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Prep Time1 1/2 hours
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Cook Time15 minutes
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Serving2
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A meal at Mr. B’s inspired this Saturday night dinner. I had gone to lunch there one day and so enjoyed the wood grilled drum with Meuniere Sauce and popcorn rice, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was a perfect example of how a fresh piece of fish, expertly cooked and lightly sauced could be transcendent! And on a Saturday night when I had plenty of time, a good movie and a nice bottle of white wine, I embarked on a mission to create a delicious reasonable facsimile of that incredible dish. Bonus: it was raining off and on and the movie (Eden 2025) turned out to be one of my favorite this year.
This dish was a hit and will be on my regular rotation! It would be a perfect dish for company… not a lot of last minute rushing around… baking the fish at 400 degrees for 15 minutes resulted in a perfectly flaky fish but watch it (!) because you don’t want to overcook OR undercook the fish and there are lots of variables that can affect the cook time (the size of the filets, how many times you open the oven door, etc.)
The crabmeat dressing I used came from Deanie’s seafood market. Honestly, I can’t make a better deviled crabmeat dressing than theirs. You can make your own crabmeat topping or omit it. If you live in New Orleans, drive over to Bucktown and get some! Their potato salad is good, too.
I have to admit this sauce recipe is pretty much exactly Emeril Lagasse’s “Creole Meuniere Sauce.” The only difference is that I added the juice from half a lemon after I let the stock and Worcestershire sauce reduce a bit. And for the stock, I used some of the good dark duck stuck I had in my freezer (maybe that was cheating because it took this sauce into the stratosphere).
You know who Emeril is, right? He succeeded Paul Prudhomme at Commander’s Palace and then in the early ’90’s he opened his own restaurant. With his signature, “Bam!” and “Kick it up a notch,” he catapulted himself to stardom on the Food Network. And he’s such a likable personality. His flagship restaurant, Emeril’s, now greatly influenced by his son, is rumored to be in line for a Michelin star. Emeril’s impact on the New Orleans food scene cannot be underestimated. His recipe for this sauce is AMAZING.
Ingredients
Baked Drum
Meuniere Sauce
Directions
Pick up some deviled crab at Deanie's. This is optional. You could leave off the crabmeat dressing, or just use some nice crabmeat, or just bake the fish without a dressing and nap it with the sauce.
Marinate the fish filets for about 30 minutes. Just lay the filets in a casserole dish and sprinkle with salt and pepper, some Prudhomme Blackened Seafood seasoning, a swirl of olive oil, a few splashes of Worcestershire sauce and a squirt of lemon juice.
Spread the top of the fish with the Deanie's deviled crabmeat dressing if that's what you are using.
When you are ready to cook the fish, it will be at 400 degrees for 15 minutes. But have your Meuniere sauce ready when you put the fish in the oven. The sauce can be held in a water bath for that long at least. In other words when your sauce is ready, pour it into a Pyrex measuring cup and put the cup in a sauce pan half filled with water. Keep the pan on low heat (very low). Keep the water warm, not hot.
Now for the Sauce: In a saucepan, heat a swirl of olive oil over medium high heat. Toss in the minced vegetables. Cook them, stirring, until they are soft.
When the vegetables are soft, add the stock and the Worcestershire sauce. Add the bay leaf. Cook the sauce down until it is reduced to a thick syrupy sauce. This could take 25 minutes to half an hour.
Strain the sauce. Add the lemon juice and cook it down a little more. Taste it. You can add more lemon but you can't take it away. Too much will make the sauce bitter. I used the juice of one HALF of a lemon, and a few pieces of the lemon "meat," also. I strained the sauce at least twice more to get out the lemon pieces and a few vegetables that remained in the sauce.
Add the cream. Start whisking.
Mount the butter. Add it by chunks, one TBS. at a time, until the sauce is thick. Whisk constantly. Watch the heat beneath your sauce pan. You may have to take the pan on and off the heat a few times. If you overheat the sauce, it will break.
When you have a nice thick sauce, pour it into a Pyrex measuring cup and set it in a pan of water over VERY low heat. You can hold the sauce until the fish is cooked.
When the fish is cooked, plate it and nap it with Meuniere sauce. Garnish with a lemon and serve some rice or potato salad on the side. Some crusty French bread would be nice, too.
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