It is well known that no food or drinks are served at the Oscars ceremony, unless guests mule in an odd candy bar or flask of liquid courage. In fact, the ceremonies have often been criticized for the lack of at least an open bar. However, this was not always the case. In fact at the very first Academy Awards (official) ceremony in 1929, when actor Douglas Fairbanks was president of the Academy, a private dinner was held before hand that consisted of dishes of fish and poultry. The recipe I'm giving here is the main course of that dinner, which was paired with the oddly Edwardian sounding "Half Broiled Chicken On Toast."
Filet Of Sole au Beurre
There is nothing particularly difficult about this dish, it does require a little knowledge of how to get around in the classical French kitchen, but nothing that can't be easily learned and mastered. The two main component of this dish are the butter sauce, which where some cooking practice helps and the cooking of the fish, which really doesn't require much skill at all. The fish is poached, so make the cooking liquid first, then prepare the sauce, right toward the whisking in the butter, poach the fish and finish the sauce. As for the poaching water, a lot of people like to add some chopped vegetables and/or an herb bundle and some white wine, but the late great James Beard recommended that for dishes as delicate as this a simple poaching liquid should be water with salt or, highly recommended, 1/2 water and 1/2 milk seasoned with salt.
You will need:
1 sole or flounder fillet per person
Poaching Liquid of choice
Butter Sauce:
1/2 to 1 lb. unsalted butter, cut into cube (best that it's not ice cold)
1 1/2 cups good drinkable white wine
Few tbsp.s good white wine vinegar
Mineral or sea salt to taste
1 to 2 shallots, finely minced (optional)
1. Heat the wine with the vinegar, and slowly bring to a boil. When boiling, add the shallots, if using and continue to reduce. When the wine is well reduced to about 3 tbsp. it's time to start adding the butter
2. This is where the technique comes in. This butter sauce is an emulsion, which are not hard to make if you get the whisking down right--there's not a lot to it, but it does take practice. Here's the deal, even if the sauce "breaks," which is what an unsuccessful emulsified sauce is called because it separates, it may look kinda rough, but still tastes good--if you are not running a restaurant or catering company, just chalk it up to practice and eat it anyway.
3. Reduce heat to stop the reducing, then piece by piece whisk in the butter. Keep whisking in each piece until used up. The resulting sauce should look like.
4. While whisking away, poach the fish for five minutes. When ready to serve, carefully drain the fish with an elongated spatula, gently drain on a clean towel. Place on heated plates and sauce as you see fit, serve the rest of the sauce on the side. Garnish with chopped parsley or other green herbs and a lemon twist, if liked.
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Variations:
There's a number of ways, almost endless, to vary the butter sauce. It's one the great basic sauces and can be flavored with herbs (such as above), purees, spices, anchovy sauce, etc. Most of the flavoring are added after the sauce is made. A few popular variations include the use of pureed parsley, sun dried tomato paste, curry powder and duxelles (mushroom puree), truffle oil, pepper purees and vegetable purees.
Some recipes call for as much as 1/2 cup to 2/3 cup of the white wine vinegar. For oily fish, this works well. For more delicate fish, it's over powering.
You can tweak the recipe slightly by adding a little nutmeg and/or cayenne to the finished sauce.
The sauce is terrific when it's made with flat dry champagne, if you can pair that with a champagne vinegar, all the better.
This is an excellent sauce for dipping. Great for seafood fondue with steamed shellfish. It is also terrific with boiled artichokes and is really good on vegetables like steamed asparagus or broccoli, which make great side dishes for the fish. Also great for flash fried oysters.
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