Wild Sorrel Sauce for Halibut and Scallops:
I spent the weekend in the country with some friends. And, on Saturday evening, supper was cooked for me, using some of the lovely fish that John at Delishfish sent me this week. We had some halibut and scallops to try, and I found a lot of recipes that paired the two. Halibut is sometimes called poor man’s lobster, because it’s quite a meaty white fish. We decided that the best option was to pan fry both in a mixture of butter and olive oil and make a sauce.
Now my friends have a lot of land and we went foraging for wild sorrel. It’s a lot smaller than the cultivated kind and has more of a lemony flavour. You can find it growning in fields where there is shortish grass (it looks a bit like fine, pointy dock!) The sorrel was used as the flavouring for a very simple cream sauce, with a little cream and an egg yolk added for depth (from the friendly hens!)
This may not look like the cheffiest dish, but I can promise you it was delicious. Partly of course because of the fabulous fresh fish, partly because of the other components which came from the field and garden there…and perhaps also because for once I didn’t cook it myself;)
Halibut with Scallops and Wild Sorrel Sauce
Print recipe
Ingredients
Fish
- 2 Halibut steaks
- 6-8 Scallops (If you want to be cheffy you should remove the coral (pink bit), but it tastes very good, so I don't!)
- 1 tablespoon Olive oil
- 25g Butter
Sauce
- 50g Wild Sorrel (any thick stems removed washed and shredded )
- 50ml Double Cream
- 25g Butter
- 1 Shallot (very finely chopped)
- 1 Egg Yolk
Directions
| Sauce | |
| Gently sweat the shallot in butter till soft (about 8 minutes) | |
 Stir in the sorrel and wilt briefly before adding the cream | |
| Heat gently and keep warm while you cook the fish | |
| Fish | |
| Melt the remaining butter in a large pan and add the olive oil | |
| Add the halibut presentation side down and cook over a medium heat for 3 minutes or so depending on the thickness of the steak | |
| Turn the halibut and add the scallops. | |
| Cook over a medium heat for a further 3 minutes, turning the scallops mid way | |
| Sauce | |
| Just before you are ready to serve the fish, add the egg yolk to the cream sauce and heat through stirring constantly so that the sauce thickens. Check and adjust seasoning | |
| Plate the fish over the sauce and surround by scallops | |
| Serve with wedges of lemon. | |
Reading this really made me hungry, it looks wonderful and very light and tasty. You can come and cook it for me any time
lol
Looks very tasty.
Thank you both:) the wild sorrel was a bit of a revelation
Oh I love the sound of wild sorrel and the leaves look much prettier than regular sorrel. Such a great meal and very satisfying when some of it has been sourced for free!
Yes I agree…and this one would be easy to miss if you didn’t know what to look for!