Rory O'Connell's pan-fried brill with roast chicken sauce, grapes, cucumber and chervil.
Ingredients
I am sure that the title of this recipe may seem a bit unusual. This sauce (see recipe) made with a leftover roast chicken carcass is as good with a firm-textured fish as it is with the chicken itself.
Bone stocks made with meat were not an unusual addition to sauces for fish in classical French cooking but the practice has gone out of fashion. I also serve this sauce with grilled young beef and guinea fowl and of course a roast chicken.
The grapes and cucumber, both of which are as good with fish as they are with chicken lighten the sauce and are little bursts of freshness when eating the dish. I sometimes freeze a chicken carcass after a roast if I am not immediately making it into a stock or to use in a sauce such as this.
The notion of not getting value out of the carcass is anathema to me – it seems like such a waste of food, flavour and goodness. This is quite a grown-up sauce that demands just a bit of concentration to allow the sauce to bubble at a gentle pace and to whisk in the butter to emulsify the sauce.
If you have difficulty finding chervil, you can replace it with pinch of French tarragon.
Serves 4
- 600g fat fillets of skinned brill
- Seasoned flour
- 25g soft butter
- 150 g cucumber, peeled, de-seeded and cut into ½ cm dice
- 24 grapes, peeled and de-seeded or if not peeled, cut them lengthways into quarters or little wedges
- 100 ml roast chicken sauce see recipe
- 50 -70g cold diced butter
- Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 1 tablespoon chervil chopped or 1 teaspoon chopped French tarragon
Roast Chicken Butter Sauce
This is a versatile sauce and in many ways is like making a double stock. If you have any jellied chicken juice in the chicken roasting tray, no matter how small the amount is, save those for adding sensational flavour to the sauce.
I keep any meat jellies in little covered jam jars in the fridge and regard them as being highly important magical flavour bombs for perking up a sauce, a gravy, a pie, a broth, a soup and so on.
Serves 6
- 1 carcass left over from a roast chicken
- 100ml white wine
- 500ml chicken stock
- Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Method
- Heat a cast iron frying pan over a moderate heat.
- Re-heat the chicken sauce to a simmer. Add the cucumber and a pinch of salt and pepper to the sauce and allow to bubble very gently while you cook the fish. Do not allow the sauce to reduce - you are really just warming the cucumber through at this stage.
- Dip the brill fillets in seasoned flour and shake well to remove excess flour. Butter each side of the fillets lightly but thoroughly and add to the hot pan in a single layer. The fish should sizzle lightly on contact with the heat of the pan. Continue cooking the fish until richly coloured and turn over and cook briefly on the other side.
- Remove the fish to hot serving plates. Add the grapes to the sauce and allow to heat through and at the same time using a small whisk or wooden spoon, add in the diced butter to the simmering sauce a few pieces at a time.
- The butter will emulsify to slightly thicken the sauce and give the sauce a more luscious appearance. Add in the chervil and swirl it through the sauce.
- Taste the sauce and correct seasoning. Spoon the simmering sauce, cucumber and grapes over and around the fish. Serve immediately.
Roast Chicken Butter Sauce
- Preheat oven to 200c
- Break up the chicken carcass as much as you can and place on a small roasting tray. Place in the oven and roast for about 20 minutes or until richly coloured.
- Transfer the bones into a saucepan they fit into snugly. Pour the wine into the roasting tray and place over a medium heat.
- Allow the wine to reduce by two thirds. Add in the chicken stock and bring to a simmer. Pour the liquid over the bones and simmer for about 1 hour.
- At this point you want the liquid to have reduced to c 200ml. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve and discard the bones. This is the basic sauce which can be put aside for finishing later or can be stored in the fridge for several days. It will also freeze successfully.
