FLATFISH WITH CRAB AND DILL

I happen to love fish. And that’s good since I grew up in Sweden where we eat lots of it. But I have discovered that in many countries, people are afraid of cooking and eating fish, lest they come as fingers or breaded and fried. Once, when I served another one of my favourites, Haddock in Saffron sauce, a female guests told me how brave I had been, serving fish to men at a dinner party. Their plates were clean though, so I figured it had gone down all right. And I had served the obligatory meat dish too, since the starter had been Seared Herb Crusted Carpaccio of Beef, so perhaps that was why it seemed I got away with it. Or perhaps they all complained to their wives on the way home, about foreigners not really understanding the need of meat and three veg!

I can’t remember when I first invented this dish, or indeed whether I did invent it. Perhaps I had something similar in a restaurant and then tried to make it at home. Still, it remains as one of my staples at home, and I can finesse it up for a dinner party, or cheapen it for family supper depending on which kind of flat fish I choose to use. I use sole for dinner parties, and plaice for family supper, but any kind of skinny flat fish will do.

The beauty of using Crème Fraiche is that it melts when under heat and so makes a crab flavoured sauce… just fantastic!


Ingredients:
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Sole or Plaice fillets, skinned and boned by the fishmonger. If they are very big, count a half fillet per person (see below how to divide it later!), and otherwise, one roulade per person.
White and Brown crab meat (I like to mix both, as the colour and most of the real flavour comes from the brown meat)
Crème Fraiche
Lemon Juice
Sprigs of Dill
Salt and Pepper


How to:
Heat oven to 200 Celsius
Coat the base of an ovenproof dish with Olive Oil
In a bowl, mix the crab meat with Crème Fraiche, Lemon Juice, salt and pepper (TASTE IT!) until a sloppy goo.
Now, place one of the fillets in the dish (you will not be able to move it from one place to another once you have finished making the roulades so you need to work in the dish where they are to be cooked).
Spread the crab goo over it into a thin layer
Place a few sprigs of dill on the goo
Roll the fish up, starting from the thinnest bit, the tail, towards where the head once was.
Now, do the same for the others.
Place in oven for about twenty minutes.
To plate up, cut the roulades in half where you see the line down the side of the fish. If they are BIG fillets, give half to each person, but even if not, halving the roulades makes it prettier on the plate as the dark crab and the green dill will be visible in the white of the fish. Dollop the sauce around the fish.
Serve with what you fancy: rice, new potatoes, pressed potatoes or mash, and some steamed tenderstem broccoli.