August 14,
2014 New Recipe Grilled Fresh Halibut with
Lemon-Butter Sauce and Steamed Cauliflower and Broccoli in Cheese Sauce
After my
annual doctor’s check-up near Academy and Wyoming I decided to shop for
food. I first stopped at Whole Foods to
see what kinds of cheese they had and saw nothing interesting except for
Spanish Valeron. Since we had bought a
blue cheese at Costco a few days ago, I drove down Academy to Nantucket Shoals and saw
lovely fresh filets of fish. I
particularly liked the Bluenose Sea Bass and Halibut.
Since I know how much
Suzette loves Halibut ($25.95/lb.), I bought a .87 lb. filet of Halibut for
$22.58.
Nantucket Shoals
has the best quality fish in town. I
have been buying fish from Nancy since she and Eric opened their first store at
Edith and Central over 20 years ago. We
talked a bit and Nancy said she is now a grandmother with three grandchildren. Nantucket has always had the best and
freshest fish in town. Although I have never had a bad piece of fish from Nantucket, Suzette thinks
they receive fresh fish on Thursday, so she thought it cannot be fresher than today. I also bought a frozen 1 lb. bag of crawfish
tails ($14.95) for crawfish étouffée.
I next went
next door to Sprouts and bought string beans ($.98/lb.) and a green bell pepper
($.50 each) and 1 ½ lb. of crab claws ($5.99/lb.).
I went home
and worked until 6:00 and Suzette came home around 6:30. She was thrilled to see that I had bought a
good piece of fish. We quickly decided
to add the rest of the broccoli and cauliflower to the last night’s PPI
cauliflower and broccoli in cream sauce, so I cut off the rest of the flowerets
and steamed them and heated the PPI cauliflower and broccoli in cream sauce and
added milk and grated ¼ cup of Pecorino Romano cheese into the sauce to extend
the sauce and make it cheesier. When the
rest of the broccoli and cauliflower flowerets were cooked, I folded them into
the by now expanded sauce. I also added
a clove of garlic, a dash of Italian Seasoning and a dash of fresh nutmeg and,
at Suzette’s suggestion, 1 Tbsp. of the fresh mint sauce we had made last night
to the cream sauce to give the cheese sauce added fresh herb flavor.
While I was
playing with the sauce Suzette grilled the Halibut. She made incisions into the flesh side of the
fish and stuck pads of butter into them and then squeezed fresh lemon juice on
the flesh side and laid the filet skin-side down on the vegetable baking pan on
slices of fresh lemon, which is the same method she used a couple of years ago
to great success. Less is more when it
comes to grilling fresh fish, because you want it to retain the fresh sea
flavor. It took about fifteen to twenty
minutes to grill the thick filet to tender.
You do not want to under-cook Halibut.
It must be fully cooked to turn tender and release its juices lodged between
the flakes. Of course, you do not want
to over-cook it either or it will dry out.
Therein lies the skill of the griller and Suzette is great at it.
I decided I
wanted the best bottle of wine I could find for this fresh grilled fish, so I
went to the basement and was lucky to find a bottle of 2001 Domaine du Rochoy produced
at Domaine Laporte in Sancerre in the Loire region of France. I looked like I paid $25.99 for the bottle at
Quarters about 10 years ago, probably because I saw that it was imported by Martine’s
Wines. We love Martine because her
selection of wines is impeccable. She usually
attends the Winter Wine Festival in Taos with an impressive array of French
wines of the highest quality but that are produced by less well known producers,
so they are usually a little less expensive.
Here is what
the NY Times Wine Club says about the wine:
Origin
“Laporte Sancerre Domaine du Rochoy
Year
Vintage
2010
Varietal
Varietal
Sauvignon Blanc
Style
Style
Crisp
Origin
Appellation & Country
Sancerre, France
Pairing
Pairing
Vegetables
$30.00
Flowing over 600 miles to the Atlantic Ocean from
its source in the Cévennes mountains, the Loire is the longest river in France.
