Stop Pan Frying Your Fish! Try This easy Normandy Poach Instead

Welcome back so in our last episode we talked about Normandy cooking broadly the five key ingredients and what you can do with them and now I want to focus a little bit more on the coastline and the seafood there is normally there's plenty of seafood in Normandy they've got some of the finest and just to tell you that you know the apple cider calvados creams and butter can be used also for fish not only for meat and dessert and I've got a recipe right here which is how to cook a fish fillet or any fish fillet Normandy style that is absolutely easy and again absolutely delicious so we're going to use the same principle some of these key ingredients a very simple process and we're going to have a beautiful dish on our hand an absolute must try if you like fish let's go right so as you've seen on the picture I can show you again here you know Normandy's got plenty of seafood of shells of crabs of prawns of oysters and all kinds of fish but I'm conscious that when you're not living in France it's going to be hard to get all those things so what I've decided to do here is to use a recipe that you simple a fish fillet and as you can see even my local fishmonger I've got some beautiful salmon fillet and this is the blue eye treble it is a firm white fish fillet that you can use it is really up to you and we can use either one of those but I think I'm going to go with the salmon because salmon is something that a lot of people are quite comfortable with and that's going to work perfectly well so as I said you can use any of fish fillet in something a bit firm it's going to be holding while cooking for the ingredients as part of the key Normandy ingredients we're just going to be using this time a real cider from Normandy last time was more of a local one so that's the real stuff some beautiful cream some shallot and perhaps a bit of lemon and parsley salt and pepper and you are done it is that simple and the process is easy let's have a look let's get started so for the mise en place that means all the things you need to prepare before you cook starting with the cookware we're going to be using a baking dish something that can go in the oven so oven proof and not not too large a small saucepan I'm going to be using to make the sauce and then the rest of the ingredients so the cider we don't need the whole bottle but it's easy just to open it and we're going to use it as is the shallot about two or three tablespoons thinly diced okay a little bit of butter that's salted butter by the way we're going to be using this to butter the dish and the salmon or the other fish fillet can be a white white fish if you want now you don't want to use the salmon with the skin so we're going to get rid of the skin here now if you buy fish fillet and they have a skin on you can buy them skin off but I kind of having them with the skin on because it's somehow fresher I think it just cut from the whole fish I'm going to need to use a knife like a filleting knife so this is the kind of knife like very long and thin and it's flexible you see the blade all right and I've washed my hands and typically you need you do this on a special board and some people they turn the fish around thing is easier when you get the skin up but actually when you fillet or you just remove a skin like this it's easier to lay down the fish with the skin under and all what I'm doing I'm doing an incision here I'm going to plant my knife and go under and you press down and you just slide along the skin on here and then you remove the skin and that's it and then you got a fillet I'm going to put this on the side I've got my fillet that is prepped you see it's nice and clean so up we're going to do this the same for the other fillets now once your fish fillet and the other ingredients are ready we can start to prepare the dish before you do anything you're going to have to preheat your oven at 200 degrees Celsius I put the equivalent Fahrenheit on the screen fan forced on I'm going to use a baking dish so I've lightly buttered the dish it is with salted butter by the way this time and now we can begin so it is the easiest way of preparing fish so anyone out there that's even that never managed to cook fish you will be able to do that beautiful recipe without any problem step number one the butter step number two you take some of the shallots we'll put some of them at the bottom of the dish like this I told you you know Normandy style there's no fuss then you put your salmon so it could be a white fish I'm doing two or only two in here but the ingredients I'm giving you you can have two three even maybe four fillets on here so a better view on here once you've got your fillet you get the shallots at the bottom I'm going to add the rest of the shallots on top some plenty of shallots on here because there's not many ingredients in that dish I'm going to add some salt okay over a bit of pepper so just the seasoning and now we're going to add the cider I'm going to open the bottle on the side and like we've seen before the cider in the other recipe we only did like about 250 ml so that replaced the wine so typically we use wine in a lot of dishes for even these types of dishes but you always have that white wine kind of taste so here we use cider instead this is a typical Normandy style and basically that's about it we're just going to cover this and that's going to go into the oven so as you can see it is very very straightforward now it doesn't look like much like here because we're not finished here it is the process of cooking the fish we're poaching the fish in the cider so this is not fully submerged into liquid it's almost like a braising and we want to make sure we've got the liquid at least three quarter of the way up and so it's going to steam it's going to boil and it's going to cook the salmon so all what we need to do is to cover this put it in the oven until the fish is just about cooked you don't want to overcook it because after that we're going to have to leave it to rest once we're going to be making the sauce I'm taking a small piece of parchment paper and I'm just going to make sure it's kind of tight like this almost like a almost like a papier there's a little hole here for some steam to escape and I'm going to put this in my oven until the salmon sauce is cooked so I'm