We have seafood once a week, sometimes more often depending on multiple factors. We mostly grill although there are some stove top and oven dishes we do occasionally. I’ve posted before about the ham wrapped fillets and last night I did a variation of Flounder Imperial. An issue with any fish is of course the tricky part of not overlooking while still having it done. (I am not getting into the whole searing versus cooking here).

Flounder is not one of our local fish, but Hubby picks up the frozen type and to the best of my knowledge, there is no way to grill flounder as thin as it is. This leave stove and oven and again, timing is tricky. With our schedules, I did the grocery shopping last week and picked up an 8-ounce can of jumbo lump crab and one container of Publix lobster bisque. My intent was sort of a “deconstructed” Flounder Imperial. The “Imperial” part means a thin layer of mayonnaise is spread over the crab before baking. Since the point of paying extra for jumbo lump crab is to have the large chunks, that means they will take a little longer to cook than the thin fillets. To prevent the flounder from overcooking I used a two-part approach, although that does require messing up an extra dish.

Crab Imperial: 8 ounces crab meat; 1 Tbs Lea & Perrine’s; 1 Tbs any type mustard; 2 Tsp capers. Gently mix to coat the crab. Place 1 Tbs of butter in small baking dish to melt while preheating oven to 375 (can spray dish with butter spray instead). Put crab mixture in dish and gently spread a thin coat of mayonnaise over the crab (approximately 3 Tbs). Lightly sprinkle with paprika. Bake for 15-20 minutes until crab is hot and top is browned.

I lightly sprinkled the fillets on both sides with a chicken/fish seasoning mix (whatever brand you like or use Old Bay). Poured the lobster bisque into a 12-inch skillet, added some white wine to the container to get the rest of the bisque out and stirred that in. Heated the bisque over medium low to barely a boil. Reduced heat to medium low. Placed the fillets in and spooned bisque over them. Cooked for three minutes, gently turned, spooned more bisque over and cooked another two minutes.

The crab took 15 minutes. Try to time it so both dishes are done at the same time (I was off a little so moved the skillet to the back burner (no heat) while the crab finished. I spooned sauce on the plate, placed the fillets on the sauce and topped with the crab. There was some sauce left in the skillet and I poured that over the fish.

And no, this is not the kind of dish Hubby attempts.