European plaice with tartar sauce and mashed potatoes

Poor people's grub, this plate of food, since potatoes and plaice were abundant, especially the underrated flounder plaice, which has a drier taste and needs much more cleaning before processing. Today, the fish again is widely used in the gastronomy, only mainly its fillets, a pity perhaps, because just a quick fry in the pan serves him best, no peeling of the skin, no flour, just plenty of good, real butter. 

 The European plaice is characterized above by their darkgreen to darkbrown skin, blotched with conspicuous, but irregularly distributed, orange spots. The underside is pearly white.  They are able somewhat to adapt their color to match that of their surroundings but the orange spots always remain visible. The skin lacks any prickles.

So here's my plaice, simply pan-fried with some smooth mashed potatoes, a tangy tartar sauce served in a chicory leaf and some pickled fennel. Maybe somewhat overdressed and the definitely the wrong plate, but I was hungry and dying to dig in. Recipe again based on JM (in Dutch), but hey the main thing remains is that you bake the plaice right: lots of butter, add some wile baking, no flour, each side 3/4 minutes starting with the skin side, and keep basting the fish; "arroser" in French meaning to spoon melted butter or fat or liquid over food as it cooks. 

How to pan-fry plaice fillets you can see here.