Fish Face Guide | Brill

Staff writer

Last updated: 16 December, 2024 @ 14:40

This fine, often-overlooked fish is admittedly a peculiar looking fellow. With its flattened and twisted face the fish looks like it’s been involved in a particularly nasty bar brawl. “You should see the other guy (fish)”. Anyway, that’s enough of that. It’s a great fish and there are some great brill recipes.

You can identify brill on the fishmonger’s slab by the complex pattern of brown spots overlaid on its pale cream coloured skin.

It looks like some sort of effect normally applied to brickwork. The fish also has what looks like a fringe or frill close to its head. Interesting character, the brill.

Brill recipes

Brill makes for very good eating. All too often you hear brill and turbot mentioned in the same sentence – with brill championed as being just below the turbot in terms of quality but slightly more affordable.

We think the brill is a good enough fish on its own without having to be linked to the turbot – the fish has already been robbed of its looks, let’s not steal its personality too.

If you can, buy brill big and treat it simply. By doing so, you will be rewarded. We try to avoid filleting flatfish, mainly because we’re a bit lazy, but also because we much prefer serving fish whole.

Therefore, we would poach or braise a brill – but by all means, have a crack a filleting one and you’ll find some fine fillets.

Alternatively, brill can be cut into chunks or tranches. The benefit in doing so is that the flesh stays on the bone, keeping it nice and moist. Ask your fishmonger to do this for you. Watch how they do it, and then try cutting the fish into chunks – or tranches – yourself the next time you buy brill.

Brill-iant (sorry…)

One of our favourite recipes is whole poached brill with tomatoes, thyme and saffron from Mitch Tonk’s book Fish. You can read the Fish Face review of Mitch Tonks, or indeed, buy the book at Amazon .

However, we also follow Jane Grigson’s advice by cutting the fish’s lateral line on the dark side and parting the flesh slightly.

Into the small gap we whack some seasoning and a little butter. Admittedly, the result is a little too untidy to serve at restaurant level, but fine when you’re at home and concerned only about satisfying the rumbling in your stomach and not immaculate presentation.