Along its banks, huge variations in soil, climate and grape varieties account
for one of the world’s most diverse winegrowing regions. But of all the
abundance and diversity found in this “garden of France,” little is more
celebrated than the Sauvignon Blanc of the famous village of Sancerre, where
the wines from this grape, many believe, achieve their purest form.
Pairings
As the quintessential expression of Sauvignon
Blanc, in all its flinty, racy glory, a Sancerre like the Domaine Laporte fares
well with higher-acid preparations, especially those involving lemon or
grapefruit. The judicious use of fresh herbs will complement its innate herbal
quality. It loves shellfish and lighter seafood, but can also be used as a
counterpoint to dishes featuring rich, creamy sauces. For example, Coquilles
St. Jacques (scallops with a lemonbutter sauce) is considered a classic
pairing. Of course, no pairing would be more classic than serving the wine with
a plate of crackers or bread surrounding a perfectly soft round of fresh
chèvre.
Serve well chilled (47°F).
Serve well chilled (47°F).
Winemaker
Serge Laporte’s family has been working the slopes
around the hill town of Sancerre for many generations and, thanks to longevity
and persistence, they are now in possession of some of the region’s most highly
regarded terroir, based in the famous wine village of Chavignol. It’s a
little-known fact that Sancerre features two very different soil types, each
making a unique and distinctive version of Sauvignon Blanc. Domaine Laporte
lies right on the edge of the valley and is fortunate to have vines in both
soils.
The Wine
This wine comes from Domaine du Rochoy, a unique 25-acre vineyard on the
flinty side of the valley, overhanging the Loire. Perpetually known for its
rockiness, in Roman times Rochoy was a quarry called Rochetum. And today that
rock plays an important role, as it absorbs sunlight during the day and reflects
warmth back onto the grapes during the cool nights, allowing them to ripen
early and at high ripeness. All of that is on display in this wine, which
offers disarming amounts of brilliant lime and grapefruit flavors and aromas.
There’s an almost honeyed richness that’s perfectly undercut by the zing of taut acidity and an
iron mineral core.”
So we seemed
to have put together a perfect meal for this wine. The vegetables in cream sauce and the fish with the lemon,
butter sauce perfectly complemented the wine and v.v.
This wine is
rated 89 points by Wine Spectator and the 2010 sells for $30.00 and the 2001
sells for $37.50 on one site. The wine
was still very good. It was approaching that point in its aging just before turning into sherry, but retained all of its
original exquisite softness and slight lemony flavor. It had an exquisite bouquet with just a hint
of minerality, less lemony than a Vouvray and less minerality than a
Savennieres.
This is the
kind of great French wine I call 'elegant".
It does not have the gravitus or character of a big white chardonnay
from Burgundy, but it is not meant to, it is supposed to be the perfect
complement to delicate fresh seafood and it achieves that purpose
perfectly. I do not know if it is
because of its age, but this 2001 bottle lacked that overwhelming fruity,
grapefruity pop that the best California Sauvignon Blancs like Mary Edwards seem to have. I think that big fruity wines seem to clash with the food when I am
trying to enjoy the subtle flavor of a fresh fish that does not have a lot
of oiliness, like halibut or sea bass/grouper.
To say the
least, this was the best Halibut dinner we have had in years. So I think we may now be stuck on better
wines and fresher fish. Neither
could have been better than tonight’s dinner; a real food treat.
The fish was tender and succulent, flaking
easily, without lots of excess moisture, like previously frozen fish; just fresh
and delicious.
Suzette made
a lemon and butter sauce by melting butter in the microwave and adding lemon
juice to it. This enhanced the flavor of
the fish, like lemon-butter sauce does for another rich seafood, lobster.
We dipped
flakes of halibut into the lemon/butter sauce and sipped Sancerre and nibbled
forkfuls of vegetables in cream sauce as the day dimmed to night.
Since the evening
was cool and peaceful, we sat and sipped the last of this great bottle of Sancerre
and relaxed as the new solar lights beside the pond turned on to illuminate the
fountain spouting water as rivulets of water drizzled out of the
giant sea clam shell sending ripples across the pond.
Bon Appétit
No comments:
Post a Comment