pan-fried pollock with parsley sauce

Pollock is the poor man’s cod. But unlike what those kind of statement normally imply, it’s actually delicious. Couple with the parsley sauce, which is essentially a modified bechamel sauce you use to bake lasagna, it’s a match made in..a plate!

Serves 2

4 pollock fillet

olive oil

freshly squeezed lemon juice

salt & freshly ground black pepper

for the parsley sauce

200ml of full fat milk

1/2 medium onion, quartered

1 bay leaf

a stick of butter

a tablespoon of flour

small bunch of curly parsley, chopped

salt & freshly ground black pepper

First, make the sauce. Pour the milk into a saucepan and add the bay leaf and the onion. Turn on the heat and bring to a gentle simmer for 5 minutes. Then turn off the heat and once cool, remove the leaf and the onion. Set aside.

Sprinkle the pollock lightly with salt. Heat the olive oil in a non-stick sauté pan over medium heat. Fry the fish in the pan, skin-side down. Turn down the heat and let fry until the skin browned, then flip it over, turn back the heat to medium and fry until just done. When the fish is about done, squeeze some lemon just over it and season with the black pepper.

Set the fish aside and finish off the sauce. Melt the butter in a small pan and stir in the flour. Cook for 30 secs. Slowly add the milk to the pan, stirring and simmer gently for 5 mins, all the while stirring continuously. Stir in the parsley and add a little extra milk if the sauce seems too thick. Season with salt and pepper. Keep warm over a low heat, stirring occasionally until ready to serve.

hollandaise

Hollandaise is basically an emulsified butter sauce. It is one of the five sauces of french haute cuisine mother sauce repertoire. The sauce is one the great transformations of butter. Its appearance is light yellow and opaque, smooth and creamy while the taste is rich and buttery. It has a mild tangy acidic taste, a result of added vinegar (or lemon juice substitute) but not too strong to overpower the flavoured dish it accompanies. The sauce is serve warm but not hot and is excellent with beef, poultry, vegetables and fish. Two phases follow: cooking egg yolks and emulsifying the butter. It’s easiest to cook the eggs over simmering water. If you use direct heat, the eggs might be overcook which will results in lumps instead of smooth and silky sauce. After the eggs are airy and hot, you remove the pan from the heat and whisk in melted butter. Some cooks use whole butter and keep the sauce over heat, but I think you have more control using melted butter.

Creating an emulsified sauce using fat(oil/butter) and liquid(water/vinegar/egg) takes time and practise (i personally broke my sauce in the first two attempts) but that shouldn’t hinder anyone to try it. You’ll be rewarded with a wonderful sauce for your patience and once you get it right, you’ll never go wrong again. The chief danger to the emulsion is not having enough water (which includes lemon juice and vinegars). Water content is essential in this sauce is cooked (and thus continuously giving up its water as it vaporizes during the cooking). So the water quantity is critical. When making a hollandaise, I usually keep some water on hand to drizzle in if needed.

The standard ratio for making the sauce is 5:1:1(translates to a weight ratio of approx. 5 parts butter to 1 part yolk and 1 part water). That is, for example, 50 grams yolk and water for every 250 grams of butter. But if you’re making a small batch, just enough to serve 2 like i always do, it by tablespoon measuring, a standard egg yolk is a tablespoon, and ibuse two egg yolks, so that’s two tbsp water and ten tbsp of butter. Remember the ratio and you’re golden whether you’re making large batch or small. After that, it’s all about flavor: seasoning with herbs, aromatics, spices, and acid.

4 teaspoons water

½ teaspoon salt

50g yolks (or 3 large egg yolks)

250g warm clarified butter

2 teaspoons lemon juice, or to taste

First of all, make the clarified butter. Melt the butter in a medium pan over medium heat. Reduce the heat to low and continue to cook the butter. The water will slowly cook off; skim off the white solids that float to the top of the butter that forms on the surface. When the water is cooked off and you’ve skimmed the solids, strain the butter through a fine-mesh strainer to extract any remaining impurities. You should be left with pure yellow butter fat.

Prepare a double-boiler by partly fill a saucepan with water and bribg to a simmer. Bring a bowl and insert in the saucepan (the water shouldn’t touch the bowl), and whisk the yolk and the water continuously. When the yolks have doubled or tripled in volume, remove the double boiler from the burner and begin whisking in the warm clarified butter in a thin stream until it’s all incorporated and the sauce is thick and creamy. If the sauce becomes very thick and shiny, almost as if the water is being squeezed to the surface, or if you sense the sauce is about to break, add a teaspoon of cold water. When the butter is incorporated, taste and add the lemon juice to desire.

Do not be daunted if the sauce breaks, and it will, all you have to do is fix it. Simply get another yolk and a couple of teaspoons of water, warm them a little, and start adding your broken sauce the way you added the butter. You’ll have your sauce back in no time.

the most basic: Tomato sauce

Homemade tomato sauce is leagues better that anything you can find in a jar at any grocey store, however fancy the packaging is or how expensive it is. Tomato sauce can be made either using fresh tomatoes or canned peeled plum tomaotes. For this variant i’ll share the simple recipe of using canned tomatoes. The quality of the canned tomatoes is important, but not necessarily the most expensive one. My favourite, and has been forever used is Cirio, an Italian brand that uses the best of San Marzano tomatoes. You can make the sauce fresh every time you wish to use it or in a big batch and store away into the freezer (where they will keep for a couple of months)

First of all, chop 2 cloves of garlic, dice a medium sized red onion, and fry them gently in olive oil over medium heat, adding a three-finger pinch of salt and stirring, until the onion is soft and translucent. Add two cans of the tomatoes, lightly season with salt and freshly ground black pepper and simmer gently for 30 minutes. Break and mush the tomatoes with a spoon (if you break it at the beginning, the sauce will taste bitter), correct the seasoning and add about 4 tbsp of butter. Add a few stalks of basil and serve immediately with your pasta.

Of course there are so many different ways for you to take this sauce forward…

For spicy arrabiatta, start the sauce off by adding a few whole fresh chillies. The chillies will provide some added heat to the sauce. After the sauce has simmered for 15-20 minutes, remove the chillies, chop them up and add back as much to continue bringing the heat into the sauce.

A real crowd-pleaser, and my favourite, is to end the sauce by adding in a nice swig of balsamic vinegar and a handful of grated Parmesan. This variation is fantastic with pasta such as fettuccine, tagliatelle or with grilled meats and fish.

To make a puttanesca, simmer the sauce gently with a handful of good pitted and squashed olives and anchovies. Also by flaking in a tin of tuna, you’d taken the sauce in another different direction.