As we do a Dover Sole, now I think a lot of people gets confused between Dover sole, Lemon sole, there’s all kinds of different soles out there.
This is the true McGuire, the real McGuire as they say. This is Dover sole. This is very expensive. When you go to a restaurant, I think we sell it with $75.00 in the menu. Some people sells it for $85.00 in the menu up. You really have to like—they were sold to pay that much money. I’m not paying that much money for fish, okay. So, the Dover sole is really—it’s very elegant fish but it’s one of those fish that it’s not just on every restaurant menu. So, it’s one of the things you really got to look for.
What I’m going to do, I’m going to show you how to sear it today. And we’re going to cook it. You got to dip it in the flour and I’m going to just tell you all that. And what we’re going to do, I just have some little spring vegetables. This is green and yellow zucchini, some baby carrots, asparagus, morel mushrooms. And then the sauce we’re going to do is the interesting part today. It’s actually—I’m going to use sauce almondine. And what we’re going to do is butter with lemon juice and then I have a little bit of demi glace here. Now, if you don’t have demi, you could do it without it. It just really helps emulsify the sauce. And I’m going to show you and we put the lemon juice and then the almonds that we’re going to put into it. So, let’s go ahead and then let’s start with Dover sole. Very important, because of the shape of the Dover sole, you kind of want to have like a long-shaped pan. This black ones work really good, I mean if you have a copper pan, you know sometimes you have to see the copper pans that I have—those are real nice but make sure you have something as long because what’s going to happen in the round pan, you can’t really fit the Dover sole into a round pan and that’s why this works best.
So, let’s go ahead. I’m going to season, I’ll take two here. I’ll probably fit two on those pans. Salt and pepper, very important to season it right before you cook it. Do not season it before. Like anything else, if you season it too ahead of time, what actually happens it will withdraw all the moisture out of the fish and you’ll have liquid. And when you try to cook it, it will be real soggy. They’re like real, like almost steaming again. And then flour, I’m just going to—the reason why we flour it, it really helps it to like give it a nice little brown crust on the fish. Flour both sides and the flour that we use here is just a regular all purpose flour, I mean and it really doesn’t matter. If you only have baking flour or you only have bread flour, you could use that. It is really not going to make a big difference. A big difference, what you do need is clarified butter. I don’t know if some of you know what clarified butter is. You have regular butter which has butter salads in it, okay. Once you cook clarified or actually take a regular butter and you cook it down, what happens is the butter salads comes to the top which is almost it look like real foamy. We skin that off and then this is the end result. That’s what you get, you get clarified butter. What happens with this is you can—it has a real high smoking point because it doesn’t have anymore butter salads in it. Okay. And that’s the difference. And the reason why we use it for the Dover sole, it really browns real nice. If you don’t have it, yes you can use corn oil, or you can use peanut oil, it will work fine. Very important, the pan to smoking point and then what we’re going to do is we’re almost going to—not fry it but you want to have enough liquid in there so it almost like gives you a purpose of pan frying it. And very important, when you put it down, always tip the pan away from you, put the Dover sole in so you don’t have split eyes. A lot of people, they put it in, they drop it down and then the fat’s everywhere. Just relax, take your pan, tip it up, and then put on your Dover sole and it’s fine. You have no oils splitting everywhere. I see this constantly. Don’t get scared of the pan. Don’t get scared of the oil. Okay. So, this is one of the things—and later on I’ll show you actually. And what we’re going to do, we actually flip it over as well.
Let’s get ready for the sauce. Now, to make this sauce was very important, you need to have—we’re going to put it when the butter actually starts to brown. You’ll see on the bottom it’s going to start to brown. So, let’s go ahead and add it into this pot. You will not to make too much sauce so I think that should be enough. Okay. This process is almost—I’ll explain to you this process how, we’re going to get to the point where it almost clarifies. But when it clarifies, we can add the lemon juice to it then you’re going to see how it’s going to boil and you’re going to add the demi and then we’re going to finish the rest of it. Okay. So, that’s good. And let’s switch pans again. When you’re going to flip the fish, what we will do first to make sure just give it a little shake. If it still sticks to the pan, let it stand, and cook a little bit longer because what happens is a lot of times people is like, “My fish always rips and always stares.” It’s because you don’t let it cook it long enough. That’s a big problem. You have to make sure it seals properly before you flip it over. Now again, when you flip it over, I put the pan sideways and then flip my Dover sole. Again, you don’t have any fats splitting everywhere. Same thing with this one, flip your pan over, and then flip it over. And then from this point on, I’m going to go ahead and put it there.
