Woodfired Sole Meuniere

As we have said many times, fish from the woodfired ovens is one of the best things you will cook. The high heat and moist environment means the fish stays succulent and it cooks really quickly.

Flat fish are a joy as they are, er, flat so they will cook even quicker especially as fillets. So if your pan is hot your fillets will be cooked in seconds. Fast food at its finest.

Here’s how we made this week’s #woodfiredweekly – do check it out on our youtube channel as well.

Woodfired Sole Meuniere – Ingredients per person

1 small sole per person – we used megrim but you could use lemon sole, even plaice

30g plain flour

30g butter

2tbsp olive oil

1/2 tbsp capers, rinsed and chopped if large

1/2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley

Juice of 1/2 lemon

Salt and pepper

Woodfired Sole Meuniere – Oven state, useful equipment etc

2 Mississippi

Heat deflector

Frying pan

Woodfired Sole Meuniere – Method

1. Fillet the fish to get 4 fillets – or get your fishmonger to do it for you (!). Mix some salt and pepper into the flour and dust each fillet with the flour on both sides.
2. Heat the frying pan in the oven and add half the butter with the oil. When the butter is foaming, add the fish fillets. Spoon the hot butter over the top of the fillets until they are cooked through. Take the fillets out of the pan and keep warm on a plate.
3. Add the rest of the butter and when that’s foaming, stir in the capers, parsley and lemon juice and heat through the capers. Spoon the caper mixture over the fish fillets and serve at once.
4. There – how quick was that!

Woodfired Sole Meuniere – Alternatives

As we said, we used megrim sole also known as Torbay sole. If you can get hold of it, do give it a try. You can also use lemon sole, plaice or even Dover sole. You could also use fillets of John Dory – even though it’s a round fish, it’s so thin that you can treat it as a flat fish.

Cook the fish whole if you like fish on the bone – you’ll need more butter and oil, less heat in the oven and it will obviously take longer to cook than the fillets.

Capers are a great store cupboard ingredient and very handy to have when you are cooking fish. They are salty and sharp and will cut through the richness of the butter. They come in different sizes  – we like the little ones – perfect nuggets of salty savouryness. They are generally in brine or salt so rinse them before use and be careful of how much salt you use in the cooking.

Woodfired Sole Meuniere – Wine suggestion

Suzie from Michael Sutton’s Cellar sent us our wine suggestion and says “Sole Meunière sings out for a rounded White Burgundy!” A delicious accompaniment. Cheers!

 

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