Whisk Wednesday -- Blanquette de Lotte aux Petits Legumes

This week for Whisk Wednesdays our recipe was Blanquette de Lotte aux Petits Legumes or Monkfish in White-Wine Cream Sauce with Vegetables. Well, living in IL and trying to find fresh Monkfish is a problem. I've only seen Monkfish in the markets a few times, unfortunately I could find no Monkfish for this week's recipe. My first thought was to use Scallops which I have in my freezer but opted to use fresh Red Snapper.

I really did not care for this recipe as the sauce was bit heavy for Snapper but it would probably be fine with Monkfish. But I do what I can and this week, my fish substitute just did not work out for us. And I forgot to buy turnips and to top things off my sauce thickened so quickly, I neglected to add the cream! Oh well, 1 recipe dud in 6 months is really not all that bad! ;)

And a big shout out to my dear friend Maryanne...Here are the fish plates you sent me! And I do use them more then you see them pictured on my blog! I like using them because the plate shape compliments food so nicely.




Blanquette de Lotte aux Petits Legumes
Recipe adapted from Le Cordon Bleu at Home

Vegetable Garnish:
6 oz carrots
6 oz turnips
6 oz green beans
Salt
6 oz shelled peas
24 pearl onions
4 TBL unsalted butter
Freshly ground black pepper
6 oz button or quartered large mushrooms, trimmed, rinsed and dried

Fish:
2 1/2 lbs monkfish fillets
6 TBL unsalted butter
1 large shallot, chopped fine
5 TBL flour
1 c. dry white wine
1 bouquet garni
Salt and freshly ground pepper
2 egg yolks
1 c. heavy cream
Chervil or parsley leaves for garnish





Whiskers' Tail


For our post tail Kayte suggested that all the Whiskers post pictures of their cookbook and recipe stands. I was particularly interested because presently I am on the hunt for a cookbook stand.



If I have a printed recipe from my recipe program, I prop the page up in my vintage iron fruit bowl, anchoring it with some of the fruit. This week's fruit of choice is pears.





Sometimes I put a printed recipe in these cute photo holders that I bought last year on closeout at TJMaxx. They actually hold about 20 pages of recipes before becoming top heavy. These are working out very well.



If the recipe is from a cookbook, I just lay the book open on my island. But this makes the book very vulnerable to spills and spatters. If the binding is tight and the book will not lay flat, I weight the pages down with...yep you guessed it, fruit. Bananas work incredibly well as page weights. Fruit is a multi-use tool in my kitchen!





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