Easy Sole Meuniere
- By Katie Roche
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- 30 Apr, 2019
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I was excited to come to this post, because it is in celebration of excellent blog-husband Dan, who made this recipe for me on our first Valentine's Day as a couple, and then gave me this cookbook. I don't think, at the time, that he knew what he was in for - a lifetime of tedious grocery shopping trips and French dishes when he really just wants Taco Bell - but now, in addition to sighing all warmly because that is a cute first Valentine's idea, we can all revel in the fact that, if he's lightly miserable now, he honestly started it. I did ask how he chose this recipe; I don't think he remembers, but I think he and his roommate decided it would be easy. It literally says "easy" in the title. And he wasn't wrong. It's pretty easy.
The hardest part, surprise, was finding the sole. Sole is a flaky white fish and check out this charming sentence I read about it on the internet: "Dover sole are also known as 'slime' or 'slippery' sole because they excrete mucous that makes them difficult to hold." For funsies I checked out what they look like whole on the Google images and they are suuuuper ugly. Almost in a so-ugly-they're-cute way. Apparently unlike other fishes, they're not really sold whole because their skin is so slimy. Is this all starting to sound appetizing yet? If you're seafood-averse and you're still reading, I'm really proud of you. We called what I have decided is the most reliable seafood provider in the area - ye olde Whole Foods - and they had none. Fresh Market also had none. When I told someone I was making sole, that person was like, "But is that even in season?" And I can't tell you how much I've never had to or wanted to worry about whether or not something was in season. That's truly been a trial of this whole process. Like, growing up, ramen and ground beef and Kraft mac and cheese were always in season, you know? Our garden, our ocean, our lifesource was the Almighty Costco and every nonperishable thing dwelled within for our nourishment and joy. Coming from a place that grows pretty much nothing, the whole concept of "seasonal" is a real first-world shocker.
Anyway, sole was eventually procured from Publix, which I was not thrilled about because for some reason, Publix has THEE most potent-smelling seafood counter of all of the grocery stores. I've always lived by the belief that if the seafood smells powerfully gross, it is not fit to be eaten. I get that there's *somewhat* of an odor, but Publix's seafood counter has really taken the odiferous and kicked it up a notch. Nevertheless, Publix was the one that had what we needed so Dan went on a trip there while I went to the ice rink to work on my abysmal skating skills. The intention was to make it for dinner. I got home and we ate pizza. Saturday morning, when we were getting ready to go to Augusta to see Avengers Endgame with our friend who lives out there, I realized we needed to cook it ASAP because you can't just leave fish in your fridge for as long as you please. So casually, on a Saturday midday, we made ourselves sole for lunch and then followed it up with a crap ton of popcorn at the movies. Popcorn as a side dish ya know? (Dan believes it is a main dish, as most of you are aware.)
The hardest part, surprise, was finding the sole. Sole is a flaky white fish and check out this charming sentence I read about it on the internet: "Dover sole are also known as 'slime' or 'slippery' sole because they excrete mucous that makes them difficult to hold." For funsies I checked out what they look like whole on the Google images and they are suuuuper ugly. Almost in a so-ugly-they're-cute way. Apparently unlike other fishes, they're not really sold whole because their skin is so slimy. Is this all starting to sound appetizing yet? If you're seafood-averse and you're still reading, I'm really proud of you. We called what I have decided is the most reliable seafood provider in the area - ye olde Whole Foods - and they had none. Fresh Market also had none. When I told someone I was making sole, that person was like, "But is that even in season?" And I can't tell you how much I've never had to or wanted to worry about whether or not something was in season. That's truly been a trial of this whole process. Like, growing up, ramen and ground beef and Kraft mac and cheese were always in season, you know? Our garden, our ocean, our lifesource was the Almighty Costco and every nonperishable thing dwelled within for our nourishment and joy. Coming from a place that grows pretty much nothing, the whole concept of "seasonal" is a real first-world shocker.
Anyway, sole was eventually procured from Publix, which I was not thrilled about because for some reason, Publix has THEE most potent-smelling seafood counter of all of the grocery stores. I've always lived by the belief that if the seafood smells powerfully gross, it is not fit to be eaten. I get that there's *somewhat* of an odor, but Publix's seafood counter has really taken the odiferous and kicked it up a notch. Nevertheless, Publix was the one that had what we needed so Dan went on a trip there while I went to the ice rink to work on my abysmal skating skills. The intention was to make it for dinner. I got home and we ate pizza. Saturday morning, when we were getting ready to go to Augusta to see Avengers Endgame with our friend who lives out there, I realized we needed to cook it ASAP because you can't just leave fish in your fridge for as long as you please. So casually, on a Saturday midday, we made ourselves sole for lunch and then followed it up with a crap ton of popcorn at the movies. Popcorn as a side dish ya know? (Dan believes it is a main dish, as most of you are aware.)
