Halibut and Scallops with Wild Sorrel

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 Delish fish 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 growing 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;)

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Halibut with Scallops and Wild Sorrel Sauce

Course: Main Course

Cuisine: British

Author: Fiona Maclean

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
• 25 g Butter

Sauce

• 50 g Wild Sorrel any thick stems removed washed and shredded
• 50 ml Double Cream
• 25 g Butter
• 1 Shallot very finely chopped
• 1 Egg Yolk

Instructions

Sauce

1. Gently sweat the shallot in butter till soft (about 8 minutes)
2. Stir in the sorrel and wilt briefly before adding the cream
   
   
3. Heat gently and keep warm while you cook the fish

Fish

1. Melt the remaining butter in a large pan and add the olive oil
2. Add the halibut presentation side down and cook over a medium heat for 3 minutes or so depending on the thickness of the steak
3. Turn the halibut and add the scallops.
4. Cook over a medium heat for a further 3 minutes, turning the scallops mid way

Sauce

1. 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
2. Plate the fish over the sauce and surround by scallops
3. Serve with wedges of lemon.