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Braised Halibut With Asparagus, Baby Potatoes and Saffron
![Braised Halibut With Asparagus, Baby Potatoes and Saffron](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/06/03/dining/03MARTHA/03MARTHA-articleLarge.jpg?width=1280&quality=75&auto=webp)
- Total Time
- 35 minutes
- Rating
- Notes
- Read community notes
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Ingredients
- ½teaspoon saffron threads
- 2tablespoons lightly toasted almonds
- 2garlic cloves, green shoots removed, or 4 green garlic cloves
- 2anchovies, rinsed
- Salt and black pepper to taste
- 2tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- 45- to 6-ounce halibut fillets
- 1pound baby potatoes, cut in ¾-inch pieces, or small potatoes, halved and sliced about ¾-inch thick
- ¾pound asparagus, trimmed and cut in 2-inch lengths
- 2tablespoons minced parsley
- 2tablespoons minced basil
Preparation
- Step 1
Crush saffron threads between your fingers and place in a small bowl or ramekin. Add 1 tablespoon warm water and set aside.
- Step 2
In a mortar and pestle, pound together almonds, garlic and anchovies along with a pinch of salt into a paste. Set aside.
- Step 3
In a heavy straight-sided skillet or wide saucepan, heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Season fish with salt and pepper. When oil is hot, sear fish for 1 minute on each side. Remove to a plate or platter.
- Step 4
Reduce heat to medium and add anchovy paste to pan. Cook, stirring and scraping bottom of pan, until garlic is fragrant, 30 seconds to a minute. Stir in 3 cups water and stir to deglaze bottom of pan. Add potatoes and a pinch of salt. (Don’t salt to taste now or broth will become too salty when reduced later.) Bring to a boil. Add saffron with soaking water, reduce heat, cover and simmer until potatoes are just tender, 10 to 15 minutes.
- Step 5
Carefully add seared halibut fillets and asparagus to pan. Tip in any liquid that has accumulated on the plate or platter, and bring back to a bare simmer. Cover and poach gently for 5 minutes, or until fish is opaque and asparagus is tender. With a slotted spoon or tongs, carefully remove fish fillets to 4 warm wide soup bowls. If necessary, simmer asparagus for another minute or 2. It should be tender but not too soft.
- Step 6
Divide potatoes and asparagus among the bowls. Turn up heat and reduce liquid in pan by half, stirring. Taste and adjust seasoning. Stir in parsley and basil and simmer 20 to 30 seconds. Spoon broth over fish and vegetables and serve.
Private Notes
Cooking Notes
Heat your stainless steel Al Clad pan until you can add a few drops of water that beads up and “dances” (not just a sizzle) around the pan and evaporates. Add the oil and your pan is now essentially non-stick. Your fish will sear much better giving you the famed Maillard reaction.
The mix of flavors is excellent, but the broth made as specified is weak. Most importantly, use a fish stock instead of water, and use 8 anchovies (or add Thai fish sauce to taste at the end). I made this with twice the almonds, 3 times the garlic, and dissolved twice the amount of saffron in rose water (not plain water). It was fantastic.
Delicious! If you can stand the price of halibut this is well worth making. Do yourself a favor and use a nonstick pan to sear the fish - I used my beloved All Clad and struggled mightily to get the fish turned over and out of the skillet without having it fall apart. As always with NYTimes recipes it takes longer than indicated - closer to an hour than 35 minutes if you're a regular home cook. The anchovies add flavor and you don't know they're there. Good enough to serve to company.
With asparagus out of season, I used large mushrooms, quartered so they were the same size as the new baby potatoes, and seared quickly on the outside (like the fish) to set aside until the later braising. As for the fish, Lake Superior whitefish right out of the cold clean waters of the greatest of the Great Lakes was, as always, superb.
Delicious sauce. I was serving a houseful, so for cost sake I substituted cod for halibut, which needed a little more cooking time. Seared the fish in an iron skillet, so it had a nice crust. Substituted small red potatoes for fingerlings, and they worked fine cut in half.
The mix of flavors is excellent, but the broth made as specified is weak. Most importantly, use a fish stock instead of water, and use 8 anchovies (or add Thai fish sauce to taste at the end). I made this with twice the almonds, 3 times the garlic, and dissolved twice the amount of saffron in rose water (not plain water). It was fantastic.