going to try first like 15 minutes or something like this but if your fish is thicker you may need more time so there's nothing really definite for the time I'll just tell you how long it took me so I'm putting this into the oven and I'll show you the results when it's done it's been barely 15 minutes and I'm so surprised how fast this went look at my salmon is really cooked already on the top right here so once you're here your fish is ready you're going to immediately taking out of there and I'm going to put it on the tray like this on the side with some of the juices so I've got my salmon pieces on here and on the side which you can see here I can't fit everything on the camera I'm taking a little bit of the juices not much just to put that in there keep it moist and I'm going to cover this and keep it warm in the oven so for 50 60 degrees celsius nothing more than that if you use your oven that you just use open the door and put the fish in the oven with the door open okay like this is not going to be too hot and immediately we're going to be taking care of the sauce perfect so our fish is cooked is resting in the oven and I've got here all I need for the sauce so you need to have all of the cooking juices so this is the taste from the fish with the side of the shallots a salt and pepper it's on here I've got the cream about 200 ml 150 ml if you want a little bit of chopped parsley and a hint of lemon you can have some extra salt and pepper if you want for the cookware favor a pan like this you know kind of a saute pan like this that's kind of quite wide so we can it can reduce faster so we don't waste too much time okay so now let's go on the stove so as you can see cooking normandy style is very easy I'm using the pan here medium to high heat I'm taking all of the juices I'm bringing this to a light boil and then we're going to add the cream and reduce and that's about it good so I've got a good boil and what we have here in effect is like a fish fumet or some kind of a an instant fish stock so I like to reduce first the liquid in here because when you add the cream if there's too much liquid this is the cider it could tend to curdle so I prefer like this I'm reducing a maximum to concentrate the flavor and I think that's enough just for just a few minutes and now from here basically all what I'm doing making a cream sauce putting that in we're gonna mix the whole lot reduce and that's it correct the seasoning bit of lemon bit of parsley and we're done with a beautiful sauce it's boiling away so this is a in five minutes maximum you use a really high heat and see we've got a spoon cutting consistency on here already as we always have it's getting there I'm gonna try have a little taste and now when it's reducing I can see the taste of the fish it's very subtle it's pretty much a cream sauce with a slight intonation of apple in the in the background and then you can add a little bit of acidity so I've got my uh lemon here but from the garden I don't even know what is it yeah a few drops of lemon okay a hint of parsley in for the color and if you want a bit of pepper and that is gonna be it with my little ladle on here and our sauce basically is ready so this is what you're getting okay a beautiful simple normally style sauce and very quick to make very simple but it works so now let's assemble this with the fish now before I forget when you take your fish out of the oven put all of the juices that are in you mix well and if need be a little boil and you're good to go but I put this into a serving dish and I've got all my sauce and the trick here that it's a very simple rudimentary sauce and you're just going to be pouring your sauce over over the salmon so generous portion as always and a bit of parsley and we're done okay so the parsley is always the final touch it's very simple you can put a piece of lemon if you want on the side and this is really for a weekday meal something ultra simple we've poached the salmon very quickly we've got a cream sauce a bit of apple flavor into it a bit of acidity some salt and pepper a bit of shallot and that's all you need you can serve this with a rice with potato it's absolutely beautiful perfect so now we've served we'll have a quick a quick try okay so very simple I've got the salmon on here and what I'm gonna do I'm gonna take a little piece of the salmon on here and of course some of that sauce very important the sauce is always super important okay so of course uh typically you have potatoes or rice with it but just a combination it's almost like a beurre blanc as you imagine on here and in my view you know the new the shallots and everything like this add really some some beautiful texture now if you want a real restaurant quality style you can filter the sauce and get rid of all the shallots because some people think they're not going to be cooked properly or anything like that but if you want it rustic like that you do exactly like me and it goes perfectly well you know a cream sauce never fails and as a bonus if you have some leftover cider have a cheers that's typical norm so there we have it another example of the power of these key ingredients here using fish we haven't used them all but we've used just some cider some cream and some butter and there again it is a very straightforward way to cook an ingredient here it is fish and it is very versatile so you can use here salmon you can use a white fish you can even use mackerel the original recipe was using mackerel fillets just to tell you you can use absolutely everything so this is really in Normandy by far one of the simplest way to prepare fish there's other methods but that will be perhaps for another video so if you've never tried that again if you've got friends coming over just for a weekday dinner something quick try it out because i'm telling you it is absolutely good and it works and make sure by the way to join me next time because for the finale of that little series i managed to dig out an interesting apple tart that is not your standard apple tart Normandy style that also includes a flambé with carvados so there's gonna be some fiddling around in the studio so make sure to come back to the channel when i post the video until then take care all let me know in the comment section what do you think of that recipe and as for me i will see you next time on the next video take care bye