Pan Fried Plaice with a Lemon & Wine Sauce, Served with Onion & Artichoke Rice

Once again I have made a dish that did not turn out quite as planned but this time I think turned out even better! I got those wonderful "mmmm" and "aaahh" sounds a cook always loves to hear when someone is eating their dish.


I read a handful of recipes for a lemony sauce to go with our fish for dinner but didn't write anything down beforehand. I just made it up as I went along. I added a tad too much lemon so my recipe below has adjusted this for you.
And I've used plaice fish but of course you can use any white fleshy fish (ie, cod, halibut, sole...)

(Feeds 2 people)
RICE:
1 cup uncooked rice
2 cups vegetable stock
1/2 large onion (chopped)
1/2 cup artichoke antipasto, without oil (chopped)
1 tbsp oil from artichoke jar
1/4 tsp salt

FISH:
2 plaice fillets
flour
sprinkles of salt
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp olive oil

SAUCE:
2 1/2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp flour
juice of 1/2 a lemon
1/4 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp dried mixed herbs
1/2 tsp garlic powder

INSTRUCTIONS:

RICE -
- Cook rice as per instructions, but instead of using water you will be using the vegetable stock
- While rice is cooking saute onion in the artichoke oil until starting to brown a tiny bit (but not burning). Then add artichoke to the onion and lower the heat
(If rice is not yet cooked you can start preparing your fish with the flour, as per the first step below)
- Once rice is cooked add to the onion and artichoke mix and stir in with salt
- Transfer rice back to the pot which you cooked rice in and cover to keep warm

FISH -
- Cover each fillet with flour on both side and sprinkle each side of the fillets with salt
- Since Plaice fillets can be quite wide I cooked 1 fillet at a time...
- Melt 1 tbsp butter and heat tbsp oil together in a pan. Place a fillet in the pan and cook on each side for approximately 3 minutes, or until golden and cooked through
- Take rice from the pot and make a bed of rice on 2 plates
- Place fillet over top of bed of rice and keep warm at low tempurature in the oven
- Repeat process with 2nd fish fillet (keep both warm in the oven while you make your sauce)
- Wipe the pan clean with a paper towel as you will use this same pan for your sauce

SAUCE:
- Melt butter with oil in the pan on a low to medium heat. Sprinkle in half the flour and whisk with a fork, then stir in half the wine. Wait for liquid to reduce slightly then added remaining flour and whisk with fork again
- Stir in milk, the remaining wine, the lemon juice, salt, pepper, garlic powder and herbs. Turn down heat and simmer until liquid has slightly reduced and sauce is smooth

- Take fish and rice out of the oven and spoon sauce over top of each dish


Yummy! Enjoy!

NOTE: From the ingredients and instructions of this meal it may seem time consuming but in fact it really isn't since many of the ingredients are repeated in each process. This meal took me about 30 minutes to prepare :)