The original dish name was Filets de Poisson en Écailles Croustillantes. This mouthful name of a dish was the actual name. lol. The quickest that I’ve ever completed this dish was 1.5 hours. Got to love cooking to do this & I LOVE this dish 😉 Here is the recipe to recreate Paul Bocuse’s signature dish at home.
2 serving
Ingredients
- Sea bass or any white fish x 2 (300g each)
- Potatoe (large) x 3~4
- Asparagus x 6 pieces
- Eggs x 3
- Unsalted butter 125g – 175g
- Creme (full cream) 150ml
- White wine 100~200ml? depends on how much reducing you plan to do
- Thyme (fresh)
- Rosemary (fresh)
- Salt
Equipments
- Disc cutter / apple core cutter or anything that can cut disc approx 1.5 cm diameter
- Sharp knife for cutting potatoe in thin slices
- Potatoe skin peeler
- Spatula or anything that you can us to lift a fillet with support
- Frying pan large enough to fit the whole fish lying flat
- Small bowl
- Brush
- Large spoon / scope
- Large bowl (1 liter+)
- Small pot
- Baking friendly trray
- Baking paper
- Sieve
- Oven
- Stove
Method
- Peel the potatoes
- Put them in water to prevent oxidation (turning dark brown).
- Slice the potatoes as thin as possible. EVEN thickness. Cut on the elongated size to maximise the size of each slice.
- Cut the potatoes into disc.
- Sautee 50g butter.
- Mix the butter with the potatoes disc with your hand. If in doubt, put more butter.
- Whisk some eggs. NO air.
- Place the fish, no skin, onto baking paper.
- ‘Paint’ the fish with egg (don’t be stingy, otherwise the dish will flop)
- Carefully place the potatoe disc onto the fish. The potatoes must fully cover the fish. Think of faux fish scale. Some scales will over lap.
- Paint egg on top of the faux fish scale, again, don’t be stingy
- Put baking paper on top of the fish
- Place fish onto the tray
- Put the prepped fish into the oven 15min (180 degrees Celcius, exact and not hotter)
- Melt another batch of butter, this time is for doing the blanc sauce. NO colour.
- Rinse some rosemary and thyme
- Place the herbs into the melted butter *medium heat.
- Add cream, wine and cook some more. Smell the cream before you put it into the sauce, as a safety precaution.
- Remove the foam. Have a bowl of water on the side to help.
- After a while (you will smell it), leave the mix to cool down a bit. This enrich the flavours and aroma. *reducing can be done without the white wine, it is up to you. When the sauce is done, use a sieve to remove all the herbs.
- Prepare asparagus. No vegetable to stay in water for longer than 1 minute. As they will become soggy. Veggies must remain crunchy / ‘crackable’ even after cooking.
- Boil the veggie in water that taste like the sea (a LOT of salt). Do NOT put on the lid. It is bad for the veggie… Chef Vincent from Institut Bocuse tried hard to explain, but that was in French… I didn’t understand…
- For best looking colour, put the vegetable into ice water straight after boiling. Just doing onsen (hotspring in Japan). If the veggie didn’t look that great when raw, put veggie in ice first, boil and ice again.
- Do NOT leave the veggie in the water for too long.
- Pan fry the fish in butter or oil. The potatoes crust must stay on!! If you only bake the fish, you won’t achieve the golden colour
- Prep all the food and plates. Pull it all together. Plating is a big part of the cooking as well.
Voila! End result 😀
Need more help? Attend the class at Institut Paul Bocuse 😉 It was great fun 😀 Want to know more about it? Click to read about my cooking class experience at Paul Bocuse
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