Guest Recipe: Cornish Megrim Sole with Thai Style Butter
12 April
Guy Owen, Executive Chef at The Idle Rocks shares one of his most popular recipes
Five years ago, Guy Owen helped put The Idle Rocks on the map as one of Cornwall's premier dining destinations, including securing the title of Seafood Restaurant of the Year. Now he's back as Executive Chef, bringing with him a refined vision shaped by years working alongside culinary heavyweights like Gordon Ramsay, Michael Caines, and at Michelin-starred kitchens across the country.
Here, he shares his popular recipe for Cornish Megrim Sole with Thai Style Butter - a perfect dish to have for a quick lunch with friends. It is very simple, the prep is all done before hand and it uses a great, affordable local fish, that we should be using more of in Megrim Sole.
This recipe will be enough for 4 people.
For the Fish
Method
Sourcing Megrim Sole will be straight forward from most good fishmongers. However, if you haven’t got one near you, then it is easy to use the services of our friends and supplier, Wings of St Mawes, to purchase these online and have them delivered to your door.
Always ask the fishmonger to gut, skin and trim the fish for you if you are not confident at doing this yourself. They are always happy to prep fish down for you, so please do not feel you can’t ask for this.
You will need 4 whole fish for this, prepped weight of between 180-220g per fish.
Ingredients
Megrim Sole don’t have a patrticuarly firm flesh, meaning they really benefit from being brined before they are used. To do this simply make up a salt and water solution of 10% salt to water. For this I would use the following.
1 litre of tap water, to 200g table salt. Bring it to the boil. Remove from the heat and add 1 litre or 1kg of ice. This will rapidly cool it down and give you the 10% ratio once the ice has melted. Make sure it is fridge cold before using the solution.
When it is cold. Submerge the fish in the brine and leave it for 30 minutes. Remove and pat excess water off.
Thai Compound Butter
Method
1. Warm the fish sauce up with dashi and palm sugar.
2. Mix with the melted butter, add the lemongrass and blend until smooth, pass through a chinois.
3. Add the remaining ingredients and taste. Adjust fish sauce and palm sugar as needed.
4. Using an Ice tray or rubber moulds, weigh into 50g Pucks and set in the fridge. Once they are completely solid, remove from their moulds and
keep in a container in the fridge. The reason for doing this is that now you have pre-portioned Thai butter - you only use what you need and do not waste anything.
Ingredients
250g Unsalted Butter - melted
2 sticks lemon grass (peeled down to core)
20g Fish Sauce
20g Dashi Powder (available online and a store cupboard must)
15g Microplaned Ginger
8g Palm Sugar
Zest and Juice of 1 lime
1 Banana Shallot, minced
1 red chilli, seeds out, very fine dice
To Cook
Pre-heat your over to 180 degrees.
Lay some parchment paper down on a tray and brush it gently with some butter or olive oil.
Lay your fish on top, and apply some butter or olive oil, remembering not to season the fish as the brine has now done that for you.
Before cooking, place 4 of your butter pucks into a pan and put on a really gentle heat. You only want to melt this down gently, not add a lot of heat to it which would change its flavour.
Place the fish in the oven and cook for between 4-6 minutes. The core temperature you are looking to achieve is 42 degrees and rising.
Remove from the oven and allow the fish to rest for 5 minutes.
Next place the fish onto plates, then simply dress with the Thai butter over the top of the fish.
Serve with your desired garnish - a simple raw salad, or perhaps some salad potatoes and green beans. Very simple and perfect for Spring.
Find out more about Guy in our Blog, here, where he talks about homecomings, sustainability, and what it means to cook with the tide times in mind!