So here is my sole, minus its slimy skin (LOL) and as soon as I unwrapped it I was instantly put off by the smell. Even Dan admitted it did not smell good, and we both had no recollection of it smelling that bad when he made it for me the first time. I was utterly repulsed and had to pray for the strength to press on and dredge the first two fillets because Dan was already melting the butter in the skillet.
The prayed-for strength was received and I got the fillets in this flour-salt-pepper combo and then I was rewarded with a reprieve from the power of the odor by the world's greatest Miracle Food, the lemon. I got to zest and juice like four of them which honestly did mask a lot of the gross fish smell.
I'm not sure whether I've mentioned this before, but Dan and I are in a near-constant battle over my love of the smell of lemons because I insist on buying every possible cleaning product in lemon scent, and he says that lemon scent is like, corrosive or something? I don't even honestly know for 100% sure what "corrosive" means, it just sounds right...I think it's the thing where acidic stuff like eats away at other stuff? Sincere apologies to my high school Chemistry teacher, I was deeply uninterested. Anyway, Dan has successfully banned lemon-scented cleaning products from the dishwashing realm of the Roche household, and he succeeded in doing this by informing me that such products would be harmful to my dishes. I feel it was rude to make me choose between lemon smells and my deep and abiding love for my Le Creuset dishes, but I guess props to him for knowing how to decisively win an argument and just going for it. Lemon smells prevail, however, in all other cleaning realms. There is no protective affection for my toilets to emotionally pit against my love of lemon. As a sidenote further from the one I'm already on, I just got up from where I sat writing because I had left my seltzer in the freezer too long in pursuit of that perfect seltzer-Slurpie frozen-level, and it exploded on me and I had to clean it up and I came back to my computer and lemon scents and toilet bowls was where I had left off. My process is a mess. Wow.
They voyage into the pan two-by-two, like Noah's ark except this time to their death instead of to be saved from it. The butter probably should have been a little more brown, but honestly, by the time the last two hit the pan, it was maybe a little TOO browned, and whatever. Balance.
See? First two vs. last two. Each fillet only cooks for 2 minutes per side, and once the first side has been flipped over, lemon zest and several tablespoons of lemon juice get added to the pan. Once removed, they rest on plates with the juice poured over them, in a 200 degree oven while the rest of the fillets cook.
This is the first batch, which Dan ate. And then I ate the last batch because I like things slightly burned. (It's weird, I know.)
Alright so the recipe intro lets us know that this is what Ina came up with when she, one day in Paris, "challenged" herself to go to the market without a menu in mind. I feel like she thinks this is impressive and cool, when really, I think it's like how a solid 75% of my friends do their grocery shopping every single week, and yeah, they come up with some weird menus, but they do it, and they don't act like they deserve a medal for it. She goes on to say that when she saw that Dover sole was in season, she thought to herself, "Well I can make sole meuniere without a recipe, can't I? Of course I can!" Of course she can, you guys! All of this, for a woman of a seasoned age who has a ton of kitchen experience is honestly not impressive at all, and she should stop tooting her own horn about it because in light of how easy this is, her horn sounds like a recorder and not, you know...like part of a symphony. It's obnoxious, and we don't want to hear it. HOWEVER, for Dan and his roommate, who previously together owned one cookbook titled "A Man, a Can, and a Microwave" (and guys, it was literally a board book, like the kind toddlers chew on) to open up a cookbook and choose a fish they've never heard of to make me for Valentine's Day, that is pretty impressive. This one will always have a special place in my heart because of how good of a job Dan did at executing it.
As for the actual result, it's seriously quite delicious for something that initially smells so bad and has an internet description of being "slimy". The dredging masks some of the smell, and the lemon decisively finishes it off, and you're left with a nice and light-tasting flaky fish that is great for a meal in the summer or when you don't want to eat something super heavy. Make this though, for real! If Ina can shop without a grocery list in Paris (positively TORTUROUS), we can all really accomplish anything we set our minds to. We can even make sole with a recipe. Difficult, really...but compared to a menu-less farmer's market trip, it's no sweat.
