1 bottle Beaujolais

Back bone and parings from one monkfish tail

1 leek white, sliced

1 onion, chopped

2 carrots, chopped

2 stalks celery, chopped

4 sprigs thyme

4 sprigs parsley

1 clove garlic, crushed

1 bay leaf

Chicken stock or water to cover.

 Braised Monkfish en Meurette:

1 monkfish tail(~3 lbs)

4 ½ inch by ½ inch by 4 inch batons of braised pork belly(frozen)

½ lb. cremini mushrooms

½ lb. french beans

1 tablespoon grated horseradish

2 tablespoons chopped parsley

2 cups red wine/fish stock soup base

1 shallot, chopped

Welcome to kitchen pirate where you get to watch me do it. Today we are braising monkfish and serving with cremini and french beans and a sauce Meurette. A traditional Meurette is a Burgundian freshwater fish stew, based on a red wine fish stock. The traditional garnish is lardon, pearl onions, and champignons, and like a bouillabaisse there’s usually a hunk of bread sopping up soup in the bottom of the bowl. So that’s where we started. Instead of using eel and assorted freshwater fish we chose monkfish. One monkfish tail of three pounds will comfortably feed four.

To clean the monkfish start by cutting off the side flaps, then skin the fish by freeing the skin with your knife until the point where the skin completely encircles the fish. From there you can just pull it off like a sock. Next, remove the grey membrane from the surface of the fillet. Starting at the top of the fillet slide the knife under the membrane and work it around to the under side of the fillet and cut. Like so. Remove the resulting flap. Flip it over and do the same starting from the tail end. Fillet by running the knife down the line of the backbone. Save the backbone and the fleshy side flaps for the soup base.

And instead of using lardon of bacon, we are going to lard the monkfish with braised pork belly. We cut sticks of pork belly and froze them to facilitate the larding. We split the monkfish fillet in two, cut a hole down the center and shoved the pork right on  through. Very crude but the result is very elegant.

For the soup base we combined the ingredients in a stock pot, and added water to cover, brought it to a boil, skimmed and lowered the heat to a simmer. Simmer for 45 minutes. Strain into a clean pot and reduce by half or until the flavors/acid is quite concentrated. It should be around two cups. Pass through a chinois lined with a wet kitchen towel.

Heavily season the monkfish with salt and pepper. Sear in a hot skillet over medium heat in two tablespoons of oil. Bring the oil to near smoking, reduce the heat and add fish. Brown the fish all around. Defat the pan gracefully. Add the shallots and mushrooms and let go for one minute. Deglaze with soup base and season. Cover with a cartouche and braise in a 350ºF oven for 8-12 minutes until just firm. Remember the pork is already cooked. It needs to be warmed enough to reach the gooey unctuous pork belly stage but try not to over cook the fish. If you do it right the consistencies of the pork and the fish are remarkably similar. When done remove the fish from the pan. Bring the braising liquid and mushrooms to the boil and mount with butter.

For our plating we placed a toasted crouton central on the plate and topped it with French beans which we then topped with the sliced monkfish. We surrounded this tower with the mushrooms and the soup base-turned braising liquid-turned sauce Meurette.

To finish we added chopped parsley and grated fresh horseradish.

Scrummers. Thanks for visiting kitchen pirate and we’ll see you next time.