Pan Fried Cod with Classic Beurre Blanc

Pan-fried cod with classic beurre blanc sauce. Served with potato rosti and samphire. Seafood with vegetables from the sea. Yum!

What more can I say? Well, a lot actually!…

Pan-fried cod with classic beurre blanc is standard in any local French restaurant. It is fine French cooking at it most basic. A wonderful light dish with a smooth and silky butter sauce. Jen and I were having it as a dinner course so I did beef up the carbs a little with the potato rosti. I think that’s allowed right? The samphire is a  great finishing touch and really adds to the taste of the sea. Seafood with sea vegetables. Really yummy!!

Now, compared to most of my other posts this recipe is a little more complicated. This, however, is not due to any complex cooking technique. It’s simply because of the number of parts to the dish. Pan frying the cod, making and pan frying the rosti, steaming the samphire, and finally, making the beurre blanc sauce. This is more of a dish than a recipe. If you take your time, however, this is well within your grasp.

C’mon, I’ll show you how…

1. Get all of the ingredients together

As always, the first thing to do is to get all of the ingredients together. I did this in two batches. Firstly, all ingredients for making the potato rosti. This needs to be prepared before you start cooking the rest of the dish. In effect, the potato rosti mixture is an ingredient itself to the rest of the dish.

At the same time, I like to lay out the rest of the ingredients.

With all the ingredients at your fingertips, you should first make the potato rosti mixture.

2. Make the potato rosti mixture

The first thing to do for the potato rosti is to peel your potatoes and then roughly grate the potatoes. You will find there is a great deal of water in the potatoes and this needs to be strained off. I do this by, firstly, putting the grated potato in a sieve and then, over a bowl, pressing the potato down with a large spoon to remove a large proportion of the water.

Now it’s time to get messy. Once you think the spoon has removed most of the water pick up the potato with your hands and squeeze as much more of the water out as you can. You may well be surprised by how much is still there. Once complete, put the strained potato into a dry mixing bowl and add the sliced onion, crushed garlic, and just a pinch of cumin.

Next, add a little Maldons sea salt and ground black pepper and mix thoroughly. This completes the mixture and you are ready to cook the rostis. Before we do this though, I want to mention a little about the order of cooking.

In an ideal world, the rostis and cod will be pan-fried, the samphire steamed and the beurre blanc sauce made simultaneously Then served just as they all complete cooking. However, we don’t all have large catering kitchens, or even enough pans, or possibly the confidence to manage cooking 4 different dishes at the same time. To this end, therefore, please ensure you cook within your own constraints.

For me, this was more about the number of pans than anything else. I have a good frying pan and a good griddle pan, which I could use for frying. However, using a griddle pan for fish or rostis risks either breaking up on the uneven surface. I decided, therefore, to stick with one pan and actually make the rostis first. Once cooked I put them in the oven to keep warm while I cooked the other 3 parts to the dish.

3. Cooking the rosti

The rostis will be pan fried using a rosti ring. Firstly, take your pan and put a good glug of olive oil and heat up on medium heat. Next, add your rosti rings to the pan and fill with equal proportions of the rosti mixture. Using a small spoon, next press down the mixture to the base of the rosti ring.

Now gently remove the ring and cook each rosti for 4-5 minutes on either side until golden brown and soft inside. Note that the rosti may absorb a lot of the oil so add more to the pan if it starts to run dry.

4. Cooking the cod

Similar to the rosti, the cod is pan-fried. Firstly pad the cod with some kitchen towel to remove any surface water. Next, season with a little Maldons sea salt and ground black pepper on both sides. Heat the pan on medium heat and add a little olive oil and a knob of butter.

Now, place the cod in the pan with the side you want to display face down.

Fry the cod for 3 minutes then, using a fish slice, turn the cod over and fry the other side for another 3 minutes.

Check the cod is flaky and cooked in the middle and serve.

5. The samphire

The easy part. Simply place your samphire in a steamer and steam for 3 minutes. One tip would be not to season the samphire. It has natural salt in it from the sea and adding more can make it too salty.

6. Make the classic beurre blanc sauce

This is probably the trickiest part of this dish but still fairly simple. Just remember to keep stirring.

Firstly, put the wine into a small saucepan and add the shallots. Reduce the wine by around 2/3 and then whisk one cube of butter at a time until all of the butter has been used. Next, season with a little Maldons sea salt and ground black pepper. Finally, and this is optional, put a teaspoon of lemon juice and whisk again.

Finally, pass the sauce through a sieve before serving. Just to remove the shallots and leave a smooth and silky sauce. The sauce can stand a little while you put the dish together but it may split slightly. If so, just give it another good whisking at it should come together again.

7. Put the dish together and eat!

If you have got the timing correct all of the dish’s constituent parts, the cod, the rosti, the samphire, and the beurre blanc sauce, should all now be ready to be served.

Lay the cod on top of the rosti…

Add the samphire on top of the cod…

Finally, drizzle the classic beurre blanc sauce over the dish. Don’t go over the top though. It’s a rich sauce and you want to use it sparingly.

And, there you have it! Pan-fried cod with beurre blanc sauce served with a potato rosti and samphire…And, I can tell you, it was very yummy!!

 

OK, that’s it for today my fine food friends. Try this yourself and let me know how you get on. It’s a great dish and will certainly impress any dinner guests you may be having round in the near future. Also, why not try one of The Yum Yum Club’s other great recipes like those below…

Thanks for reading and until next time…Steve.