Zesty White Wine Butter Green Chilli Fish #Foodle

Having grown up in the city, I have great reverence for any home grown produce. And when I am the recipient of fruit or vegetable from anyones terrace or garden, I'm very excited. Last Week I paid Farzana Contractor, Editor of Uppercrust India Magazine a long overdue visit. It was a great meeting with much deliciousness to come from it. But this post is not about that. This is about food gifts... Farzana had just recievied a bagfull of produce from her farm, and she generously shared some lemons and chikoos from it. 

The lemons came at a very opportune moment too since I needed to test this recipe for my Cooking with Alcohol class and I hadn't been able to find Italian lemons. 

And it was most popular at the class as well, I served it and it was gone in Minutes! You can make the butter and freeze it indefinitely. Use Kingfish (Surmai) or any firm flesed fish. We did it with Basa at the class and it was quite brilliant because Basa's versatality and lack of overwhelming odur and flavour actually allows tha delicate flavours of the White wine and lemongrass to stand out. The Green asparagus is great but this is even berre with white asparagus or Witloof. 

Bon Apettit!

Zesty white wine Green Chilli Fish

Time: 40 minutes ; Serves: 2-4

Ingredients:

To make White Wine Butter

150ml White Wine

Zest of two Italian lemons/ Lemon flavoured Vodka

250 g butter, at room temp

2 tbsp Lime Juice

Sea salt

To make Fish

2 X 200 g boneless fish fillets

1 tbsp Lime Juice

salt and pepper to taste

1 green chilli minced

Green or White Asparagus to serve.

Method:

To make White Wine butter - Pour wine into a pan, add lemon zest. Simmer till wine reduces to half, leave to infuse and cool. When cool, strain and reserve. Place butter in a mixing bowl and add reduced wine, using a whisk mix to incorporate over a Double boiler but be carefull you do not want butter to liquify so keep a bowl onf ice water handy to cool it in. When done, keep beating over ice till butter begins to solidify. When butter is almost solid, stir in remaining zest and sea salt. Roll into a log and freeze. 

To make Fish - Season fish with green chilli salt and pepper and coat in olive oil and lemon juice. (add in a bit of wine if you like!). Reserve. Place a bed of asparagus in a baking pan, place marinated fish on top, cover with foilwrap and bake at 180 degrees in a preheated oven for 15- 20 minute. 

Alternatively melt a little butter in a large frying pan over medium heat and coom on a very low flame slowly till done and ligtly golden at the edges. This will take about 2 minutes for medium sized fish piece. Do keep in mind not to overcook as very crispy fish with take away from the flavour of the butter. Transfer to a plate, top with White Wine butter and serve hot over grilled asparagus spears or greens. 

Marinate Basa

Grate zest into wine

Cool

Whisk with Butter

Transfer to foil and roll up. Freeze.

Cook fish lighly

Transfer to plate

Slice up frozen Butter

Arrange on top of hot fish.

Serve

Watch it get wiped out!

Down to the last lick!

GYAAN

Italian Lemons, Witloof, White Asparagus and Basa are all available at Fine food stores like Nature's Basket.