This is one of the first dishes I cooked for a dinner party when I got out of the kitchen. It is not particularly conducive to entertaining at home if you want to join the party.
The idea behind a beurre blanc is that you take wine and an acid – like white wine vinegar – with some herbs and aromatics, boil it down till it’s almost nothing (a sec – “to dry”) but a few large sticky bubbles in the bottom of the pan, so that the sweetness of the vinegar is concentrated and balances out the acidity, then you dilute the whole concentrated thing with a ton of butter. You do so by adding cold butter, a little bit at a time, and whisking it in vigorously so that the fats form an emulsion, leaving you with a seemingly impossibly airy sauce that doesn’t feel oily or heavy at all. It is rich, though, so a little goes a long way. It will also break (the fats will come out of emulsion) if you let it sit, so you either need to prepare a hot water bath and carefully monitor its temperature, or make it just before serving. This will go with a wide variety of seafood – especially the less fatty or oily fishes, like scallops, fluke and flounder, sea bass, etc. I wouldn’t necessarily try this with mackerel or something like that, although you never know.
In this version, I’ve used grapefruit juice but supplemented with some vinegar. The acidic tang is a signature of the sauce and grapefruit doesn’t do it all on its own.
This is actually quite a difficult sauce to fuck up – but you must use cold butter and you must be patient, not adding the next piece until the last one is basically gone.
As for Turbot, it is one of my favorite fin fishes to eat. It’s a flat fish, like flounder, only maybe a little more delicate. Keep that in mind with this preparation, which is simple, but you want to keep the fillets whole so you can’t fuck with them too much once they’re in the pan. If you’re cooking for two, that shouldn’t be a problem. If you’re cooking for 8 in the home kitchen, it gets a bit tricky as the fillets fight for pan space.
The purple potatoes – well, why not? Orange, purple and white. Those have to be some college ball’s team colors.
Ingredients:
Turbot
- 2 turbot fillets – approx 1/3 lb each
- Salt and pepper
- High heat oil, like safflower or grapeseed
Beurre Blanc
- ½ cup fresh squeezed grapefruit juice, strained (discard any pulp and seeds, and for Chrissake don’t use a bottled version)
- ¼ cup white wine vinegar
- 1 medium shallot, minced
- 2 sprigs fresh thyme
- 5 or 6 peppercorns
- salt and crushed white pepper (or black. whatever.)
- ½ pound butter, cut into one-tbs cubes
Sour Cream Mashed Potatoes
- 2 – 3 pounds of purple potatoes
- A tub of sour cream (you won’t use all of it)
- More butter
- Salt
- Pepper
Directions:
First things first: remove your butter from the fridge, cut into chunks, and place back in the fridge. Make sure it’s entirely cold before assembling the beurre blanc.
Then: start with your potatoes since those will take the longest. Roughly cut them into even ½-inch chunks – depending on your purple potatoes, this should mean either halving or quartering them. Drop them into cold water, add a little salt and a small dash of white vinegar and bring to a boil. Boil until they’re very soft and almost falling apart, then drain.
As they come to a boil, add all the ingredients except the butter and the salt and crushed pepper to a pot and place the heat on high. A small sauce pan with high sides is good for this. Bring to a boil and keep an eye on it.
Back to the potatoes – after draining them, add them back to the pot, add as much butter as you’d like to eat, add a bunch of salt and pepper and a whole bunch of sour cream and begin mashing. If they’re too clumpy or dry or sticky, add more sour cream. Don’t over mash, whatever you do. These can stay warm on the stove. You can reheat over the stove if necessary.
Before the liquids are a sec, remove your turbot fillets from the fridge. Rinse them off and pat them completely dry and place on your cutting board.
How to recognize a sec: the bottom of the pot is completely visible except for a thin film – the liquids are just clinging to the clusters of minced shallots, peppercorns, and thyme leaves. None can burn, as they’re still in liquid, but there’s barely anything surrounding them. With higher sugar-content liquids like grapefruit juice, there may well be large sticky bubbles boiling.
I like to remove one piece of butter from the fridge at a time, but it’s not required. Add one piece of cold butter and using a whisk, stir vigorously until only a tiny speck is un-melted. Repeat this until you have only a quarter of the stick left.
At this point, turn heat a large, flat-bottomed skillet on high heat and film the bottom with safflower oil. Keep working on your sauce and make time to salt and pepper your fillets on both sides. When the pan is screaming hot, add the fillets, top-side down and don’t move them. Cook this way over very high heat for 1-2 minutes, until the edges of the fillets become opaque. They may begin to flake in the pan. For Godsakes don’t press on them or touch them or slide them around. The idea here is to create a nice, evenly browned crust. After a minute or two, flip them gently using a fish spatula. If they seem basically done, you may turn the heat off right away; otherwise, cook for no more than a minute.
At some point just before the fillets are done, or just after you turn off the heat, you’ll want to pass your beurre blanc through a fine mesh strainer. Don’t go crazy pressing on the solids – you don’t want to release any of their water into your emulsion, as it will not incorporate. But do your best to get it all.
To assemble: mound a small heap of purple potatoes in the center of the plate, drape the fillet over one side so the head is on the potatoes and the tail is touching the plate. Drizzle the beurre blanc liberally over it so it drips all down. You can garnish with caramelized grapefruit segments if you’re cool, or a sprig of mache if you want to be cheesy. Serve and reap the compliments at once.
The Grumpy Gastronome 
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