As for the actual result, it's seriously quite delicious for something that initially smells so bad and has an internet description of being "slimy". The dredging masks some of the smell, and the lemon decisively finishes it off, and you're left with a nice and light-tasting flaky fish that is great for a meal in the summer or when you don't want to eat something super heavy. Make this though, for real! If Ina can shop without a grocery list in Paris (positively TORTUROUS), we can all really accomplish anything we set our minds to. We can even make sole with a recipe. Difficult, really...but compared to a menu-less farmer's market trip, it's no sweat.
For this post, I wanted to combine two summertime flavors into the crisp recipe one of my oldest Alaskan friends passed on to me years ago. Rhubarb, if you're unfamiliar, is a reddish stalk that kind of resembles really big celery. It's very tart and is most commonly paired with strawberry. I've rarely seen it star in its own show dessert-wise, but my friend Kylee has been making rhubarb crisp for years and it's the best crisp I know of. Blueberries are usually in season in late summer; I have not been home for a blueberry season since Dan's last deployment in 2018 so in order to make this recipe I actually used blueberries from a friend's parents' farm in upstate SC! They're a little sweeter than the blueberries I'd have picked at home, but they worked well. I'm going to pretend like I was actually picking blueberries at home in Alaska for the purpose of showing you what that would look like.
I was getting all ready to write this post, going through my process with photos starting in my kitchen when I realized that a lot of my friends probably don't know what fireweed is or where it comes from and this recipe actually starts far, far away from my kitchen. This will be the first of a few posts highlighting iconic Alaskan ingredients. I've wanted to do this for a while because my home inspires me in so many ways, writing and cooking particular among them. Fireweed is a wildflower that is rather ubiquitous in southcentral Alaska and is often considered a gauge for how long summer will last. It is said that when the blooms reach the top of the plant, winter is six weeks away. Whether or not that's accurate, fireweed is found all over in late summer in Alaska. Here is some I spotted in mid-July by Eklutna Lake:
If you know Dan and me very well, you probably know by now that if our life were a sitcom, he'd low-key be the funniest character. Because that is true, I thought I'd include his bottom ten with accompanying remarks before giving the actual bottom ten. His are hilarious, but aren't as legitimate as mine because he actually tried way fewer of these than one might think. I realized as he was flipping through the book that my old coworker Cam probably ate more of these foods than anyone else did. The overarching theme of Dan's song of Ina Garten hatred is not the actual taste of the finished product but more how asinine he finds that particular recipe to be. So here you are, Dan's bottom ten.
#1: Butternut Squash Soup
#1: Butternut Squash Soup
You guys asked for my top ten from the blog, so here we go! And I'm thinking that what you *really* want is actually the bottom ten, so I'll go ahead and give you those next week. That post will probably be A LOT funnier. While preparing to write this post, I had Dan flip through the cookbook to give me HIS top ten and he was all disgruntled as he did so and only came up with eight that he even liked at all. "I'm not a picky eater!" he insists. Yeah ok. Although to be fair, I've seen some cookbooks I would only make, like, one thing out of and plenty I'd make nothing out of, though sometimes that's because I find the chef so annoying. @ the Pioneer Woman. I just don't trust someone who puts sour cream in spaghetti and then bakes it. Plus all her recipe intros are about, like, Ladd or Tadd or whatever the heck her husband's name is "coming in from the fields starving for dinner". If I came in from working in a field and you tried to give me sour cream spaghetti, I'd be like, "How about a hot pocket instead? Thx." Anyway, this is not Dan's blog so these are not his top ten. You can ask him which ones he liked, but you'll end up in a long convo about how much he hates Ina Garten. Anyway, these are not ranked or anything, they're just in order from the cookbook.
So with that, #1: Juice of a Few Flowers
So with that, #1: Juice of a Few Flowers
It was Sunday afternoon and I thought to myself, "What a perfect time to make jam!" I mean, how positively quaint: just sitting in my home in suburbia, finished with weekend chores, relaxing with some knitting...why not? Why not make some jam? I mean, obviously my afternoon-kitchen-activity was directed toward jam-making because it was next up in the book BUT whatever, I was kind of excited! Also, this is the last recipe in this book!!! I'm still in the process of deciding what I'll do now, so if there's something you'd like me to make and tell you about in my own fashion - you know, with lots of tangents and jokes - please do let me know! I'll likely continue to tackle Ina content, but may start including some recipe faves and/or foods people text me about a lot! I get a lot of cake questions, a LOT of frosting questions (because meringue buttercream is bae and I've got everyone in my social circles who eats my food on board), and a lot of fish questions. So look for more food to come, even though this is the last recipe in Back to Basics.
