Filets de Soles Mignonette

Filets de Soles Mignonette (sole fillets with potato pearls, truffle, and light meat glaze) teaches one true thing: this is a timing dish, not a difficult dish. The potatoes and glaze must be ready before the sole touches butter, because a thin fillet cooks in minutes and waits for no saucier.

The original kitchen assumed a saucier on staff, stock never off the fire, a tiny round spoon-cutter, and a hot timbale waiting at the pass. At home, reduce good unsalted veal stock to a very light meat glaze, use an 8 to 10 mm Parisienne scoop, and warm a shallow serving dish with hot water. There is no work here for a salamander. Those arrangements were brigade scaffolding and can go; the pea-sized potatoes, eight to ten truffle slices, and glaze mounted with the book's 19 grams of butter must stay. Eight fillets serve four, and the one-sixth pint of glaze is translated precisely as 95 millilitres. One cook, one stove, one evening.

When it is right, the sole is tender and lightly golden, the potato pearls taste richly of butter, and the restrained meat glaze gives the truffle depth without smothering the fish. Have everything within reach, then take the glaze completely off the heat before whisking in the cold butter. That last emulsion decides the dish.