Can you believe it? I’m actually on time for a Whisk Wednesdays post! We’ve now moved on to a section on frying/sautéing. I think last week was the first time I intentionally decided to skip a recipe — we were supposed to make deep fried whiting, and I’m just terrified of deep frying. I don’t have a deep fryer or a scatterscreen, and I just know I will end up with hot oil all over myself and my kitchen. (I meant to post one of my backlog of cooked-but-not-up-on-the-blog-assignments, but as seems to be happening a lot lately, things got away from me.) Anyway, I’m glad to be back this week for Sole Belle Meunière.

According to Le Cordon Bleu at Home, this translates literally to “sole cooked the way the beautiful miller’s wife cooks it,” which basically means floured and fried. It’s served with sautéed mushrooms, and a nut-brown butter sauce, with a bit of lemon juice added to the sauce to perk it up.

I think this was by far the fastest LCB recipe I’ve made yet, and I think I only slightly cheated by using one pan! (Of course, it was shortened also by the fact that I bought sole fillets instead of buying whole sole — which I don’t think I could’ve found anyway — and filleting it myself.) The fish was pretty simple, but it got a nice crispy crust from the flour, and of course, all the butter and the light lemony-ness added to it. The brown butter sauce and sautéed mushrooms made this feel fancy, but it was actually a pretty quick meal — a great way to have a nice meal during the week and still sit down to the table before 9. (Ok, I admit we barely made that cutoff tonight but still — you get the idea.)

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Can you believe it? I’m actually on time for a Whisk Wednesday’s event! It’s amazing. (Of course, I’m also late for Daring Bakers, but that’s another story.) This week’s assignment was a Lamb Stew with Spring Vegetables. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find lamb except for chops, which I didn’t want to waste on stew, so I used stew beef instead. I took a fair amount of liberties with this one — I used rosemary instead of thyme, and changed the vegetables around a bit. (I should’ve also included pearl onions and green beans, but I left those out, and added a parsnip.) Also, I was supposed to cook each kind of vegetable (carrots, turnips, onions) in its own pot, but I didn’t have enough saucepans — and wouldn’t have wanted to clean them if I had — so I cooked them all together. I actually think to make it even easier they could’ve been just added to the stew directly, but maybe they would’ve gotten too soft, I don’t know.

I also had trouble reading the recipe, which I seem to be doing a lot of lately. More on that when I get my Daring Bakers post up. Anyway, it said to drain the potatoes before adding them, but I thought it was saying to drain the lamb. I thought it seemed strange to drain the liquid out of a stew, but figured that the folks at LCB probably know better than I, so I dutifully drained it. Then, reading again later, I realized the ambiguity, and decided I should’ve drained the potatoes and not the stew. Luckily, I had saved the broth and added it back in later, but that’s why my pictures seem to have a bit less liquid in them than they should.

Anyway, despite all the changes and screw ups, this turned out delicious. The meat had a great flavor from simmering in the water with tomatoes and especially picked up the taste of the rosemary. Since it actually cooled of this week, this was a great dinner. It also could be simplified quite easily without, I expect, losing much flavor, so that this might actually start making regular appearances at our house!

As always, if you want the recipe, check out the Le Cordon Bleu at Home book, though you can see the basics below, after the jump. And look to see how the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group did, on the blogroll to the right. (more…)