Sometimes ignorance is bliss. And in this dish you definitely do NOT want to know how much butter went into its creation. Not even an estimate! For a dish featuring a healthy protein like fish this may seem odd, but I’ve found that fish dishes tend to be accompanied by some of the richest buttery and creamy sauces. And this one is no exception…

We cooked the halibut with few thrills, simply pan-frying it in clarified butter and hitting it with a squeeze of lemon at the end. The only thing to be careful of was not overcooking it. Chef gave us a tip at the end of the lesson to use a toothpick to poke the flesh and as soon as it turns flaky, remove from heat and let the residual heat finish the job.

Just when I thought there couldn’t possibly be more French potato dishes, we learned a new one today! It’s called Pomme Anna and consists of a stack of thinly sliced potato rounds baked in the oven with lots (and I mean LOTS) of clarified butter. Another signature is a pretty rosette pattern on the top made of teeny tiny potato circles. To achieve this effect, you build the potato stack upside down so that the top layer starts on the bottom during cooking and gets flipped over afterwards for the final reveal. This helps the layers stick together. My pomme anna is a little darker than it should be, but my oven fell prey to a common occurrence in a jam packed kitchen – the temperature gauge accidentally got knocked to full till by one of the 14 other busy chefs in the kitchen passing by! I’m just glad the potatoes didn’t char completely!

The star of this dish, though, was the over-the-top decadent Sauce Choron. A derivative of Bernaise Sauce, it uses the same potent reduction of white wine, white wine vinegar, shallots and peppercorns that is whisked into egg yolks over a bain marie (water bath). Once the egg yolks cook through and become thick, clarified butter is streamed in while constantly whisking to make an emulsion. If you stopped here, you’d have Bernaise Sauce minus some tarragon. But for Sauce Choron, you finish by folding in tomato concassé (peeled, seeded and roughly chopped tomatoes gently cooked until they start breaking down) and chopped tarragon. All I can say is – WOW!! I could eat this on top of pretty much anything!

Pavé de Flétan Poêlé, Pommes Anna, Sauce Choron

We finished up the dish with some pan-fried spinach (in clarified butter) and a roasted tomato wedge (basted with clarified butter).

This dish was almost too much…almost! When I took a bite of the Pomme Anna, there was so much butter in every nook and cranny of the potato stack that it dribbled down my chin! After one more bite of fish with Sauce Choron, I felt for sure my cholesterol levels shot through the roof! But Mmmm, it tasted sooooo good!