Based on what others had said about the broth, I used less liquid, used some fish stock and some water, and deglazed the pan with white wine before adding the broth and water. My finished dish was more of a sauce than a broth. I also don't have a mortar and pestle, and the sauce was grainy from the nuts so used the immersion blender on it. I also poached the fish for only four minutes and it was perfect. This is a really elegant and easy dish.
Loved the flavors but had some prep/timing issues. Used anchovy paste rather than whole fish to mix w/ garlic & ground almonds. (Why ground almonds? Why not just scatter some toasted, slivered almonds over the dish before serving?) Used a thick slab of halibut. I get the need to sear, but after sitting for 15 minutes post searing, the fish was basically cooked through. So put asparagus in liquid first for about 3 minutes, then poached fish for only 2 minutes — just to reheat. Used only 2c water.
#) USE A NON-STICK when cooking the fish . . . then transfer oil to a larger heavy pot (like a Le Creuset) for the rest
#) Let the oil cool down before adding the garlic paste or else the garlic will burn instantly
Quite tasty and sophisticated. Used 1 lb halibut and kept all other ingredients the same to make 2 generous portions. Deglazed pan with 1/2 c white wine and added 1/2 c water to simmer vegetables. Total of 1 c liquid instead of 3 c. No need to reduce. Fish was fully cooked after sautéing and resting in a 160F warming oven while vegetables cooked. Finished with a drizzle of EVOO.
I microwaved the asparagus for 2 minutes and then added it to the broth with the fish and after a few minutes of simmering everything was cooked to perfection
Very tasty and light
I used cod, but it needs a little more cooking time to get the nice flake you want.
Fantastic spring dish. I had no problem with the fish. I heated my All-Clad frying pan with olive oil to cover the bottom of the pan to sizzle. My fillets were thick so I seared all 4 sides. I cut the recipe in half for 2 of us but used the full amount of water. My asparagus were right out of the garden as was the garlic. Lovely flavor, very filling. I love dinners that are cooked in one pot. This was an elegant dinner that could be served at the finest of restaurants.
Kinda missed the mark for me. In particular, I didn't think saffron added to the dish at all
Add kalmata olives and maybe capers at the end. Also add lemon
Delicious!! Adjusted for one person, but doubled almond/garlic/anchovy & herbs, used white wine to deglaze then water. Added strips of red pepper for color. Ate w/crusty WW baguette. Fresh halibut on sale made the day :-)
I'm not sure why the fish needs to be seared at the beginning of the preparation, why poaching at the end isn't enough?
This is a great recipe but to say this takes an hour is a complete farce. Minus the minions, if you want to serve at seven, start around 3:30. Every step is simple, but every step takes time. Are you deveining the shrimp? Scrubbing the little necks? Rinsing the rice? Arranging everything by the grill? Our guests loved it (three cups of rice more than enough) It’s a labor of love, and love takes time.
Used almond butter instead of almonds. Sprinkled bacon bits on top. So good!!
A bit bland so I added 1-2 TBS tamarind dipping sauce when adding the seared halibut back to the pan. This added a delightful pungent kick to the braising sauce.
Sauce was delicious. Enjoyed the recipe but it seemed to overwhelm the halibut, which is too pricey now to overwhelm. I’d make it again and make it vegetarian. 😀
I made this recipe and my husband and I loved it. I love recipes that incorporate anchovies; they add such a rich, mellow and umami taste. I didn't have halibut so I used cod. It seemed to come out just fine.
I used anchovy paste, and instead of making a paste with my toasted sliced almonds, I added them at the very end. I also followed other people's advice and used fish stock instead of water. It was delicious.
Agree with some of the comments. The sauce as is lacking flavor. Needed way more saffron, anchovies, garlic and SALT! Mistake not to salt it (as the recipe says). Would definitely make again, but with more flavor.
Substituted the water with spot prawn broth, anchovies with capers, and parsley with Vietnamese coriander. The result was incredibly flavourful without needing much salt for seasoning.
Microwave potatoes in advance Chopped almonds and add on top of fish along with herbs Cook fish To internal temp 130
Having just saffron as the broth doesn’t help. I added fish stock I had in the fridge.
And oh yeah - I don't own any nonstick pans and you really don't need them here. If you have fish sticking badly after a 1 min sear with 2 tbsp oil, your heat is either too low or you're just not waiting long enough for the surface of the fish to cook and release. Probably a combination of both.
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