"Normandy" Grouper
 

We watched some cooking show that was doing a segment on Normandy France. Lots of cream sauces and flambe with apple liqueur. One that struck my fancy was a baked fish dish with a cream sauce. I tried my interpretation yesterday, it was simple but quite tasty. This recipe served four and we had some leftovers for today, which reheated well.

Ingredients
2 lbs of frozen fish (I used orange roughy)
1 leek
four whole carrots
1/2 cup cream
1/2 container sour cream
1 can chicken stock, plus one boulion cube
1 egg

Sauce Prep
Dissolve boullion in stock, then reduce to about one third the volume. Remove from heat, stir in cream and sour cream, add egg and whisk until smooth. Put on low heat and whisk until the sauce just starts to thicken (the egg makes a custard), then remove.

Vegetable Prep
First I peeled the carrots then julienne cut them very thin. Next I cut the leek at the place where the leaves branch out, then cut that in half and rinsed to remove dirt, then julienne cut very thin. Individual pieces are about 2" long and 1/8" wide/thick.

Dish Prep

Place the julienne veggies in the bottom of a large sheet pan or baking dish. Place cold (not frozen) fish pieces on top of the bed of veggies. Ladle sauce over fish, sauce will coat the fish and much of it will get down in the veggies. Bake at 400F for 20 minutes, then broil for 5 minutes or so until the sauce on the fish browns. My roughy was 1" thick chunks, if you are using something thin like tilapia then I'd try baking for 15 minutes, then broiling.

Serving

Use a large spatula to scoop out a serving of fish sitting atop the julienne veggies.

Everybody in the family enjoyed this including both kids, one of whom is not a big fan of fish. I do think the original recipe had some small amount of apple cider or liqueur in the sauce but since I had none I went without it. I was sorely tempted to use some herbs in the sauce but decided to try it plain first. The chicken stock made the sauce slightly sweet while it still had a bit of tartness from the sour cream. The sauce did curdle slightly in the baking but it was very tasty. I do think the thickening step is necessary to make it stick to the fish better, but you could maybe reduce the stock more and make it naturally thick with more sour cream, skipping the thickening with egg. Its the first time I've used leeks, I thought they would be like green onion but they really weren't and had a very nice texture with the carrots.