This riff on a Flemish fish pot (vispotje) has a nod to the tradition of Hollandaise sauce, but without the fuss. I'm serving it here with a Mediterranean salad of red Camargue rice, trying to keep the flavours of summer alive in those last sunny days of the season.
Marieke
This is another of my free-form riffs on the Dutch and Flemish traditions. Here it's the vispotje (fish pot) or vispannetje (fish pan), a tradition of fish and seafood stews not dissimilar to the much better known French bouillabaisse. In this simple version—it only uses fish and not other seafood often included in vispotjes—the inspiration is Hollandaise sauce. Here it bears no resemblance to the Hollandaise sauce women of my grandmother's generation learned to cook in Swiss finishing schools. And. it's certainly a lot less fuss.
One of the ingredients is samphire (zeekraal in Dutch; Queller in German), often known as "marsh samphire" in North America. It's a plant that grows in marshy estuaries close to cold-water coasts, so not sure how easy it will be to find in warmer climes. However, I think good old curly-leaf parsley treated in the same way works well.
The creation myths behind Hollandaise sauce are fascinating—everything from being brought back by the French Huguenots from their exile in the Netherlands to originating in WWI Normandy when butter was scarce. For once, I'm not going down an historic rabbit hole. And, this version doesn't demand all that precision needed to get a good Hollandaise sauce right.
This is a healthy dish, but it's not particularly low-calorie: it uses butter. Here, I'm combining it with a Mediterranean salad of red Camargue rice, a personal favourite. However, you could just as easily serve it simply with a nice crusty bread, which is actually closer to the tradition.
These portions serve 2 to 3 diners. Scale as needed.
Make the Camargue rice salad first. You can make it up to 72 hours before and store, sealed in the fridge, removing to return to room temperature before serving. In many ways, both the salad and dressing benefit if created at least 24 hours before taking to table.
Shopping list
for my Hollandaise fish pot
1 small-to-medium responsibly sourced boneless skinned fillets of cod and salmon per diner, cut into fairly large pieces
1 egg per diner
1 large leek; sliced
2 sticks of celery, finely sliced
Approx. 200g mushrooms, sliced
Approx 120g fresh young spinach
3 cloves of garlic, finely grated
2 dried bay leaves
2 tspns dried mixed herbs (typically basil, marjoram, oregan, rosemary, sage, thyme)
1 fish stock cube diluted in approx. 250ml water (or fresh equivalent)
3 tbpns unsalted butter
The juice of 1 fresh lemon
A generous clasp of samphire, washed and drained
1 glass dry white wine (optional)
Black pepper to flavour
for the Camargue rice salad
1 cup red Camargue rice, washed
1 red bell pepper, finely cubed
2 or 3 raw green Turkish peppers, sliced
2 carrots, peeled and roughly grated
2 tbspns very finely minced pitted black olives
2 tbspns chopped capers
1 dried bay leaf
3 tbspns of very finely chopped (or freeze dried) tarragon
The juice and zest of 1 fresh lemon
4 tbspns extra virgin olive oil
5 tbspns good quality white wine vinegar
salt and black pepper to flavour
Cooking method
the red Camargue rice salad
Make your dressing before anything else. In a bottle, add 3 tbspns of the olive oil, the white wine vinegar and 2 tbspns of the tarragon. Shake violently and store in a dark cool place, allowing the tarragon to infuse
Boil the washed red Camargue rice in salted water with a bay leaf. NB: Camargue rice usually needs a little more water than basmati or white rice; simply top up if with a little more water if needed. When cooked—its texture should remain a little "chewy" though all the grains should be cooked—drain and cool
In a frying pan, sauté the cubed red bell pepper in about 1 tbspn of the olive oil on a medium heat with the chopped capers, stirring constantly and adding 1 tbspn of the tarragon about halfway through cooking. When the peppers are cooked, remove from the heat and allow to cool
Add the cooled Camargue rice to a large bowl—it's okay if it's still lukewarm—and stir in the grated raw carrot. Dress with the lemon juice, stir in and allow it to seep in
Add both the cooked red bell pepper (with its juices) and the raw green Turkish pepper and stir in. Add the minced black olives and stir in too
Dress with black pepper and add your tarragon vinaigrette dressing and stir in. Store in the fridge until you allow it to return to return to room temperature before you take to table, garnishing with the lemon zest
