We are into Courgette Glut Season, and getting slightly fed up with courgette fritters and courgette soup, we came across Richard Olney’s Sole Fillets with Courgettes (Simple French Food - 1970). Mon Dieu!  What a delicious meal! You must try it and wash down with a minerally, dry white. We enjoyed Jean Michel Duprés, Beaujolais-Villages La Ronze Blanc 2023 which was the perfect accompaniment.

For four people;

·         750 g small, firm courgettes, sliced coin thin

·         60 g butter

·         Salt, pepper

·         1 large, ripe tomato, peeled, de-seeded, chopped

·         8 sole fillets

·         1 lemon

·         A handful of fresh basil leaves

·         A handful, or more, of fresh breadcrumbs cooked until dried and lightly coloured in butter, stirred often

Sauté the seasoned courgettes in butter over a high heat for about five minutes, add the tomato, and continue cooking and tossing for another two or three minutes. The courgettes should remain somewhat firm. Line the bottom of a buttered gratin dish with the seasoned fillets, squeeze a few drops of lemon juice over each, tear the basil into fragments, scattering it over the surface, cover with the courgette-tomato mixture, spread smooth, sprinkle liberally with the buttered breadcrumbs and gratiné for about 15 minutes in a hot oven (230˚C).

Simple and frankly delicious!

Richard Olney – Simple French Food (1970)

“In France, only Provence has conceded to vegetables a position on the menu worth of their possibilities, giving them the opportunity to expand in beauty as a first course or to provide a light interlude between a fish and the roast in a more formal context. Elsewhere they are considered as a banal, but necessary, accompaniment to meats and are loyally treated in manners contrived to reinforce that grey vision. Even vegetarians expend most of their ingenuity trying to destroy the vegetableness of the poor fresh things, welding them into horrible imitations of meat dishes in pathetic compensation for self-imposed deprivation.

Treated with respect, a vegetable can undermine the singlemindedness of the most bloodthirsty of carnivores. There is, moreover, no reason to take seriously the French claim that vegetables and wine do not go together.”