We went to Publix to ItemQuest for this and Dan said, "Don't we already have strawberries???" And I had to confess that I had eaten them all because it's honestly amazing how good fruit can be when it's 1) in season, 2) somewhat local, and 3) not ludicrously expensive. I'm about to travel home to Alaska for about a month, and it's going to put a real damper on my current fruit-snacking habits when I go into Fred Meyer for some strawbs and they're like, $7/lb and already trying to be moldy. Also needed blueberries (partly for the jam, mostly for the snax), one Granny Smith apple, and more superfine sugar. Publix had all of these things, plus about a million old people 'cause Sunday + Publix = Old People City.
We went to Publix to ItemQuest for this and Dan said, "Don't we already have strawberries???" And I had to confess that I had eaten them all because it's honestly amazing how good fruit can be when it's 1) in season, 2) somewhat local, and 3) not ludicrously expensive. I'm about to travel home to Alaska for about a month, and it's going to put a real damper on my current fruit-snacking habits when I go into Fred Meyer for some strawbs and they're like, $7/lb and already trying to be moldy. Also needed blueberries (partly for the jam, mostly for the snax), one Granny Smith apple, and more superfine sugar. Publix had all of these things, plus about a million old people 'cause Sunday + Publix = Old People City.
I was glad Ina gave me something easy for this week, because I was packing for Alaska and just *did not have the time* to mess with hunting lobsters or weird cheeses from the internet or whatever. ItemQuest was fairly straightforward, just took Dan a trip to the liquor store next to the Publix for some limoncello. I grabbed this particular lemon curd in the British aisle of Publix; I think last time an Ina recipe called for lemon curd I bought it from Trader Joe's and it was DISGUSTING. I mean, truly awful. I would like to recommend making your own lemon curd if you have the time and the inclination. Ina's lemon curd recipe is phenomenal and it is one thing for which I can say she is truly correct: homemade is BETTER and store-bought is not at all as good. The most beloved cupcakes I have ever made were filled with Ina's lemon curd, and had the lemon curd mixed into the meringue buttercream frosting. HIGHLY RECOMMEND!!! Anyway, the rest of this was fruit that I had on hand, mint, and Greek yogurt which we did have to buy because I don't, as a rule, eat Greek yogurt of my own free will. It's chalky and disgusting.
Dates are something I honestly never even thought about until I did Whole 30. I have mentioned my Whole 30 experience several times over the course of this journey through Back to Basics, but if you're new to reading the blog, this is what happened: I did Whole 30 one time, just to prove that I could, because salvation-by-diet apologists were obsessed with it as the newest fad in righteous eating practices. It was a terrible experience; on top of hating every minute of it for myself and finding exactly zero wellness benefits, I also hated it for Dan who was not allowed to eat popcorn for 30 days. Dan is in love with popcorn; his addiction to it is almost at the level of my addiction to coffee. He gets rage-y without it. But anyway, Whole 30 recipes are big into dates as sweeteners and some of the things you can eat, like Lara Bars, are made with dates. Dates are impossibly chewy. I ate more of them in that 30 days than I ever wanted to, and now when I see them in recipes I can't help but think of that Whole 30. Fortunately for me, I got to begin this recipe by chopping TWO CUPS' worth of dates. Oh, they also kind of look like cockroach bodies, so there's that. The only thing I actually had to get at the store for this was oranges! I had everything else on hand, even Cointreau, thanks to many previous Ina recipes.
Alright so, I'm not the Muffin Man. I don't really make a whole lot of muffins, for a lot of reasons, one of the main ones being that on the rankings of breakfast foods they definitely do not crack the top five, maybe not even the top ten. If I have an option for a bagel or a waffle, I'll pick one of them over a muffin every single time. I also prefer cereal, cinnamon rolls, or *cue eye roll* avocado toast. I've just never risen from my slumber and been like, "You know what would really hit the spot right now? A MUFFIN." But!!! In recent months, since my friend Logan came into my life, I've been making muffins a lot more frequently because he really loves them. So the last blueberry muffins I made were from a 99cent Betty Crocker mix packet which he brought into my house and asked me sweetly to make, because they're what he grew up with and along with many preservatives, they are full of nostalgia for him. Here is Logan and me, preparing to mix the muffin batter. Out of respect (and to make up for the disrespect of rolling up with muffin mix), he wore one of my aprons. I will treasure this picture forever.
