Sauteed Fillet of Fish & French Remoulade

You can use any flatfish fillets for this, like flounder, sole, plaice or halibut (just for the halibut). "Sole" is a flatfish that can generally mean something different to different people. Fish names at times came to mean a specific fish type in one place, but a different fish type in another place, although they usually are similar types of fish.

This is an easy dish to prepare, but unless you have a good knife to fillet the fish, it's probably a good idea to buy fish fillets or have your fishmonger fillet the fish for you. I've kept the salt to a minimum, because I used salted butter.

Serve with roasted small red potatoes and French remoulade sauce. For French remoulade sauce, here is the link to the recipe: https://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2020/08/french-remoulade.html

Ingredients:

3/4 to 1 pound fish fillet (I used flounder)
1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 to 3/4 cup panko breadcrumbs
1/2 cup melted butter
2 tablespoons butter + 1 tablespoon regular olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
parsley for garnish 

Mix the 1/2 teaspoon salt into the flour on a plate. Melt the butter in a shallow dish. Add the panko breadcrumbs to another plate. Add the 2 tablespoons butter and 1 tablespoon olive oil to a skillet over medium heat. Cut some light "X" markings on what had been the skin side of the fish, do not cut too deeply into the fillets (this helps to prevent the fish from curling up when cooking). Dredge the fish fillets in the flour, then put them into the melted butter. Place the fillets into the panko breadcrumbs, then put the breaded fillets into the hot butter/oil in the skillet. Fry until golden brown on both sides. Serve with French remoulade sauce.

Sauteed flounder with remoulade and roasted potatoes ...

 

WORD HISTORY:
Flounder-This is the noun for a type of flatfish, but English also has a verb form, which may well be related, but that is not a certainty. The noun form is related to "flat," a word from Germanic, but in this case, a borrowing by English from Old Norse; it is also related to "plate," a word borrowed by English  from French, which had it from Latin, which had gotten it from Greek, which had it from Indo European. "Flounder" goes back to Indo European "peleh," and its variant, "pleteh," which had the notion, "to spread;" thus also, "to spread out;" thus, "to make flat." This gave Old Germanic "flunthrjo," meaning, "a flatfish," but a word that seemingly developed more in the North Germanic branch of the Germanic languages, producing Old Norse "flyðra" (=flythra) also meaning "a flatfish." Old Northern French borrowed the word as "flondre," but exactly how the borrowing took place is unclear. Old Norse speakers of long ago have often been called "Vikings," and they frequently raided along the northwestern coast of what is now France, even venturing up the rivers leading inland. Perhaps this brought about the borrowing? Anyhow, the Norman dialect that developed in England (brought there initially by the conquering Normans) had "floundre," and English borrowed the word, as "flowndre" and "floundre," in the early 1300s for the name of a specific flatfish. Low German is a close relative of English and it had "vlunder" ('v' pronounced like 'f'), but it is likely a borrowing from Old Norse, and there was much contact between Old Norse and Low German, and the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, common to both language groups, had lots of the flatfish given this name. German borrowed the word from Low German (late 1400s?) in various forms, which became the modern form "Flunder." Danish has "flynder," Norwegian has "flyndre," Icelandic and Swedish have "flundra."