Fillet of seabass with sauce vierge and spring onion mash
THIS is a great dish for lunchtime as it is tasty and satisfying without being too filling. In fact, it’s a popular favourite at the City of Manchester Stadium’s Ladies Luncheon.
The dish is based on a classical French sauce, sauce vierge, which literally translates as ‘virgin sauce’.
It is a very light Mediterranean-style sauce, made from olive oil, zingy lemon juice, chopped tomato flesh and basil, or sometimes tarragon.
The sauce was popularised by Michel Guérard at Eugénie-les-Bains back in the Eighties and has since become a modern classic.
The beautiful clean flavours of the seabass sing alongside the sauce, which, with the added savoury flavour of the spring onion mash, serves to enhance and ‘ground’ the whole plate.
The most important aspect of this dish is to make sure that you don’t ‘fry’ the fish.
The fish should be lightly oiled, seasoned and placed into a very hot, dry pan – resulting in the fish being seared rather than fried.
To avoid over-cooking, the fish should be cooked 70 per cent skin side down and 30 per cent flesh side down.
Ingredients (serves four)
4 x 6oz fillets of seabass (de-scaled but skin on)
Mashed potato (enough for four people)
1 bunch spring onions (trimmed and finely sliced)
150ml extra virgin olive oil
1 lemon (finely grated zest and juice)
20 cherry tomatoes (halved across the equator)
12 black olives (stoned and halved)
1 tablespoon capers
1 tablespoon cocktail gherkins (sliced)
1 small bunch fresh tarragon (picked and finely chopped)
60g butter
Method
Heat a non-stick saucepan until very hot.
Douse the seabass fillets in a little vegetable oil, then place in the dry pan (skin side down) and leave to crisp up a little for about 2-3 minutes.
Flip the fillets over and cook the other side.
For the sauce vierge, warm the olive oil slightly then whisk in the lemon juice. Add the lemon zest, cherry tomatoes, gherkins, capers and black olives, finally add the chopped tarragon.
Check the seasoning and adjust as necessary.
Heat the mashed potato in a pan until piping hot, adding the 60g butter to keep the consistency good.
Add the sliced spring onions just before serving – the residual heat will cook them sufficiently.
To serve, place a metal ring into the centre of each of four plates, add some of the spring onion mash and compact down well with the back of a dessert spoon.
Place a fillet of seabass on top of each portion of potato (skin side uppermost), then spoon the sauce around the outside of the plates, and eat at once.
Published: Thu, 07 May, 2009
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