Helstegt Rodspaette med Persillesovs og Nye Kartofler

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Large heavy frying pan, 28-30cm (or two pans if you want to fry all four fish quickly)
• •Wide fish slice or spatula
• •Medium saucepan for the sauce
• •Large pot for the potatoes
• •Sharp knife for scoring the fish

Instructions

1. 1

   Cook the nye kartofler

   Put the new potatoes in a large pot and cover with cold, well-salted water. Bring to a gentle boil and cook for fifteen to twenty minutes until a knife slides through the largest potato without any resistance. Starting in cold water lets them heat evenly from the outside in. If you drop potatoes into boiling water, the exterior overcooks before the center catches up, and you get a mealy shell around a hard core. When they're done, drain and set them aside with the lid on. They'll wait patiently while you finish everything else.

   Don't peel nye kartofler. The skin is paper-thin in June and holds the potato together while it cooks. It also tastes of the soil it grew in, which is part of the point.
2. 2

   Make the persillesovs

   Melt 30g butter in a medium saucepan over a low heat. Add the plain flour and stir it in with a wooden spoon. Cook this roux for two minutes, stirring constantly, until it smells biscuity and has lost its raw-flour taste. Don't let it take on any color. You want a white roux for a white sauce. Now add the milk a little at a time, stirring each addition completely smooth before pouring in the next. This is where patience matters. If you add the milk all at once, you'll spend the rest of the evening chasing lumps. Once all the milk is incorporated, let the sauce simmer gently for eight to ten minutes, stirring often, until it coats the back of a spoon and leaves a clean trail when you run your finger through it. Season with salt, white pepper, and a grating of nutmeg if you like.

   White pepper, not black. Black pepper leaves dark specks in the sauce that look like dirt. White pepper is invisible and slightly sharper, which is what the Danes have always used in their cream sauces.
3. 3

   Add the parsley at the end

   Stir the finely chopped parsley into the sauce just before serving, not while it simmers. The parsley goes in last because heat dulls its color and flattens its flavor. You want it vivid green and fresh against the cream of the sauce, and you want to taste the herb, not a memory of it. Keep the sauce warm with a lid on while you fry the fish. If the sauce thickens too much as it sits, stir in a splash of milk to loosen it.

4. 4

   Prepare the plaice

   Rinse the plaice under cold running water and pat them very dry with kitchen paper, both sides. Dry skin is essential. Wet skin sticks to the pan and tears, and then you lose the crisp surface that makes this dish. With a sharp knife, make three shallow diagonal cuts across the dark side of each fish. The dark side is the top, the presentation side. These cuts let the heat reach the thickest part of the flesh evenly and help the rugmel grip the surface. Season both sides lightly with fine sea salt.

   Ask your fishmonger to gut and trim the plaice for you. The fins can be trimmed with sharp kitchen scissors at home if they haven't been. Leave the head on. A whole fish with its head tells the table that someone cooked something real.
5. 5

   Dredge in rugmel

   Spread the rugmel on a wide plate. Just before the fish goes into the pan, not a moment earlier, press each plaice into the flour on both sides and shake off any excess. Rugmel, dark stone-ground rye flour, is the traditional dredge for Danish fried fish, not wheat. It creates a thinner, crispier coat that browns faster in the butter and carries a nutty, almost earthy depth that flatters the delicate sweetness of the plaice. Wheat flour coats too thickly and tastes of nothing in particular. Dredging at the last moment matters because rye flour is absorbent. Give it time and it draws moisture from the fish skin, turns damp, and won't crisp. The flour needs to hit the hot butter dry.

   Look for dark stone-ground rugmel, not the fine pale kind. The coarser texture gives a better crust with more character. Danish supermarkets stock it as fuldkorns-rugmel. Outside Denmark, any dark rye flour from a good mill will work.
6. 6

   Fry the plaice in browned butter

   Heat 40g of the butter in a large heavy frying pan over medium-high heat. Watch it carefully. The butter will melt, then foam, then the foam will begin to subside and the butter will turn golden. You'll smell toasted hazelnuts. That is the moment the fish goes in, dark side down. The dark side fries first because it's the presentation side, and first contact with the pan gives the best color and the best crust. Cook for four minutes without moving the fish. The edges will curl slightly and the crust will turn deep golden-brown. Carefully flip with a wide fish slice and cook for three minutes more on the pale side. The flesh should be white and opaque all the way through, pulling gently away from the bone at the thickest point. Transfer to a warm platter while you wipe the pan, add the remaining 40g butter, and repeat with the second pair of fish.

   If your pan fits only one fish at a time, use two pans or fry in four batches with 20g butter each. The fish must lie flat and have room, or it steams instead of frying. Crowding kills the crust.
7. 7

   Finish the potatoes

   Return the drained nye kartofler to their warm pot. Add 30g butter and a pinch of salt. Shake the pot gently so the butter melts and glazes every potato. The skin of a new potato in June is so thin it drinks the butter. Tear a few dill fronds over the top if you have them. Dill and new potatoes are inseparable in Denmark, and for good reason.

8. 8

   Bring it to the table

   Lay the fried plaice on a warm serving platter, dark side up so the golden crust shows. Pile the buttery nye kartofler beside the fish. Serve the persillesovs in a warm jug or bowl alongside, never poured over the fish, because the crisp rugmel crust deserves to stay crisp until the very last moment when the fork breaks through it. Set lemon wedges on the platter for anyone who wants the brightness. This is a plate that needs nothing else. A cold beer or a glass of dry white wine, the window open to the long evening light, and the people you want at your table. Tak for mad.

Chef Tips

• •Buy the plaice as fresh as you possibly can, from a fishmonger you trust. A fresh rodspaette smells of the sea, clean and briny, never fishy. The flesh should be firm and spring back when you press it. If the fish isn't good, don't make the fish dish. Make something else. I'd rather you cook a beautiful omelette than a disappointing plaice.
• •Real butter, never margarine. The browned butter is not a background flavor here. It is the sauce for the fish itself. The nutty, toasted-milk flavor of properly browned butter against the sweet flesh and the crisp rye crust is the whole point. Margarine gives you nothing.
• •If you can't find rugmel outside Denmark, any dark rye flour will work. What you want is the coarse, dark, stone-ground kind, not the fine pale rye flour sold for Scandinavian baking. The coarser the grind, the better the crust.
• •Rodspaette is best from June through July, when the fish are at their largest and fattest and the nye kartofler are just emerging from the soil. You can make this dish at other times, but in high summer it reaches something the rest of the year can't quite match. The season decides.

Advance Preparation

• •The persillesovs can be made up to two hours ahead and kept warm in a covered saucepan. Add the chopped parsley only when you reheat it gently just before serving, so the color stays bright.
• •The nye kartofler can be boiled ahead and reheated in butter in their pot. They take well to gentle rewarming.
• •The fish must be fried just before serving. There is no way around this. Fried fish waits for nobody, and this is the dish that rewards you for being the last person to sit down.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 500g)