Delicate White Fishes
I’m not talking about lighter fillets that are easy enough to broil (like Flounder, Fluke, or even the Stripers we love here out east). Nor am I talking about the fish that classically call for a flour dusting before pan-roasting (Dover Sole, for instance). I mean delicate, white fish that are often referred to as flaky, which are sort of thick and take a few minutes to cook, and which you regularly see on fine dining menus: Atlantic Cod, Black Cod, Chilean Sea Bass, Halibut. These can be tricky in any milieu, especially in the home kitchen, so they’re often relegated to oven-baking. Which can get boring. So folks look for alternatives; Butter Poached Halibut, for instance, is delicious. But I’d like to go in a different direction.
In almost every restaurant I worked for in NYC we made a crust for such fish:
Montrachet- Brioche, softened butter, and black truffles
RM- Wondra flour and black steel pans transformed the skin into a crust
Bouley- scallop mousse and tiny mango medallions
Danube- scallop mousse and almonds or thinly sliced mushrooms
At Montrachet we used black truffle because we had black truffle scraps. At RM we were seafood purists so we had methods to transform the skins themselves into crusts. And at Bouley and Danube we used scallop mousse because we had scallop scraps and it set nicely when cooked.
In each case, by pan roasting the crust side on medium high heat, followed by a trip through the oven, we achieved a nicely browned, and deliciously crunchy crust—with flaky, tender flesh. No flipping. Maybe a quick finish with a herby butter baste.
I’ve used many other “crusts” in restaurants, but I’d suggest they’re not practical for home cooking.
Lately I’ve been turning to the world of vegetables to create interesting”crusts” for these sensitive and tasty fishes, experimenting with things like cabbages and bitter greens.
I saw a photo of some beautifully prepared stuffed cabbages, and my first thought was: I can’t get over the texture of those things; I love that slow cooked sweet cabbage flavor but the cabbage is a textural nightmare. How to solve this problem?
What I want is for the moisture from the fish protect to the greens from burning, while the hearty leaves from the greens shield the surface of the fish from cooking too quickly and becoming dry. I want a “crust” that cooks while our fish cooks, developing flavor and texture through a Maillard Reaction or Caramelization.
Here’s a picture of what I served this past Tuesday—Atlantic Cod, marinated in white miso and wrapped in Radicchio, grilled over Binchotan charcoal:
