Poaching...the legal kind.

As a kid, I hated fish. It's not unusual - our palates are underdeveloped when we're young, which is why there are so many foods that we wouldn't eat then that we love now. The addition of previously-despised foods to my list of "things I love to have in my mouth" reads like a timeline of palate development. Onions, shrimp, tomatoes, avocados, beets (also pâté, blue cheeses, fois gras, escargot, and a variety if other obscure gustatorgasms) - one by one, they all wooed and seduced me into loving them.

Seafood had its own timeline. It started with things like popcorn shrimp from Red Lobster (I hang my head) or your standard fried fish. I clearly remember the first time I was enticed to eat Shrimp Scampi; for the next several years, it became my dish of choice at The Country Gentleman, back when that was THE good restaurant in Rome, GA. Then came grilled salmon, then grilled tuna, then salmon en papillote, then mussels, then calamari, then crayfish, then crab and lobster, then...whew! You get the idea.

Eventually I got to the point where all of those delicate fish - too delicate to appeal to an under-developed palate - tasted great, and offered a welcome change from the chicken-beef-pork-salmon-tuna grind. So, TONIGHT'S DISH IS:....

Cod fillet, slow-poached in wine, with a saffron-infused bechamel made with poaching liquid, served over bacon-gratin potatoes, with roasted leeks.

The Plan:

First, slice red and yellow wax potatoes into fine slices on mandoline. Parboil for a few minutes in milk. Shock in cold water, reserve milk, dry potatoes. Put several bacon slices on medium-high heat and sizzle until done. Drain bacon, then crumble, and reserve bacon fat. Take potato slices and carefully overlap into a SQUARE or RECTANGULAR pan. As each layer is complete, lightly brush with bacon fat, and lightly sprinkle with bacon crumble, salt and pepper - go REALLY LIGHT on the salt. Once all potatoes have been layered, add back sufficient milk to cover, and add to 350 oven.

Second, heat oven to 180-200. slice one leek longways into planks. Maintain form, while fanning layers under cold water to clean. Dry well. Slice long planks in half, shortwise. Mince a couple of shallots. Melt a bit of butter over medium heat in a saute pan - 1TB or so, then sauté shallots. Season cod. Add planks of leek to pan in center to create a platform. Pour in white wine (GOOD white wine) enough to cover about 1/3 of the fish atop the leek platform. Bring liquid to a bare simmer (around 130-140 degrees) then add fish atop platform. Cover, and move to oven. For a thick filet, you're looking at 10 minutes. When done, remove fish and keep warm. Reserve liquid (strain).

Third, make béchamel. This mother sauce is a roux (equal parts flour and butter by weight, though a good non-weight rule of thumb is 2 parts flour to 1 part butter, where the butter is melted and the flour added and cooked to various degrees - in this case, a very light cream color) plus milk or cream. Warm milk - 1 cup of dairy for each 2TB Flour/1TB Butter in the roux - then slowly stir in until sauce thickens. For this sauce, first add a pulverized 1/4 t or so of saffron threads after the butter melts, but BEFORE adding milk.

Once fish is done, add strained poaching liquid to béchamel, thicken slightly, taste and adjust seasoning. The sauce should be velvety, but not gummy.

Plating

Slice the gratin so you have rectangular lengths, two overlapping potatoes wide.

On a square plate, drizzle sauce over one half. On the unsauced half, place a rectangle of gratin so that the edge is just at center. Place the cod filet parallel to the gratin, and slightly overlapping so that it leans against the gratin. Dot or streak with some additional sauce, then arrange the grilled leeks so that they are perpendicular to the fish/gratin, leaning against the fish on the sauced side of the plate.

Results

This dish turned out really well. The béchamel with the poaching liquid was subtle but very rich, and the potatoes were delicious. I decided to go with scallions instead of leeks, more for visual reasons. Leeks are pale and straight, while scallions have brilliant green ends, and curve. They also crisp up nicely when roasted.

I will make this one again!