I'm bill King executive chef from McCormick and Schmidt's seafood restaurants and it's held at season one of my favorite times a year actually Halbert seasons pretty long it runs from roughly March til the end of October most years and when the catch is good there's just plenty of halibut for everyone it's absolutely one of everyone's most favorite fish and it's very very popular in all of our restaurants so I'm going to prepare for you today a quintessentially Pacific Northwest item which is where the hell that comes from the only place in the world where great halibut is is taken out of the water so I've got this beautiful piece of halibut you can see it's nice thick fleshed bright color soft pink tone to the to the flesh absolutely gorgeous we're just going to put a little salt and pepper on it I don't like to season this fish too much with anything else because we've got a lot of flavor coming out in the sauce so a little kosher salt a little cracked black pepper I've got a nice hot pan ready to sear the fish just a little bit of oil and I love using the nonstick pan I Eve I put a little oil in it mostly to get carmelization on the fish it's not going to stick but between the nonstick and a little oil it's easy money in the pan halibut top side down because when you flip it then that's going to be a presentation side on your plate this is going to probably take six or eight minutes on each side maybe a little bit less depending on how hot you keep your pan and one thing you can do is that you can put your oven on about 400 degrees and get it just nice and brown and then you can pop it in the oven for five or six minutes and be about doing some other things your choice it goes either way today I'm going to do it all in the pan all right we've been about six minutes in the pan now and I think it's time to flip it we should see a beautiful golden brown which we do there it is you know how there's just this absolutely spectacular fish they're enormous they're the largest member of the flatfish family which includes all manner of soul and flounder but these fish a bit it's pretty typical for a fish to be 40 to 60 pounds in its market form for restaurants and markets these days but these fish can be over a hundred pounds and I've had I've had a whole halibut on on my table in the prep kitchen that was close to 150 pounds these are just remarkable fish they come from really deep cold water in the Pacific Northwest most of the best howl that comes from up around Alaska and it's just the most versatile sweet meat it's good for first-time seafood eaters it's relatively mild but it's got a pretty nice firm texture a beautiful flake to it it's just fabulous fish so we're going to be about another four or five minutes on this side and then it's going to be ready for the fish but we're going to do a real quick sauce well I think this fish is done it's looking beautiful golden I think it's the same on the other side let's take a quick peek absolutely perfect fit about 10 11 minutes in the pan and again like I said you could do this in the other we're going to take this fish out and we're going to put it right here I'm going to serve it in this in this pretty little boat shaped dish and we're going to make a very very quick pan sauce I'm going to turn the heat down just a touch and I'm going to take cassis which is black currant liqueur but if you don't want to put an alcohol-based liquid in here you could use a puree or a you know a juice even blackberry juice cranberry juice you can use anything like that this is particularly good and matches up with these beautiful big thick juicy blackberries that we're going to put in a sauce too so we're going to put this in the pan and we're just going to let it simmer away for about probably less than a minute it's going to get a little bit thicker then I'm going to put a splash of lemon juice a splash of rice wine vinegar and they'll give you a little tartness a little sharpness against sweet liqueur and then I'm going to add these blackberries these are actually marionberries from the heart of the Willamette Valley in Oregon and they are absolutely the most beautiful blackberries you can find anywhere so let's put them all in there we may not use them all but let's just that's good we're just going to let those berries heat and let that sauce simmer a little bit and in about a minute and a half we're going to have a perfect sauce for the fish so this sauce is ready now and it can be poured over the fish just the way it is but if you want to gild the lily a little bit at an extra bit of richness and silkiness to this sauce I'm going to put a pad of butter in here we're just going to work it around here just real quick I like that butter very very cold because as its added to the sauce and it melts it brings a little viscosity into the sauce and that's it as soon as that butter is done melting we're going to put it right over the fish blackberries we'll see if we can't keep some there we go and as if this wasn't quintessentially Pacific Northwest enough I'm going to scatter a few chopped toasted hazelnuts on here these are absolutely delicious with the blackberry and there you have it blackberry and hazelnut halibut from the Pacific Northwest I'm bill King executive chef from McCormick and Schmidt's seafood restaurants see you next time