Fish Blanquette Stew

I want to share with you a recipe that's so dear to my heart. It's called a blanquette, usually done with veal, called blanquette de veau, but I'm going to show you a version using some fish. It's so delicious, and this is a dish that my maternal grandmother would cook for me, and I love to cook it now for my family. So we start off with a broth. I've got a fish broth, fish stock here, but you could actually use some chicken stock if you like. So in here, I'm going to add some onion, and I'm just going to cut it into chunks because what we're trying to achieve here is extra flavour in this liquid. So in with some onion. To this, I'll add carrots, and the carrots, I want to thinly slice them into rounds. So the carrots and the mushrooms are going to be part of the dish. The onions are there to flavour the broth even more. So we'll discard them later on. So in with two carrots and one bay leaf, and then some mushrooms, little button mushrooms. I'm just going to cut them in half. And no need to wash your mushrooms. Just brush them with a pastry brush if there's a little dirt, and I don't peel them either. So in with our mushrooms. That also flavours it, and we're going to serve it, OK? So this now needs to cook down for about 10 to 12 minutes or until those carrots are just tender. So we can start the rice while we're waiting. In a pot, just on a medium heat, we're going to add a splash of oil. You could also add some butter if you like. The other half of the onion can go in, and I've just finely chopped that. You don't want too much colour on this. The whole point of this dish is to be that really white, pale colour. I'll give these onions a stir and try not to get too much colour on the onions. We just want to soften them. So give them three to four minutes. Then I can add the rice. I'm actually using a risotto rice. You can use any short-grain rice you like. That'll go in. I'll coat it in the onions, and then we'll wait for our broth. I've separated the vegetables from the stock. We've got our carrots and our mushrooms. And I have discarded the onion, so it's done its job, and also the bay leaf. So you'll need about one litre of stock left over. So to start with, you'll probably need about 1.2 litres because it does evaporate as it cooks the veggies. So our rice is looking good. It's just on a low heat. I've sweated off the onion, and I've just gently toasted that rice. In with the stock. So you'll need about two cups of this stock. That's about right. I need to season it, so a pinch of salt. And because that's come straight up to the boil, I'll now turn it down. The lid can go on, and this rice will take about 10 to 15 minutes to cook or until it's absorbed all of that liquid. Now, while the rice is cooking, let's get on to the famous sauce. So in the same pot, you can see that it's still got a little bit of that stock residue. Totally fine, because it's all the same flavour. We'll pop the heat on there. You'll need about 15g of butter. I'm just using unsalted butter. And we'll just melt that on a medium heat. Not too hot, because you don't want that butter to burn. And we'll just swirl it around the sauté pan. And this is very much like that white sauce that we make, the béchamel that you'd make for a lasagne. But instead of milk, we're going to be using our stock, just like a veloute. And it just gives it the most amazing flavour. It forms a silky-smooth sauce. It's fantastic. So the butter is melted in with our flour. Allow that to become slightly foamy. And time to add in our stock. So I add a small amount to start with. Give it a stir. And if you like, you can transfer over to a whisk, just so there's no lumps. But I do find when I'm adding this stock, it does dissolve all together quite nicely. In with the last bit of stock. And at the moment, it looks quite liquidy, but fear not, it's going to come up to the boil and thicken. And this needs to cook for about three to four minutes. So we'll just wait for that to thicken. We'll wait for our rice to finish cooking. And then all we need to do is poach our fish. The sauce has thickened up nicely, produced a little. Now we can add some cream. So I'm just going to use some thickened cream. A generous amount of that can go in. It's not supposed to be swimming in the sauce. It's just going to gently poach in this. So once that's combined, we can add our fish. I've got about 500 grams of fish. This is hapuka. I love the texture of poached hapuka, but you could also use some monkfish, some red emperor. Snapper fillets also work. Some ling. Any white fish that holds its shape as it poaches. So in to our lovely white blanquette sauce. We'll turn that down, because you never want to boil that fish. Just on a medium to low heat. Coat that fish in the sauce. Oh, it looks so good, doesn't it? We can also return our vegetables. We want to warm them up again. So we've got the mushrooms and the carrot. And fold that through now, while the fish is not too flaky. We don't want to break up the fish too much. We want to serve it in those big chunks. Fantastic. Okay, lid on. And because fish is so delicate, it takes no time at all to cook. It's going to take another four to five minutes. In the meantime, I've got some parsley to chop. I want it to be super fine for the garnish. All right, this has been poaching for five minutes. Oh, it smells like my grandmother's house. I love it. Now we need to season it again. So a good pinch of salt. And we'll just fold that through. Just being super delicate with the fish. And I always like to finish it with some lemon. So a cheek of lemon. Just a squeeze. And you want to leave it right at the end so we get the freshness of the lemon juice. Back to our other pot over here. Our rice. You can see that's completely absorbed all of that liquid. And we can plate up. So we start with our rice pilaf on the bottom. Okay. And for our fish, carrots and mushroom, place that on one side. We'll add a few more carrots just for some colour there. And because it is such a pale-coloured dish, a pop of parsley, it also tastes fantastic with it. And there you go. A humble French-style dish, usually done with veal, but now I'm showing you how to do it with fish and it works just as well. If you want something a little special, Sunday night, beautiful fish stew like this, French style.