my Hollandaise fish pot
Add about 1 tspn of the butter to a large, deep frying pan heating on a medium-high heat. When it bubbles, add the samphire and cook for barely a minute or so, stirring constantly, dressing with a little black pepper. Decant to a dish for later use
In the same pan, melt the remainder of the butter on a medium-high heat. When the butter bubbles, add the garlic. Sizzle for a minute, stirring. Add the celery and sauté together until it begins to soften. Add the sliced leek and sauté together until it too begins to soften
Add the sliced mushrooms and fold in. Sauté all these ingredients together. When the mushrooms soften, add the white wine and lemon juice and cook off
Add the fish stock—initially about half of it—and the mixed herbs and bring the liquid to come to a healthy boil for 3mins. Stir gently, pouring in the remainder of the stock. Reduce to to a low heat, cover and simmer for 15 to 20 mins, stirring halfway through
Once the sauce has reduced—it won't thicken as such but become more like a jus—gently add the fish to the centre of the pan and add the spinach around the edges. Re-cover and cook on the low heat until the fish is done. This depends on your personal preference for how well you like fish cooked; anywhere from 3 to 6mins. Personally, in this case I think "less is more".
While cooking this last stage, poach an egg per diner. Again, how poached you like it, is up to you. And, again, I'd suggest "runny" is the ideal
Plate, add the poached egg to each plate, garnish with the samphire and take to table. Serve with the Camargue rice salad. Eet smakelijk!
Accompaniments
Here, I'm serving the dish with a Camargue red rice salad with a lot of nods to Mediterranean flavours and it is truly joyous. But, it is essentially a meal in its own right and more traditionally these kinds of fish stews were simply served with bread.
Alternatively, if you wanted to keep it in a Netherlandish tradition, you could serve it with mashed potatoes, something that will work well as we truly get into autumn.
Alternatives
This is a pescatarian dish. When the recipe was distilling in my brain, I could see a definite argument for adding chopped smoked bacon at the stage of cooking the leeks and mushrooms. I imagine that could work, but I haven't tried it yet. So that's one for the carnivores.
Vegetarians or vegans. Sorry, but if a recipe has the word "fish" in its name, it's not going to be easily veggie or vegan. That said, while eating it, I thought it would have made a great lacto-veggie stew by simply leaving the fish out—and using vegetable rather than fish stock.
One of the great things about this dish is that you can re-purpose any significant leftovers by turning them into a delicious soup. If you have a reasonable amount of leftovers (as I usually do) this isn't a dish that's great for freezing for later consumption in its original form. Rather, turn it into a hearty soup in the tradition of Cullen Skink, here with a lovely citrus twist.
Spoon your leftovers into a deep jug (obviously this doesn't involve any poached eggs because they are only added at the plating stage, though I guess it makes it less "Hollandaise") and add approx. ½ a cup of boiling water. Using a handheld blender, blend into a fairly thick soup.
Keep adding boiling water, little by little, until you achieve your desired consistency of soup; thicker for more of a meal, thinner for a fantastic first course. Re-heat the soup and serve garnished with a little lemon zest and chopped spring onion or allow to cool: as a soup it freezes very well to be consumed later.
Pairings
Hey, I only came up with this one yesterday. I woke up late after a friend's delightful Saturday birthday barbecue and was wondering what I should do with salvaged ingredients that hadn't made it onto the coals. I've been keeping an eye on some things my cousin has been posting on social media that triggered a bemused memory of my grandmother telling me that in her day a woman was judged on her Hollandaise sauce. Don't get me wrong: I love Hollandaise sauce. But, it does involve quite a lot of fannying about and, traditionally, a special pan all of its own. So, I thought, why not mix it up.
To cut a long story short, I had it with a workaday riesling I had knocking about from some experiments with some German-facing autumnal things I've been testing out that will appear on here later. It was very good with a bog standard riesling. But, as we all know, Karel is where the finessed knowledge lies for this one.
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