Meunière; in the manner of a millers wife, lightly dusted with flour.
The trout and three ingredients plus seasoning, it doesn’t get much easier and yet there is a technique to this recipe that makes it a dish that good cooks still love to put together well.
This is a method of cooking that suits our holiday season perfectly and with a lemon and a few herbs taken up river one that can make a great meal cooked in a river hut. This method can be used with many other fish species, especially those we catch in our rivers and around river estuaries.
INGREDIENTS:
4 nice fresh trout fillets
½ cup of flour mixed with ½ tsp salt and ¼ tsp white pepper
20mls olive oil
60g butter (cut into 20g and 40g portions)
¼ cup freshly chopped parsley
Squeezed juice of one lemon (50ml)
A grind of pepper
A little salt
INSTRUCTIONS:
Pre heat your oven to 110˚c to heat plates and to keep your cooked trout warm.
Heat a frying pan. Put the oil and 20g of the butter into the pan and continue to heat until the butter starts to ‘sizzle’.
Pass the trout fillets through the seasoned flour and lay into the pan, rounded sides of the fillets face down. Fry gently for a couple of minutes then using a spatula turn over and cook a couple of minutes on the other, take out of the pan and keep warm on an oven tray. You may need to cook two fillets at a time depending on the size of your pan.
Timing is the key to a good meunière sauce.
When the fillets are cooked, place them onto a serving dish or four serving plates.
Tip off any excess oil from the pan and place the pan back on to the heat.
Add the remaining butter and cook, swirling the pan, until the butter foams then begins to turn to a nut brown colour. Lift the pan off the heat, add the parsley and then the lemon juice, swirling the pan to mix the juices into a sauce that is poured or spooned immediately over the trout fillets.
Sprinkle over a few salt flakes and a grind of pepper.
Serve with new potatoes and a simply cooked green vegetable or a salad or just some bread and butter.
