2023 Tour de France - Stage 3: Amorebieta-Extano to Bayonne.
One last day in Spain; in fact, today’s stage begins in Spain and ends in France. Resultantly, today’s dish straddles geographical cuisines as well. Today’s sauce is lighter and verdant, as opposed to yesterday’s thick red pepper sauce. But, there’s the commonality of the route traversing along the Biscayan coast, so I wanted to make sure there was seafood involved again. A regional specialty is merluza en salsa verde (hake in green sauce), but hake isn’t found easily here in the states so I picked up the similar haddock (eglefino). Throw in a few clams and shrimp and you're in coastal heaven.
Eglefino en Salsa Verde
4 medium sized clams
Extra-virgin olive oil
2 large garlic cloves, sliced thin
1 tbsp flour
Parsley
½ cup white wine
1.5 cups clam juice or fish stock
2 Haddock fillets
Frozen salad-size shrimp, thawed
About an hour before you want to eat, place the clams in a bowl full of salted cold water.
After the clams have soaked for 45 minutes, pour enough oil to coat the bottom of a nonstick pan. Add the sliced garlic and heat over medium until the garlic begins to sizzle, but doesn’t quite brown.
Add in the flour and stir until incorporated into the oil. Then, stir in the parsley and add the wine. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly, then add in the clam juice/fish stock. Let it come back to a boil and continue to cook, slightly reducing the liquid, for 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, scrub the clams and rinse under cold water. Add them to the skillet and place a lid on top. Cook for a few minutes, shaking the pan every so often.
Season the fish with sea salt and black pepper. Place the fillets into the pan skin-side down. Cover and continue to cook for 4 minutes. Once the clams pop open, remove the lid and add in the shrimp and continue to cook, uncovered until warmed through, about a minute.
To serve, place a filet onto a plate, along with 2 clams. Spoon the sauce over everything. Serve with some bread to soak up the extremely delicious broth.
______________________________ Copyright 2023, Brendan McCann, All Rights Reserved.
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