Filets de Soles Chauchat

Filets de Soles Chauchat (folded sole fillets with Mornay and potato roundels) teaches the discipline of a composed gratin: every part must be cooked, hot, and properly drained before the final glaze. The fierce heat is not there to cook raw fish. It bronzes Sauce Mornay, the cheese-enriched béchamel, in the few minutes the delicate sole can afford.

The original entry assumed a saucier on staff with the Mornay waiting, a stock never off the fire, and a salamander already fierce. Your home equivalent is honest and smaller: two cups of finished Sauce Mornay, one shallow covered pan, a modest oval gratin dish, and a broiler preheated as hot as it will go. A round cutter replaces laborious hand-turning for the potato corks. The extra holding pans and separate pairs of hands were brigade scaffolding, so they can go.

What stays is the dish: the lemon-butter poach, the oval of folded fillets, the ring of potato roundels, and the swift Mornay glaze. One cook, one stove, one evening. The final glaze decides everything, so assemble with every component hot, preheat the broiler fully, and don't look away.