Fish in Mushroom Sauce
Baking white fish under sour cream with mushrooms is standard Eastern European practice, where the same sauce dresses meat and vegetables just as readily. The cup of sour cream is smetana — cultured cream around 20% fat, thicker and tangier than most US supermarket sour cream; full-fat sour cream works, and crème fraîche is safer still, since it splits less easily. The tablespoon of flour beaten into it is not a formality: without it the dairy breaks in the oven into grains and a puddle of fat; with it, the sauce thickens, clings to the fillet, and browns on top.
The lemon juice you sprinkle over the fish before saucing does two jobs — it mutes any sharp fishy smell and firms the protein slightly, so the pieces keep their shape. Use a dense fillet: cod, pollock, or pike-perch. Delicate flatfish will fall apart under the sauce.
Cook the mushrooms and onion until the pan is dry, or their liquid will thin the sauce. Button mushrooms give a mild background; a few dried porcini, soaked and chopped, deepen it without adding water. Twenty minutes at 200°C (400°F) suits fillet 2–3 cm thick (roughly an inch) — much longer and it dries out. Serve with boiled potatoes or rice, which take up the sauce well.
Part of European cuisine — 100 more recipes in the section.
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Ingredients
Instructions
Cut the fish fillet into portion-sized pieces, season with salt and pepper, sprinkle with lemon juice, and place in an oiled baking dish.
Finely chop the mushrooms and onion and lightly fry them in oil in a skillet. Pour in the sour cream, stir in the flour, season with salt and pepper, and warm through.
Pour the mushroom sauce over the prepared fish and bake for 20 minutes in an oven preheated to 200°C (400°F).
Serve sprinkled with finely chopped herbs.
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