slip sole with vinegar potatoes

when i saw that foodari were selling slip sole i was delighted. i first came across this fish (it’s a young dover sole) at the sportsman, where it was served with a seaweed butter, and have seen it on a number of menus since.

it’s a delicious fish – the flesh has a delicate almost buttery flavour. its incredibly quick and easy to cook – the one pictured above was fried in an olive oil and butter mix (skin side down for a few minutes, thirty seconds on the other side and then a final minute with the skin side down, while i assembled everything else on my serving plates). i’ve also grilled it – it won’t dry out as long as you stop cooking it when the flesh turns opaque.

i had to fry it this time as my grill was in use for vinegar potatoes. i first encountered these on lottie + doof. they have a recipe posted but you don’t really need one – the thinly sliced potatoes are boiled in vinegar until they are just cooked (i added a few sprigs of herbs but couldn’t taste them, so wouldn’t bother again). the potatoes are left to cool in their vinegar bath, drained, tossed with olive oil and seasoning them grilled until browned on each side and crispy in places.

the potatoes have a subtle vinegar flavour, reminiscent of salt & vinegar crisps or takeaway chips which have been soused with malt vinegar. they went well with my spicy tomato jam, or you could use your favourite ketchup.

it was an interesting experiment making these and i liked the end result but it is fiddly and does make your kitchen quite smelly - the grilling stage seemed to be worse than the boiling vinegar so keep your windows open throughout! frying my fish didn’t help much either – ‘tis just as well i’m not expecting guests this weekend…