Saturday, June 7, 2008

creme fraiche

Another quick note on the creme fraiche. Though it tastes a lot like sour cream, it behaves a lot like ultra thick whipping cream. I have never used sour cream to make a white sauce before, so I don't know if it would work the same way. A lot of american sour cream is more gelatinous (and most of it has a lot of additives). My recommendation, if you can't find creme fraiche for the previous recipe, try using regular creme. Or if you want that sour note, use an organic sour creme with no additives (or regular, non organic Daisy Brand sour creme, which lists these ingredients from what I recall: grade A creme, culture). It also comes with "inspirational" sayings on the lid, like "When there's a song in your heart, sing along!" Yay for Daisy!

Fish in white sauce

I was going for something similar to the previous recipe, but I'm currently residing in Paris in a dorm, so I have different ingredients on hand and different utensils to cook with.

Ingredients:
1/2 red bell pepper
4 - 5 white mushrooms
1 med clove of garlic
olive oil
rose wine

2 salmon filets (I really used 1 and then a filet of another fish whose name I don't remember, but the salmon was better in my opinion)

1/2 cup creme fraiche
1/2 cup coconut milk

Thougths/background: So I think I never knew what creme fraiche was until I bought it instead of creme today. I'll admit to that, but in my defense, I was rushed and trying to shop in french. Anyway, if you don't know what it is, it's like the step between creme and sour creme. I discovered this as I was in the middle of cooking the sauce and had to modify the recipe on the fly. By dumb chance, I also bought coconut milk, and it really complimented the creme fraiche in a very delicate way. Hooray!

Directions: Fry the bell pepper, mushrooms, and garlic in olive oil and wine. You could add other veggies, but these worked really well, in my opinion. When the veggies are sufficiently cooked, scoop them out and save in a bowl. Leave the wine/olive oil in the pan. In the same stuff, cook the fish. When the fish is cooked, set it aside as well. If you could keep it warm while this cooks, cool! I don't have the facilites for that. Now toss in the creme fraiche, and a minute later, the coconut milk. Let the sauce solidify some (I really hate the word "congeal") and then toss in the veggies. My veggies were still pretty wet, so I had to let the sauce sit on the stove a while longer. I also boiled some fettaccini in the meantime. Just place the pasta on the plate, throw some fish on top and pour the white veggie sauce over all of it.