Recipe: Crab stuffed sole

It was a staple on my grandmother Jessie Cutting Richardson's elegant table: crab stuffed sole, moist and delicious. Jessie was talented in the kitchen, preferring simple dishes with fresh ingredients. Her daughter Madge, however, was an intellectual, and like her father, needed a recipe to follow--slavishly.

In my childhood, I can remember the moist dish when eating at Grandmother's, but at home, it was dry and rubbery. I finally figured out why in 1986. My parents were moving from Portland, Oregon back down to Redding, California for their retirement, leaving us, their adult children, behind. Moving day was predictably hectic, and the plan was that after the van pulled away, they would come stay the night in my apartment. I would provide a well-earned shower, dinner and a bed. My mother handed me $20 and a copy of the recipe for crab-stuffed sole and said, "why don't you make this?"

The recipe in Madge's book

 A careful reader of the recipe will note that the method doesn't say what to do with the wine, so I added it before putting it in the oven so the fish would poach. At dinner, my mother was near tears as she noted that it was as delicious as when her recently-deceased mother had made it--and what did I do differently? We went through the steps, and when I said I added the wine, she exclaimed, "You added it? I always just drank it!"

While cleaning out her home last year, I found my grandmother's recipe box. Turns out those years of baked fish can be traced to a copying error. Use this version.

The recipe in Jessie's card file