Baked Fillet of Halibut with Cabbage, Smoked Bacon and a Tarragon Cream Sauce

Halibut is widely landed in Scotland and is an absolutely topping fish - it has a beautiful texture and flavour, it's easy to fillet and the bones make good stock - no scales to get everywhere either! It has sufficient flavour to partner the robust cabbage and bacon, which is all you really need for this dish, though I'd go for rösti potatoes too.

Serves 4

Ingredients

1 small savoy cabbage
2 rashers smoked back bacon
1 tablespoon olive oil
Freshly ground sea salt and freshly ground pepper
25 g (1 oz) butter
4 skinless halibut fillets (steaks will do), weighing 140g-170g (5-6 oz) each
A few drops of lemon juice
2 tablespoons dry white wine
4 portions of rösti potatoes, to serve (optional)

For the Tarragon Cream Sauce

15 g (½ oz) butter
2 shallots, sliced
4 button mushrooms, finely sliced
1 bay leaf
3 tarragon sprigs, leaves and stalks separated
300 ml (½ pint) white wine
300 ml (½ pint) fish stock
150 ml (¼ pint) double cream

Preheat the oven to 230°C/450°F/Gas 8

To make the sauce, melt the butter in a pan over a low heat. Sweat the shallots and mushrooms until they are soft. Add the bay leaf and tarragon stalks, increase the heat to full and add the white wine. Reduce until it's nearly all gone. Add the fish stock and reduce again until it's nearly all gone. Then add the cream and bring to the boil. Pour the sauce into a fine sieve, forcing it through with the bottom of a ladle into a small clean pan. Season, adding lemon juice to taste.

Now cook the cabbage and bacon. Heat a medium-sized saucepan until hot. Peel off the coarse outer leaves of the cabbage and discard them. Give the centre part a good wash, then cut it into quarters lengthwise. Cut out the root part of each quarter, then finely shred the remaining cabbage with a sharp knife.

Cut the bacon into matchsticks. Pour the olive oil into the now-hot saucepan and stir-fry the bacon matchsticks until crisp. Add the cabbage and stir-fry it for 5-6 minutes, splashing in 3 tablespoons of water to help steam the cabbage, until it is tender. Season with a little salt and pepper and keep warm.

For the halibut, use half the butter to grease the base of a roasting tin. Place the fillets into the tin, season them with salt, pepper and a little lemon juice and dot the remaining butter over the fish. Now pour the 2 tablespoons of wine into the pan to prevent the butter from burning.

Whack the roasting tin into the middle of the hot oven and place the rosti potatoes, if using, on a baking sheet at the bottom of the oven. Set the timer for 6 minutes, and get four warmed serving plates ready.

Place four good-sized piles of the cabbage and bacon combo into the centre of each plate. Chop the tarragon leaves and add to the sauce before pouring it around each pile of cabbage and bacon. When the timer pings, the fish should be just cooked through and no more. Place a fillet on top of each pile, finishing with an individual portion of rb'sti potatoes, if using. Spoon over the juices left in the roasting tin for extra flavour and hand the plates out to the lucky guests.

© Nick Nairn

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