Sole Mornay

Sole Mornay (sole poached and glazed beneath a cheese-enriched béchamel) teaches one true thing: finish the fish without making it endure the finish. The sole must leave its gentle poach slightly underdone, because the broiler is still cooking even while your eye is admiring the gold. Mornay, béchamel’s cheese-enriched daughter, protects the delicate flesh, but it cannot rescue fish that was boiled first.

The original entry assumed a saucier with Mornay ready, a stockpot of fumet never off the fire, trimmed sole arriving from another pair of hands, and a salamander waiting to glaze each order. At home, the fishmonger skins and fillets four small sole, one saucepan makes only the sauce you need, good prepared fumet replaces the perpetual stockpot, and the broiler replaces the salamander. Sauce holding and service machinery are brigade scaffolding, so they go. The gentle fumet poach, Mornay beneath and above the fish, Gruyère and Parmesan, and the final glaze are the dish itself, so every one stays. One cook, one stove, one evening.

When it is right, the sole yields beneath the serving spoon, the ivory sauce pools around it, and the cheese wears freckles of hazelnut gold. Keep the poaching liquid below a simmer. That is the step that decides the dish.