Picture the scene. The year is 2004. The setting, a British field or maybe a beach. There is a small open fire burning with a single cast-iron pan perched on it. A male TV chef – dressed in a striped shirt, open at the neck, chinos, possibly red, leather shoes – is standing over it, reverently holding a fish. ‘This is a beautiful piece of fish,’ he says, ‘and we’re not going to do anything fancy here. It doesn’t need it! We’re going to keep it simple.’
There must have been a clause in the contract of any TV cookery show in the early 2000s to say that a beautiful piece of fish should be cooked simply. It never looked simple, mind you, but that’s probably because the TV chef in question was simultaneously freezing and squinting into the sun, both courtesy of the British summer, and because cooking over fire – something that is supposed to convey the primal nature of this culinary experience – wasn’t something that most of us had encountered outside a campsite gas stove.
But annoyingly, they were right. A good piece of fish really doesn’t need complicated technique or a thousand ingredients. If you can lay your hands on a knob of butter and a lemon, you’re golden. ‘Just let the fish shine!’ you’ll hear the TV chef’s words ringing in your ears as you lay the fish in the hot pan. ‘I’m letting the fish bloody shine,’ you’ll think as you wish you’d remembered to juice your lemon before you started cooking.
Sole meunière is one of those classic fish dishes that takes simplicity as its starting and end point.
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