Meagre with Black Couscous
Some dishes seem designed for a special occasion and yet almost cook themselves.
This meagre with black couscous is one of them: few steps, simple ingredients and a surprisingly sophisticated result. The contrast between the juicy fish and the couscous tinted with squid ink turns an everyday recipe into a restaurant-worthy dish.
The key is to respect the timing and not rush. A base of well-sweated vegetables, couscous that slowly hydrates while absorbing all the flavour of the fumet, and meagre cooked on the griddle, with crisp skin and a perfectly cooked interior.
Serves: 4
Preparation time: 45 minutes
Difficulty: As always, very easy
Cookware used: One small saucepan and one Vitrinor frying pan
You will need:
- ½ Carrot
- ½ Onion
- 200-300g of couscous
- Fish stock or fumet, same volume as the couscous
- 2 sachets of squid ink
- 10 g Butter
- 2 meagre fillets
- Salt
- Oil
How is it done?
Start by chopping the onion and carrot very finely, into a brunoise. But if you put it in the chopper, no one will know.
In a little oil, sauté it with a little salt for 20 minutes or more, slowly, until it is soft and sweet.
Add the ink, dilute with the fish stock, bring everything to a boil and add the couscous. Turn off the heat and cover well, let it rest and the couscous will acquire all its volume and flavor. After 15 minutes, add the butter, let it melt, and mix everything well. You will have a loose, very tasty and above all very elegant couscous 😉
Put the pan on a rather high heat, if you use a Vitrinor vitrified steel pan you will reach the right temperature immediately.
With very little oil, for grilling, put the clean, descaled, salted and well-dried meagre fillets on the heat, 3 minutes on each side, starting with the skin. Make sure the skin is crispy.
And that’s it, assemble the dish as you like, we add a touch of sriracha mayonnaise, you can use alioli or whatever you want.
We made a quick and delicious fumet in a pressure cooker for 20 minutes, with the head and spine of the meagre, half an onion, half a carrot and some celery. With whatever you have available, basically. We let it reduce once opened until we had the volume equivalent to the couscous, a fumet full of flavor.
A perfect example of how, with good ingredients and the right utensil, cooking well doesn’t have to be complicated.
