Sole meunière

Flour, butter, lemon, parsley. Four minutes of cooking and a lifetime of getting the butter to exactly the right brown.

500 g — sole fillets

40 g — plain flour for dusting

80 g — butter

20 ml — lemon juice

10 g — parsley

4 g — salt

Salt the fish, then flour it and shake every loose grain off. Flour left on the fillet burns before the fish is cooked and tastes of scorched paste.

Fry in half the butter, two minutes a side, and lift it onto warm plates. Fish keeps cooking on the plate, so take it out looking very slightly underdone.

Wipe the pan, add the rest of the butter and let it foam. When the foam falls and the solids turn hazelnut and it smells of nuts, take it off — noisette and burnt are about fifteen seconds apart.

Add the lemon juice to the pan — it will spit — then the parsley, and pour it over the fish at the table while it is still foaming.