Pan roasted white fish, calamari, snow peas, veloute, herbs

Wine pairing

2015 Josef Chromy Vintage Sparkling

Ingredients

Fish veloute
½  bottle sparkling wine
1.5L fish or vegetable stock
250ml cream
100g crème fraiche
4 bay leaves
10 black peppercorns
100g golden shallots, sliced
1 lemon, juiced

Other items for dish
1.5kg blue eye trevalla or trumpeter, skin on
200g snow peas
100g baby peas, good quality, defrosted is fine
1 punnet snow pea tendrils
A few sprigs of your favourite soft herbs. We like chervil, tarragon and chives to garnish this dish.

The sauce
In a heavy-based saucepan, sweat the shallots until soft and sweet. Add the peppercorns, bay leaf and sparkling wine and boil until the wine has cooked down to about ¼ of the original volume. Add stock and cook down until it is around ¼ of its original volume. Add cream and cook down to half of its volume. Pass through a fine sieve, add crème fraiche and lemon juice, taste and season with sea salt to finish.

For the fish
We try to get locally caught Blue Eye Trevalla or Stripy Trumpeter. Cut the fillet down the centre to remove the bones and cut into portions of around 150g for a main course size. Pan roast the fish, skin-side down, in a nonstick fry pan on medium-high until you have nice golden skin. Remove the fish to an oven tray, but keep the juices in the pan for when you need to sauté the calamari when serving. Cook the fish in the oven, skin-side up, until it’s white all the way through. For the calamari, buy fresh and local if you can. Peel off the skin, quickly rinse in cold water and finely slice into 2cm rings.

Clean the snow peas, cut in half on an angle and, with the peas, blanch for 20 seconds in salted water.

Place the fish in a shallow serving bowl, then reheat the fry pan and sauté the calamari for 20 seconds. Scatter the fish with the calamari, peas, tendrils and herbs, and serve the sauce in a jug so you can pour on as much as you prefer.