I adapted this recipe from a Marcus Wareing recipe. I love his book, I genuinely want to cook everything in it… Anyway, he uses cod and I used halibut… He uses a lot of blue cheese, but I wanted to retain the flavour of the beautiful milky fish sauce, so I added small chunks of Roquefort cheese so when you ate it, you got the occasional hit, rather than a dominating flavour. The ramekins that we bought for the chocolate mousses we made a while back were the perfect size, which was nice.
Ingredients
- 400 ml of semi skimmed milk
- 200 ml chicken stock
- 1/4 bunch of thyme
- 3 cloves of garlic, peeled
- 1 bay leaf
- 450g cod or halibut
- 1 leeks chopped
- 100g unsalted butter
- 50g plain flour
- salt and freshly ground pepper
- 50g of blue roquefort cheese
- handful of chopped flat leaf parsley
- 1 egg yolk, from a free range egg
- puff pastry
Method
In a deep saucepan, add the , milk, 100ml of the stock, thyme and garlic and warm through on a low heat, do not boil. 
Season the white fish with salt and freshly ground black pepper, then add this to the sauce, and poach for about 7 or 8 minutes. 
You’ll see it turning from translucent to white. Remove the fish and put to one side. Then put the sauce in a jug and put to one side as well. 
Melt half the butter in a frying and cook the chopped leeks for 5 mins, then add the other half of chicken stock to the leeks and cook for a further 5 minutes and then set aside.
Now in a another (or the same frying pan if it’s been washed) melt the other half of the butter over a medium heat. Whisk in the flour and cook for a couple of minutes. Now get your jug of white sauce (garlic and bay leaves removed) and add a dash of the liquid to the flour and butter, whisk vigorously, then, when that has blended in, add the rest of the liquid slowly to create a nice creamy texture. Check the sauce for seasoning.
Take your ramekin and evenly disperse the white fish, the leeks and the crumbled Roquefort.
Place a disc of fresh puff pastry over the ramekin, brush with egg yolk and bake in the oven at 180C for 20- 25 minutes. I think this would go well with steamed broccoli and buttery new potatoes.
The Pear Tree 