fish gratin with parsley

The following recipe was adapted from one found in Nigella Christmas. ?áI love Nigella Lawson’s recipes because they are fun to read. ?áShe takes the complication out of cooking. ?áWhen I follow her recipes, I end up making quick and delicious dishes. ?áIt is the opposite of the early Martha Stewart Living recipes that seemed to assume we all have kitchen staff and abundant time to cook elaborate meals.

For the most part, Nigella’s recipes are great, but this one had a gross error in it. ?á My spidy senses were tingling the first time that I made it. ?áI already knew that I needed to make some modifications by inverting the recommended amounts of smoked fish and white fish. ?áThe recipe recommended 300g of white fish and 750 g of smoked fish and I used the 800 g white fish and 200 g of smoked fish on the first round. ?áThis was still too salty. ?áThe second time, I decreased the smoked fish even more and increased the other seasonings and finally, it turned out.

Since it took a couple rounds to figure out, I am happy to share the recipe with you!

Ingredients

50 g unsalted butter

50 g flour

2 tablespoons dry white wine

1/4-1/2 tsp ground mace or nutmeg

1 tsp dijon mustard

350 ml whole milk

1 onion

75 g of italian flat leaf?áparsley (approximately 1 bunch of parsley)

100 g Digby smoked herrings, roughly chopped

800 g haddock or another firm white fish, fresh or frozen, cut into 2 inch pieces

400 g baking potatoes (approximately 2-3 potatoes, I used yukon gold), sliced thinly, perhaps using a food processor.

1-2 tbsp olive oil

white pepper or black pepper

• Preheat the oven to 400’F
• In a sauce pan, melt the butter and then add the flour. ?áWhile stirring, allow this to bubble for a minute. ?áTake off the heat and stir in the white wine, mace or nutmeg and mustard. ?áWhisk in the milk and return the pan to the heat and continue to whisk as it thickens.
• In a food processor, mince the peeled onion and then add the parsley and pulse til minced. ?áAdd the coarsely chopped smoked herrings and pulse once or twice to chop until the fish is in approximately 1 cm pieces. ?áPour the onion, parsley and fish mix from the food processor into the sauce in the sauce pan and stir the two together.
• Pour the combined sauce into a 9.5″x13.5″ casserole pan. ?áPut the fish pieces on top of this.
• Arrange the sliced potatoes on top of the fish pieces, covering the entire casserole.
• Pour the olive oil into your clean hands and quickly apply olive oil to the potatoes. ?áGrind pepper over the top.
• Bake for 1 hour at 400’F. ?áServe with buttery petits pois.

By Tammy Schmidt, Montreal