Merluza en Salsa Verde

Ingredients

• 4 hake steaks, cut 3 cm thick, about 180 g each
• 300 g small clams, purged in salted water
• 6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
• 1 tbsp plain flour
• 150 ml dry white wine, ideally txakoli
• 250 ml fish stock
• 1 large bunch flat-leaf parsley, leaves finely chopped, about 6 tbsp
• 100 g cooked peas
• 8 cooked white asparagus spears
• 2 eggs, hard-boiled and quartered
• Salt

Before you cook

• Sit the clams in cold salted water for one hour so they spit out their grit, then drain them.
• Salt the hake steaks lightly on both sides and leave them at room temperature for fifteen minutes.
• Slice the garlic thinly and chop the parsley leaves very fine.
• Hard-boil the eggs, peel them and cut each into quarters.

Steps

1. Pour the olive oil into a wide earthenware dish or heavy shallow pan and set it over low heat.
2. Add the sliced garlic and let it turn pale gold over three minutes without browning.
3. Sprinkle in the flour and stir it through the oil for one minute so it loses its raw taste.
4. Pour in the white wine, raise the heat, and let it bubble for two minutes.
5. Add the fish stock and half the chopped parsley, and bring the sauce to a bare simmer.
6. Lay the hake steaks in the dish skin-side down and tuck the clams in around them.
7. Cook for four minutes, gripping the dish by both handles and shaking it in slow circles every thirty seconds so the sauce thickens and turns creamy.
8. Turn each hake steak over carefully with a fish slice and keep shaking the dish for another four minutes.
9. Scatter in the peas and lay the asparagus spears around the edge to warm through for two minutes.
10. Check that the clams have all opened and discard any that stayed shut.
11. Taste the sauce and add salt only if it needs it, since the clams bring their own.
12. Scatter the remaining parsley over, arrange the quartered eggs around the dish and bring it to the table still bubbling.