This is a dish that I made for my better half during our anniversary. It’s basically fish inside a fish pastry case! 🙂 Bouchee is a small flaky pastry shell and the word poissons means “fish” in French. There’s apparently only one manufacturer who makes bouchees poissons from a Google Image search.
This is my interpretation of Bouchee a la Reine – a French pastry dish but without the bechamel.
I bought a 250 gram piece of King Grouper at RM 80 / kg. It cost me slightly over RM 20 and I like this fish due to the relative lack of bones. You will need:
- Fillet of grouper
- Dry white wine
- Fish pastry shells
- Lemons
- Arugula
- Applemint
- Butter
- Salt and pepper to taste
I pan fried the King Grouper with lots of butter to produce a nice sear before removing it from the pan.
The next thing I did was to break down the fillet of King Grouper into smaller pieces so it’ll fit into the fish pastry shells.
I decided to play with my food processor and make an arugula and applemint puree. I had read up on it and blanched the arugula in hot water quickly before removing it and adding lemon juice so it retains that *bright green* color.
However, the arugula and applemint puree turned out to be a bit of a disaster. There was just too little of the wild rocket leaves. 80 grams got processed into barely two tablespoons of watery “puree”. It did taste good though – the acidity from the lemons and the addition of applemint really makes it pop.
Sorry if that oft-repeated pretentious term made you cringe. It made me laugh while typing it too. 
I had the impromptu idea of removing the insides of the bouchees poissons to the white wine reduction sauce and small pieces of King Grouper so there’s pieces of flaky pastry to soak up the liquid.
This has the added benefit of heating up the fish before serving.
I also plucked a bit of basil from our herb garden and added it to the fish pastry shells stuffed with buttered King Grouper. It was so good we finished all four (4) of the bouchees poissons – which has a net weight of 120 grams in addition to the fish! 🙂
