Glazed monkfish

Jonnie Boer doesn’t need much to make something delicious. ‘Very often I’m tinkering around at home,’ says Jonnie, ‘and then Thérèse says: why don’t you write that down?’ That’s exactly what they have now done, in Jonnie and Thérèse at Home. 

There’s kibbeling, and then there’s kibbeling. Jonnie Boer naturally makes his – at home too – just a little differently: with monkfish and a ‘glaze’. But that doesn’t make it any more difficult to prepare.

Method

1. Cut the monkfish into equal pieces of approximately 3 x 3 cm.
2. Coat the pieces of fish in potato starch and tap off the excess.
3. Deep-fry at 180 °C until the fish is crisp.
4. Mix the ginger syrup with the ketjap, soy sauce, brown sugar, oil, shallot and garlic and bring to the boil.
5. Blend this glaze until smooth using a stick blender.
6. Boil for 2 minutes, so that the sugars begin to caramelise.
7. Leave to cool to room temperature.
8. Whisk well until it becomes a lovely thick glaze.
9. Heat a frying pan over high heat until it starts to ‘smoke’.
10. Add the crispy fish to the pan together with 3 tablespoons of the glaze and toss carefully but quickly, so that the monkfish gets a beautiful layer of glaze.

Thérèse’s wine tip:
‘Solaris Barrique’, Kus van Thérèse.

Kibbeling is deep-fried, so it’s rich and crispy (when it’s done properly, at least). On top of that comes the thick, sweet glaze. That’s quite a lot of flavour with a sticky, thick mouthfeel. You need a wine that won’t be intimidated by that, a wine with plenty of character. You soon arrive at a white wine aged in oak. Oak ageing does two things that sound contradictory: it makes the wine both more powerful and softer at the same time. Powerful in the sense that the wine gains more body; it feels fuller in the mouth – as if it had a higher specific gravity with every sip. By softer, we mean rounder in flavour, with the acidity coming across as milder. This deeply spiced, lightly perfumed Solaris from Thérèse therefore works extremely well with that sticky, rich and sweet kibbeling. Together, they make a truly delicious combination.

Title: Jonnie & Thérèse at home 
Author: Jonnie Boer, Thérèse Boer, Joël Broekaert
Publisher: Wbooks
Price: €29.95