Julia Child’s Filet Of Sole

This simple recipe for Julia Child’s filet of sole pairs tender filet of sole with a lemony, butter sauce for the perfect seafood dinner.

Welcome to the recipe I have decided is the most perfect seafood recipe of all time, and as the story has it, the one that Julia Child created after she had one of her first glorious dinners in France.

It’s the perfect easy elegant dinner, and here’s how it made its way to my kitchen!

One of the things the Southern husband and I actually love doing together is the weekly food shopping.  (I know. But we do!).  I make up the menu for the week before we go, and each week the Southern husband gets to pick out one dinner that he is longing for me to make.

Some weeks he picks a throwback recipe that I have made before (last week he wanted this Irish Grilled Cheese sandwich), but if he’s asking for something new, he always makes a beeline for the seafood counter.

Usually he zooms in on the scallops or the red snapper, but one fateful weekend he picked out…filet of sole.  And I drew a blank in terms of what to do with it.  I’d never made filet of sole before, and couldn’t remember having had it at a restaurant.

But that’s what he wanted, and he had this face on…

…so I bought some and off we went.

(Side note: that picture is from my brand spanking new iPhone 11 Pro, and since I finally have the phone that can shoot in portrait mode I am taking portraits of anyone who will sit still.)

Even if they refuse to look in the camera.

Back at the sole, when I got it home I started searching for filet of sole recipe inspirations, and the same thing kept coming up, which is that Julia Child’s way of cooking sole was pretty much perfection.

So I hauled out my copy of The Way To Cook and after much paging around I found her recipe for Sole Meuniere, which is otherwise known as that perfect recipe of hers for filet of sole.

Here’s how you make Julia Child’s filet of sole!

You start by sprinkling the fish with a little salt and pepper, and then you cook it ever so quickly in some butter (Julia of course made clarified butter, but I just relied on my trusty Kerrygold).

The sole cooks for 2 minutes a side, and then you carefully take it out and whisk in some lemon juice and parsley and chopped parsley and more butter.  Julia loved butter, and she was right.

I added a few capers because the Southern husband loves capers, and I love him…and that was it.

5 minutes of prep time, less than 10 minutes of cooking time and I had a gourmet seafood dinner on the table.

So with heartfelt admiration for the brilliant Julia Child (and if you don’t have The Way To Cook, it’s a must-have for your cookbook collection),

Bon Appetit!!

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