped salmon). Will pay some more attention next time when I cook fish again.