From The Taste of Things · 2023 · Reconstructed
Turbot with Hollandaise
Serve when
Poach the turbot gently in milk and serve it whole under a warm, housemade hollandaise — the feast's grand fish course, plated with the calm of a kitchen that has done this a thousand times.
In the movie
Theatrical
- 00:31:33 The turbot course of the opening feast — a whole flatfish poached and served with a housemade hollandaise. At the table a guest sighs that he gets less pleasure from anything else than he does 'of this turbot.'
The turbot is the feast at its most classically grand — a whole noble fish, a sauce that is nothing but butter, egg, and nerve. The film shoots it the way it shoots everything: close, patient, reverent, letting the steam and the pale gold of the hollandaise do the talking. When a guest confesses he takes more pleasure in this turbot than in almost anything, it lands as the film's whole thesis in a single line — that a dish, made with total care, can be a form of love.
Ingredients
- For the hollandaise:
Method
- Lay the turbot in a wide pan and add enough milk to nearly cover, with the bay, peppercorns, and lemon. Bring to a bare tremble — never a boil — and poach gently, allowing about 10 minutes per inch of thickness, until the flesh just parts from the bone.
- While it poaches, make the hollandaise: whisk the yolks with the cooled vinegar reduction over a pan of barely-steaming water until pale and thick and doubled.
- Off the heat, whisk in the warm clarified butter a thread at a time until the sauce is glossy and holds a ribbon. Season with lemon, salt, and a pinch of cayenne. Keep it somewhere warm, not hot.
- Lift the turbot carefully onto a warm platter and pat it dry. Lift the top fillets from the bone if serving portions.
- Spoon the warm hollandaise generously over the fish and serve immediately, while both the fish and the sauce are at their fragile best.
Substitutions
- Turbot is the prince of flatfish and priced like one — thick halibut, brill, or a fine sole are honest stand-ins for the firm, sweet white flesh.
- Hollandaise splits if it gets too hot or too fast; if it breaks, whisk a fresh warm yolk in a clean bowl and add the broken sauce to it slowly to bring it back.
Beyond the recipe
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