We get an over here that’s 400 degrees. I’ve another pan. We’ll finish this two as well. I’ll be getting this pan hot. Let’s look at the sauce again. The sauce, you have to let it go. You will see what’s going to happen with the butter. It will boil, boil, boil and at some point, what we call the butter salad, you see this white foam on top. What’s going to happen, once the butter gets to a clarified point, that’s going to go down as a sediment. Now, the sediment is what’s going to brown. And what you want to do from the sediment, once you get to that point, this is called beurre noisette. Noisette is of obviously hazelnuts but it’s a term we use. Beurre noisette is brown butter. I don’t know if you go to France, you’ll see a lot of terms in their menus. Everything is with beurre noisette at sometimes especially fish. And that’s basically this principle of beurre noisette. What happens is the butter salad goes to the bottom, it starts to brown, don’t let it get black. Once it’s nice golden brown, that’s when we’re going to add the lemon juice. And I’m going to show you a couple of tricks too because when you add the lemon juice to this, everything tends to roll over. So, that’s why it’s very important, the amount of liquid that you use and how tall or how deep the sides of the pan. You want to make sure it’s not a little shallow because if I use something like this to try to make the sauce, it will all boil over and probably catch some fire.
That’s not really it, I’m going to go ahead and get this ready as well. Then, on Dover sole too, what you’ll see, it comes in different sizes, always 16, 20 or 14, 16’s and then 16, 20’s. And basically what it indicates, it indicates the amount of Dover sole per pound or per case. And we have usually—this is anywhere from 16 to 20 Dover sole that comes in per case, that’s what we have. These are 16, 20’s, they’re a little bit smaller than the regular 14, 18 on the Dover sole. All right, that pan is hot too. When you do this, just shake off the little excess flour in it. So, you can see on the sides there, it starts to burn, not burn but it starts adhering to the pan. You can see that if you’re looking to—so what we’re going to do, we’ll finish this two Dover sole in the pan with it. And then usually, I mean for us it looks easy but you know in the kitchen when we cook, we have 16 burners around you. So, you go from one to one, you cook, you pour, you go in the oven. It’s not a problem but I know at home, it gets a little bit frustrating like I would say that at home, it gets very hard to cook. I feel like I’m in confinement because you’re going to get such a small kitchen. You don’t have enough space. I know that I guess there are problem.
All right, you see how nice and brown it is. So, that’s beurre noisette. So at this point what we’re going to do, we’re going to add our lemon juice. So, as we add the lemon juice, you see they start bubbling out. This one is not bad—and then what I’m going to do, I’m going to take my spatula and just spread the bottom a little bit. And that’s why for this one, whatever you do, never use a nonstick pan please. Another thing with nonstick pan too, it is very hard to actually brown butter in a non stick pan. So, what you’re going to do, always use like a stainless steel pan. And even if you have the calphalon pans don’t use that because what happens is since you add lemon juice to this, you don’t want to have a pan that’s going to lay up any—have side effects on the acidity. Okay. So, stainless steel is your best bed on this. And then I’m going to add a little bit of our demi glace to this. I’m going to put it all. And let’s flip these.
Now, the Dover sole usually when you cook it and once you put it in the oven, it takes about I say a good 15 minutes. And you’ll be ready with it. So, our sauce here, I’m just going to whisk it up. And once you add all your ingredients, put it off. Once you add the lemon juice and once you add the demi, you can go ahead and put it off. And then I’m going to go and put the almonds in here. And what I usually do, the grapes goes on top of the Dover sole but I’m not going to throw it in here and then just have everything in the sauce and then we’ll garnish the fish with it. Now, again the sauce is really, really good with the fish because it gives it a real nice. It’s got a nice lemon buttery flavor to it. And the same thing, you got to season it with salt and pepper, very important as well. While the sauce is cooking, we’ll get ready for our vegetables. When you do this at home sometimes especially with the flour, you know you always try to work as clean as possible because a lot of people when they cook, it looks like a tornado into the kitchen. It is very important as you cook, always like wipe, put stuff away, put stuff away because it becomes a nightmare. And then you don’t know where to put stuff and you always have a problem with that. So, as you always cook, just try to clear up things, put it away.
This is our sauce, okay. Mix it up a little bit. And very easy, I think the very easy sauce to make. There’s nothing to it. Like I said, if you don’t have demi glace, it’s not a big deal. What you need to do sometimes saving—if you got a little bit of chicken stock, you can do that and even want to—sometimes what we do, we add a splash of soy sauce in it. Just for acidity, it also gives a nice little brown color to it so that’s what we do sometimes with that. Now, for this one since we are in the butter, forget about spring and we’re going to do butter in this pan with all the rest of the vegetables. What I’m going to do first, starts with—but always when you have kind of mushrooms, when you do something, start with the mushrooms first because you want to sear the mushrooms first then you’re going to add your rest of your vegetables to it. And then as far as seasoning vegetables usually what we do, let it cook in a pan a little bit. We always let the pores open, then you season it because right at this moment you don’t want to see the—you want it to cook a little bit, sautéed, then you’re actually going to season the vegetables. And also remember with plants and vegetables, always when you blanch the vegetables, the water is heavy salted, so it’s already seasoned. After it’s blanched, it should be already salted. But you always have to finish it with just a little more salt and pepper.
