Fish is always a quick dinner and, if you're ok with sorting out the bones yourself, a whole fish is the tastiest of all. Lemon Sole has an mcs rating of 2, or at least the ones caught off the cornish coast are, so no need to feel guilty either.
This is a really tasty sauce to serve with lemon sole, and an uncharacteristically close rendition of a recipe for me, this time from The Abel & Cole Cookbook, I love this book and all the recipe ideas are cleverly grouped by seasonal ingredients. I've used it a lot and can really recommend it.
So, first put some jersey royals on to boil. Or whatever you want to serve with this, personally I couldn't wait to get my teeth into the jerseys, they are so lovely (just in case anyone doesn't know - jersey royals are a very special type of potato grown in, and only in, Jersey!).
Sprinkle a liberal serving of flaked almonds into a dry frying pan and heat until toasty brown. Put them to one side and add oil and a knob of butter to the pan to heat up, at the same time pop the oven onto its lowest heat.
Lightly coat the lemon sole with plain flour, put into the frying pan and cook for a couple of minutes on each side. Pop them into a baking tray and bung in the warm oven, turn it off though as you don't want them to keep cooking, just to stay warm.
Get some spinach (or whatever veg you're having) on to steam.
Back to the fish pan: be warned this sauce evaporates faster than last month's paycheck, so you need to be on the ball. Make sure the pan is really hot then chuck a glass of white wine in, let it bubble away for a bit and deglaze the pan with a spatula. Squeeze in the juice of half a lemon, and add a heaped teaspoon of capers that you've chopped up, all of the toasted almonds, another knob of butter and a load of fresh parsley.
Turn the heat right down and get the fish, potatoes and spinach onto plates. Spoon over the sauce and eat immediately. Yum.
Lemon sole has a rating of 2 from the Marine Conservation Society so, when I was standing at the fish counter, I remembered this and thought it was a pretty safe purchase. I later read that this is its breeding season (April to August), although it is at the very end of this period. Next time I'll go for a different flat fish during these months, such as dab or farmed halibut.
The white crab meat in this recipe is caught and hand picked in Cornwall, the potatoes are from our garden and the marsh samphire, which is in season at the moment, I got from the fish counter at the supermarket.
The first thing I did was to thinly slice the potatoes into crisps, using a mandolin because it's my new "toy", it probably would have been fine just to do it with a sharp knife though!
These crisps/chips are shallow fried in enough light olive oil that you can see it bubble when it's hot, it takes a few minutes on each side to cook them. We did them in batches and laid them out on recycled kitchen paper to absorb the grease, before popping them in a very low oven to keep warm.
For the sauce, heat up some oil and butter in a saucepan and add several sliced spring onions (or any onion) and a crushed garlic clove. Cook until soft, then pour in half a glass of white wine, salt and pepper, and let that bubble away gently to cook out the alcohol. Add around 100ml of vegetable stock and keep on a low heat while you cook the fish and vegetables.
Put a handful of beans into boiling water and put the samphire on greaseproof paper in a steamer on top of the saucepan. Both vegetables should cook through in the time it takes to prepare the fish.
Using the same frying pan as for the potatoes, reheat the oil and add a little butter. Lightly season the fish and place it in the pan when the oil is very hot. Leave it, without moving or pressing on it, for a good few minutes until the sides of the fish are starting to go opaque. Flip them over and cook for a final minute or two before plating up.
The potato crisps can be layered up to make a little tower, with the beans on top and the samphire to one side. At this point, stir some sliced sorrel into the sauce and remove the pan from the heat, then stir in the crabmeat as well and spoon over the fish.
