Dominic Chapman's pan-fried halibut recipe represents the classic way to serve white fish: complete with a lemon butter sauce, earthy wild mushrooms and crunchy purple sprouting broccoli. The potato gnocchi is a wonderful addition to this seafood meal, bringing in a wonderfully buttery flavour to the rest of the dish
Method
1.
Start on the gnocchi by baking the potatoes in a preheated oven set to 180°C/gas mark 4 for 1 hour or until soft
2.
After the potatoes have cooked for 20 minutes, start on the lemon butter sauce by combining the wine, vinegar, thyme, bay and garlic in a saucepan over a medium to high heat and reducing to 200ml
3.
Add the cream and bring to a boil. Dice the butter and whisk in to the pan until completely melted. Pass the contents of the pan through a sieve and season and add the lemon juice to taste. Set aside to reheat before serving
4.
Remove the potatoes from the oven and scoop out the centres of each. Pass through a ricer and then a fine sieve
5.
In a bowl, mix the sieved potatoes, the flour and the whole egg. Work into a dough (being careful not to overwork) and then cut dough into 4 pieces
6.
Bring water to a boil in a pan. Roll each piece of dough between cling film into a long sausage and then blanch each sausage for 6 minutes. Refresh in ice cold water. Once cool, remove the cling film and slice each tube of dough into gnocchi parcels
7.
Before serving, fry in foaming butter in a pan so that the gnocchi parcels are golden on the outside and light and fluffy in the centre
8.
For the halibut, add some oil to a hot pan and lay down each portion of fish in the pan - you may need to pan-fry the fish in batches depending on the size of your pan. Once the fish is golden brown, turn over and add a knob of butter to the pan. Cook until the fish looks golden brown on both sides but still white-ish in the middle
9.
Remove each fish from the pan and correct seasoning. Squeeze some lemon juice over each fish and leave to rest for a moment
10.
Clean the mushrooms and dry thoroughly. Fry the mushrooms in the butter until golden brown. Drain in a colander and add the parsley and Parmesan to the mushrooms in a bowl
11.
Remove the hard stalks from the broccoli then blanch in boiling water for two minutes. Season and serve immediately
12.
Serve each plate with the halibut, along with the broccoli, mushrooms and gnocchi. Drizzle in the lemon butter sauce
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