Easy Sole Meuniere

For the first time this month, I didn't have to work on a Sunday.  It was blissful.  I went to the gym, we cleaned the apartment (not so blissful, but necessary), we ran errands...  It was a wonderfully productive and only semi-lazy Sunday.  And so I celebrated by cooking dinner!  Actually, we made lunch too but as I have already posted about the Tunisian Soup with Chard and Egg Noodles, there is no need to post about it again.  But since dinner was a random recipe that I have been wanting to try, I get to post about that!

Sole Meuniere is a classic French dish that is often made of Dover Sole and costs a fortune at some fancy French restaurants. I'm not sure if the Dover Sole itself is extremely expensive, but I figure that it must be since the rest of the ingredients are cheap.  Since I don't have a fortune to spend, I often avoid the dish entirely.  But as Fairway had some really nice lemon sole fillets when I swung by yesterday, I decided to go home and make it myself.  And it is both remarkably easy to make (not to mention quick cooking - as the sole only takes about 4-5 minutes total to cook through), and remarkably tasty.  I have tried other meuniere recipes with capers in them, which provides a nice salty bite to the dish, but I might actually prefer the dish without capers as the capers detract from the delicate flavor of the sole.  Then again, sometimes I do want big bold flavors and the capers would be perfect.  So I guess you can adapt this recipe to taste and either add some minced capers when you add the lemon juice, or just leave them out entirely like I did here.  Either way the dish is light, but still very flavorful.  If you're not a big fan of lemon, then you could cut back on the amount of lemon juice, or if you want to lighten the dish you could use half butter and half evoo.  But the recipe is simple enough and uses such easily recognizable flavors/ingredients that you can play with it pretty easily to suit your tastes.

Recipe after the jump!


Easy Sole Meuniere
Barefoot Contessa: Back to Basics
By Ina Garten


INGREDIENTS:
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
kosher salt
freshly ground black pepper
6 tbsp unsalted butter
1 tsp grated lemon zest
6 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice (3 lemons)
1 tbsp minced fresh parsley


Preheat oven to 200 degrees F.  Have two heat-proof dinner plates ready.


Combine the flour, 2 tsp salt, 1 tsp pepper in a large shallow plate.  Pat sole fillets dry with paper towels and sprinkle one side with salt.


Heat 3 tbsp butter in a large saute pan over medium heat until it starts to brown.  Dredge 2 sole fillets in the seasoned flour on both sides and place them in hot butter.  Lower the heat to medium-low and cook for 2 minutes.  Turn carefully with a metal spatula and cook for 2 minutes on the other side.  While the second side cooks, add 1/2 tsp of lemon zest and 3 tbsp lemon juice to the pan.  Carefully put the fish fillets on the ovenproof plates and pour the sauce over them.  Keep the cooked fillets warn in the oven while you repeat the process with the remaining 2 fillets.  When they're done, add the cookd fillets to the plate in the oven.


Sprinkle with the parsley, salt and pepper and serve immediately.