Let’s look at our Dover sole and see what we have here. You can see, almost done. I’ll give it about another two minutes. When you do this, very important to remember is if you have Dover sole, it’s not cooked fully—completely cooked fully, it is going to be very hard to cut off the bone. Usually, when you put your knife and I’m going to show you today when we clean it, when you put your knife into the Dover sole, it should just come right of the bone. And again, if it’s not completely—if you have a hard time and it sticks to the bone, it’s raw, put it back in, it is not finished. Let’s go ahead and put the rest of the vegetables in here. Seeing all this things, I think a lot of times from cooking, the cutting part is the hardest part. You’re sitting there and getting all the cutting ready and you know chopping and all that stuff. And that‘s why usually when we come here for the show, I like to have like everything chopped, kind of ready. I mean if there’s something interesting, I think everybody knows how to cut up onions and everybody knows how to cut—sometimes we’ll show you different features on how to use your knife properly or different knife skills as far as cooking and cutting. A little bit of salt and pepper, put some—and a little bit more butter. People always say—butter makes everything taste better. But I know a lot of times, you’ll also get request for no butter or whatsoever.
All right, let’s go ahead and pull out the first pan of Dover sole and be ready. Again, when you do this, you’ll see a lot of times on your fish that it sticks sometimes on the one side that it sticks to the pan. But just remember, when you put it out, use a proper spatula. I see a lot of times people they have this. And sometimes they tend to stick to the pan too because they’re not nice and smooth. So, if you’re going to end up cooking Dover sole at your house, this is proper one to use. So, I’m going to show you both—you want to see both methods? I’ll show you both methods, okay. What we’re going to do with the first one, I usually, what I like to do is just take a boning knife or any skinny knife. You go inside it and then what you do, it just lifted up like that. Just wiggle your knife a little bit, wiggle it, wiggle it, get to the end. The end usually is crispy. You can use the end. What you do, you just slide it off. And then the other bone, you just pick it up, and it comes right off. And we always cut the tail end because the tail end is crispy. You can’t get it out. You don’t have to use your hands, “Oh it’s burning!” You don’t have to do that. You can use a little thong. And then whatever bones that’s left here, take that off. And we put the other one back on top. And it’s going to go right here on the plate, just like that.
After a while, after you cook, your fingers kind of get heat. It is one of those things you get used about you know in the kitchen sometimes, it is not as easy. Let me show you the other way how to do it. Now, if you don’t have a boning knife and usually what they do in the kitchens, actually in a dining room, when they have Dover sole, they use what they call fish bone. These are not necessarily fish bones. And these are just regular soup bones but I’m just going to give you an example. What they do, they go on both sides on the bone because the bone has a little—that it has a little almost like the backbone has got a little round there so you have to go on both sides and then put it in and then put your spoon underneath and then flay it off. And you see in the restaurant, when they do this method, they do this method. And then the same thing they just spoon in and then lift it up on this side. So, they do this in the restaurant. But for me, what I like to do is I like to use the other method because I think you have—I mean the Dover sole, when you look at it and you put it together, it looks like the bone is still in it. It looks nice and clean. But this method, sometimes it’s a little bit—not as neat and you’ve a little bit more of like a hacked up Dover sole. But you could definitely do both ways, that’s not a problem.
Let’s go ahead and garnish this. Then we’ll put the sauce and I think then, we’re ready to—usually the same thing, if you want to put a little of mashed potatoes or if you just want to do a salad, you can do that. It’s endless. What you can serve—is always but I think the most important part with the Dover sole is what sauce do you serve with it. And we have found that this has been one of the sauces that’s been on the menu and it’s never changed. And you have a choice between Almondine or Veronique. You can always choose. With this, you just spoon it right over the fish. And you know it might—you think it’s like, “Oh, it’s a butter sauce.” But trust me when you eat this, it is so yummy. It is really, really good that you don’t even realize that you’re eating a butter sauce. Just garnish it with a little bit of chives. So, that’s it! And that’s our Dover Sole with some mixture of you know, I call the Almodine Sauce. But we also have the grapes in there, usually with the grapes, they call it the Veronique. And then just with some more else and some of our vegetables and that’s it! Bona petite! We hope you enjoy it.
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