Fillets in a Creamy Pesto Sauce

17/70


This is yet another interesting idea for what to do with Quorn fillets (although the recipe says to use either fillets or pieces). I do like it in theory but to be honest I do not think this is one I will rush to make again.


The sauce that these are simmered in is ok, not remarkably tasty but quite edible. The thing that bugged me about it, I think, is that it is high fat and also simmers away quite easily. 


I found that after simmering the fillets in the sauce for the suggested 20 minutes there was literally about a tablespoon of actual sauce left which you are then supposed to stir the creme fraiche into - I had to thin the sauce back out with extra vegetable stock which I had deliberately kept to one side predicting that this would happen when I saw the quantity of the sauce to begin with.


This is the dish once finished, it does look quite appealing on the plate and the sauce goes very nicely with some mash as served here:

The sauce is quite rich, being made of red pesto, creme fraiche, stock, tomato puree and thyme. I did really like the use of fresh thyme here and you could really taste it in the finished sauce. 


Although the recipe calls for half fat creme fraiche, this is still quite a high WW point count. The recipe says this serves 2/3 and that I think, is because you get 6 quorn fillets in a pack so a moderate size serving would be 2 fillets. Because there are 2 of us and a spare one portion would be pointless, I split this between the two of us and accordingly it works out at 11 points per portion.


This is 3 for the pesto, 4 for the quorn, 2 for the creme fraiche and 2 for the oil which is needed to brown the fillets in. I guess you could cut out the oil by pre-cooking the fillets and if you split the recipe by 3 it would be 7 points per portion but not particularly generous sizes. The problem with keeping it at 11 points is that you then have to also take into account whatever you serve it with and that bumps it up.


The method here is quite good, simmering the fillets in sauce before removing them and creaming up the sauce itself to serve. I felt the whole way through cooking though that this was quite a fatty recipe and I did think the sauce tasted rich and a little bit oily (although it was quite nice). 


We gave this a 6/10, it is simple and a good idea for jazzing up fillets but not interesting or tasty enough to be one I would make again in a hurry. I may well experiment with the method though and it is useful to cook this way with fillets.