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By Root 939 0

they brown – a few patches of light gold are all right, but no more. Salt the leeks, and leave them in the pan for a minute as you remove the sole to its warmed serving dish. Remove the leeks with a slotted spoon and put them round the sole in little piles or in a circle. Arrange the lemon quarters at intervals among the leeks. Serve immediately with bread, and a dry white wine.

NOTE Unfortunately the new French cookery depends for its light effect on brief cooking and prompt service. Easy to manage if you have help in the kitchen that you can trust, or if you always eat in the kitchen and do not mind leaving the table to cook between courses. If your problem is the lack of a second fish pan, remember that the sole will survive waiting around better than the leek shreds. Brown the sole in turn, using half the butter, over a slightly higher heat (golden-brown, not black-brown), and put them on their dish in the oven set at gas 2, 150°C (300°F) to complete their cooking while you cook the leeks in their juices, refreshed with the remaining butter. If something is served before the sole, this really must be done between courses.

SOLE MOUSSELINE WITH BUTTER AND CREAM SAUCE

I think it was Drew Smith, editor of the Good Food Guide, who remarked that Dover sole brought out the worst in chefs: he was thinking of the enormous list of sole recipes in Escoffier’s Guide Culinaire I suspect. Reading it, you do feel that the fish has been submerged in champagne, cheese sauce, grapes, potato balls, cucumber balls, turned mushrooms, oysters, truffles, aubergines, sliced oranges, crayfish, smoked salmon, asparagus, spaghetti and lobster sauce, until it seems to have no existence of its own except in the floury hands of the miller’s wife. But then she had nothing to cook it with but butter. Temptation was not her problem, temptation of that kind at least.

Today, chefs have calmed down and produce restrained dishes of sole that depend on good fresh fish and a few simple ingredients of quality to set it off. In this, Colin Wood of the Old House Hotel in the Square at Wickham in Hampshire learned well from his training at the Box Tree at Ilkley (see their sole recipe on p. 394).

Serves 4

100 g (3–4 oz) filleted sole

2 medium eggs

150 ml (5 fl oz) double cream

salt, pepper

milk

parsley

SAUCE

125 ml (4 fl oz) dry white wine

125 ml (4 fl oz) white wine vinegar

½ medium onion, chopped

1 bay leaf

250 ml (8 fl oz) double cream

30 g (1 oz) butter

salt, pepper

shreds of carrot and leek

Chill the processor bowl or liquidizer. Chop sole roughly and reduce to a paste in the chilled processor or liquidizer. Add the eggs, and when everything is smooth, pour in the cream. Taste the mixture for seasoning. Turn into a bowl, cover and chill for 2 hours.

To make the sauce, reduce by two-thirds the wine and vinegar with the onion and bay leaf. Add the cream and boil 1 minute – keep tasting and remove the bay leaf before it becomes too strong. Beat in the butter and season to taste.

Boil the matchstick shreds of carrot for 1 minute, add the leek and return to the boil. Tip into a sieve and cool under the running tap. Keep on one side.

For the final cooking of the mousseline, prepare a shallow pan half full of milk and bring it to simmering point. Adjust the heat to keep it this way. Using two tablespoons, shape an ‘egg’ of mousseline and slip it into the milk to poach for 5 minutes turning it once. Do the same thing with the remaining mousseline, as quickly and neatly as you can, to give you 4 ‘eggs’.

Meanwhile, reheat the sauce gently and stir in the vegetable strips. Put each mousseline on a plate. Coat it with the sauce, which should run down on to the plate. Sprinkle the top with a pinch of parsley and serve immediately.

SOLE SUR LE PLAT

This is one of the simplest ways of cooking sole, baked in the oven, preferably with wine. There are many variations possible with this excellent method.

The recipes which follow are all for 2 people; they require a sole weighing