You guys...Ina has "a thing" about commercial granola bars. Her beef with them, apparently, is that they say they contain real fruit and nuts but that all she sees when she looks at the labels are like, ten different kinds of corn syrup. I'm going to go ahead and guess, just based on this, that none of the lunches her mom packed for her growing up contained any Fruit By the Foot. And surely if we introduced her to Gushers, she would die. This is a real shame. I also feel like this disdain for corn syrup is maybe just a tad self-righteous, coming from the woman whose frosting recipe calls for literally six entire sticks of butter. At that point, what's a little corn syrup to you really? People's nutritional hills-to-die-on really fascinate me (and also kind of annoy me sometimes) and the ones about sugar might get me the most. I feel like, at some point, sugar is sugar and whether you're baking with honey, white sugar, brown sugar, molasses, maple syrup, etc you're still probably making something that's not amazing for you so, in terms of sugar, why not just be in for a penny in for a pound, amirite? So while I'm on this topic, before I even get to the actual point (please, I know you're here for the tangents), I would like to just let anyone and everyone know that I'm absolutely not interested in your "healthy substitutes" for things that taste good in their original form. I do not WANT a chocolate chip pancake made out of bananas and grains you harvested in your field this morning. If I want a banana I will eat one, and if I want a chocolate chip pancake I will eat one, and that's that. And DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT come @ me with "cashew cheese". Just don't. I don't even think I should honor that concept with an explanation of why it's so wrong. If that's not self-evident, I can't help you.
So down to the granola bar ingredients. I rolled up to Kroger only to find that their already meager bulk bins had been EMPTIED because if you scoop dates into a bag and then someone else scoops dates into a bag, you might get the coronavirus. I'm glad they've taken the precaution of removing this shopping option, since I cannot resisting licking my hands after every grocery trip I make. Thankfully, they still had the lil tower of small containers of some of the weirder items right there in the organic section, which was where I was able to find dates. The rest of this stuff was on the baking aisle, with the exception of wheat germ which was, for some reason, with the cereal. I'm still kind of unclear on what wheat germ is actually used for by people, and the context of it being located on the cereal aisle makes me wonder even more. Do people eat it like grape nuts? Sprinkle it on stuff like how people like to do with nutritional yeast right now? ("It tastes just like cheese!" You know what else tastes like cheese? Actual cheese. You're welcome.) Anyway, I was very grateful that Kroger at least had everything I needed and I didn't have to go on a for real ItemQuest.
So down to the granola bar ingredients. I rolled up to Kroger only to find that their already meager bulk bins had been EMPTIED because if you scoop dates into a bag and then someone else scoops dates into a bag, you might get the coronavirus. I'm glad they've taken the precaution of removing this shopping option, since I cannot resisting licking my hands after every grocery trip I make. Thankfully, they still had the lil tower of small containers of some of the weirder items right there in the organic section, which was where I was able to find dates. The rest of this stuff was on the baking aisle, with the exception of wheat germ which was, for some reason, with the cereal. I'm still kind of unclear on what wheat germ is actually used for by people, and the context of it being located on the cereal aisle makes me wonder even more. Do people eat it like grape nuts? Sprinkle it on stuff like how people like to do with nutritional yeast right now? ("It tastes just like cheese!" You know what else tastes like cheese? Actual cheese. You're welcome.) Anyway, I was very grateful that Kroger at least had everything I needed and I didn't have to go on a for real ItemQuest.
At first I saw the pictures of this and thought, "YAY!!! Cinnamon rolls!" And then a couple of weeks ago, I actually tried making cinnamon rolls for the first time and realized that my inability to roll/shape/slice yeast doughs is still a thing. AND THEN I read this entire recipe and realized these get filled with raisins. So here we go!
ItemQuest was only dramatic because the stores just DID NOT have puff pastry sheets; I was only finding it in "shells". I tried Bi-Lo and Dan tried Food Lion before he finally located sheets at Publix. The rest of the ingredients, I already had on hand!
ItemQuest was only dramatic because the stores just DID NOT have puff pastry sheets; I was only finding it in "shells". I tried Bi-Lo and Dan tried Food Lion before he finally located sheets at Publix. The rest of the ingredients, I already had on hand!