Roasted Halibut with Green Olive Sauce - Barak Hirschowitz

Last Saturday I made Roasted Halibut with Green Olive Sauce from Barak Hirschowitz. I came across his recipe on http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/roasted-halibut-with-green-olive-sauce. What a lovely combination I thought and doable for me as an inexperienced but (I certainly am) an enthusiastic home-cook.

Barak started to work in a restaurant kitchen in New York when he was sixteen. Originally his parents were from South Africa and in 1993 he decided that this would be an exciting time to take a working vacation in South Africa. Since then he had a fast moving career, working as Executive Chef at The Bay Hotel and working as Executive Chef at Bushman's Kloof. Currently living in Cape Town, Barak is the Director at Hospitalio Recruitment, specializing in hospitality recruitment, hotel recruitment, hotel jobs, cruise line jobs, food and beverage jobs, chef jobs, chef recruitment, and hospitality human resources.

Earlier in my 'career' I learned what a cup stands for, or 1/2 cup or 1/4 cup. Now I had to look on the internet to find out what 'six 7-ounce skinless halibut fillets' meant. 1 ounce = 28.3495231 grams it said on the web. How was I supposed to know this complicated United States customary system? I am European! Anyway, I struggled through the recipe converting the ingredients with Google's built-in calculator function. I managed to preheat the oven to 450 (first I thought this was a huge mistake until I realized it meant Fahrenheit, not Celsius) or what I understand and know now: 230 degrees Celsius (so complicated!).

I mixed the olive oil with the lime juice and refrigerated the Halibut in the mixture for 15 minutes. Then I combined the fish stock, wine, shallot, white peppercorns (searched the whole of Johannesburg to finally find them in stock), bay leaf and lime juice. Boiling these ingredients for 6 minutes over high heat, spread delicious but also fishy flavors in my little kitchen. I added the heavy cream and let it simmer for another 10 minutes. It's a piece of cake so far.

 

For 10 minutes I cooked the Halibut fillets in the oven, on a baking sheet. I added chopped green olives to the sauce and whisked in butter and parsley, and salt and pepper to taste. Creative as I am as a chef (not), I copied the layout of the dish as posted on the internet page: white rice with Halibut on top, rocket and half a lemon on the side. I topped the Halibut with the Green Olive sauce. As Julia Child would say: 'bon appétit'. Peter loved the combination of the rice, olive sauce and roasted Halibut. And so did I! Guys, I had a lovely Saturday night after that..
A big thanks to Barak for learning me to cook Halibut with Green Olive Sauce and for Peter who so far eats everything I cook.

Warm regards,

Abigail Summer