Cod and carrots in French yuzu butter

I pan-fried some cod the other day for lunch, and here is the crazy part. When I was in France in 2009, I smuggled various butters back with me, maybe 5 different blocks. One was from a place in St. Malo, La Maison du Beurre (The House of Butter). They even had a small museum at the back, and various butter tools and accessories for purchase. They had flavoured butters, and I got one called yuzu. Yuzu is an Asian citrus type fruit, and goes amazingly with white fish. I always find lemony things go with white fish, where salmon type fish are yummy with orangey flavours. I tried to find yuzu here in various Asian markets and couldn't. Most of the people didn't know what I was talking about. I wanted to make my own yuzu butter. When my friend went to France in 2011, she brought me another block of this butter, and I used most of it, but I had a piece in the fridge for too long, and then instead of tossing it I put it in the freezer. It's been years (4-5), and I took it out the other day. It was a bit darker, the way butter gets when it gets old, but it wasn't rancid, and had no sign of mold. I tried it, and it tasted fine, so I used it for my cod. Lunch was amazing! So that's nuts, because when I had a block of Stirling butter in the freezer, and it didn't sit in the fridge for months but went in the freezer shortly after I bought it, when I took it out and put it in the fridge to thaw out, it didn't take long for it to grow mold inside of the block. It looked like blue cheese. Stirling, if you don't know, is from Stirling Creamery in Ontario (north of Belleville), and has won awards. It's supposed to be Canada's top butter. Canadian butter is s**t, not just because of this incident. Stirling is the first and only Canadian butter, as far as I know, to recently make butter with 84% fat. Most full fat butter here is 80-82%. When it comes to butter each % counts. It's why so many people complain about not being able to make great croissants here. The Polish butter I buy is minimum 84% fat, and that's the norm, standard across various brands. I keep it on the counter in a stoneware covered butter dish, and it does change colour around the edges, but I haven't had any go moldy yet, even after being in the freezer and thawing out, and then sitting on the counter. I often freeze butter when I buy extras. This is why I wish I had access to trusty raw milk, so that I could make my own cultured butter and cultured creme fraiche with a high fat content, as well as sour milk (similar to kefir) and so many other yummy fermented dairy products that most people here haven't even heard of and so get easily grossed out by. That is a sad part of human nature–not knowing something, being uncomfortable with it, and so shutting it down. Anyway, I though the butter surviving for so long was amazing. The butter didn't have mold or a rancid taste after years of sitting in the freezer. I still have a little piece big enough for one more fish fry  :) I should get some scallops.

The picture isn't the greatest, but it was a delicious lunch. The carrots I sauteed in plain Polish butter with cumin, black cumin (nigella, jeera, and various other names that it goes by), and tarragon. Tarragon and carrots are an amazing combination, especially when roasting carrots. I had these in a pot with a bit of water, so they wouldn't eventually burn, and the extra moisture creates a steam in the pot, so they soften faster, without being boiled. It's like roasting, but on the stove and in a pot. 

The fish I placed on a plate with paper towel in the fridge for a few hours changing the towel about 3x. I wanted some of the moisture to leave the fish, so that I could get a crispier outside without breading or frying. It's like drying a duck or goose for that crispy skin when it's baking, except my fish was skinless. Much of the formed crust was left in the pan, but I scraped it out because it was too good to discard. I sprinkled some salt and pepper on both sides of the fish filet, then sauteed it in yuzu butter. That's it. It's as yummy as it is simple.

If you try making the fish or the carrots leave a comment and let me know how it went. I imagine most of you won't have yuzu butter, but if you have access to yuzu fruit, just add it to the pan when you're sauteeing your fish. Another option is to use lemons, or even just plain butter, and then squeeze some lemon juice just before eating, otherwise the crispy coating will get soggy.

Enjoy!