Galets stuffed with monkfish and prawns

The first dish that Àngels Pallàs suggested for our Christmas meal is a delicious fish recipe presented in galets, one of the typical ingredients of Catalan Christmas cuisine. What he proposes is to make some delicious galets stuffed with seafood. In the absence of galets, it can also be made with any pasta we have on hand, as long as it is very large and easy to fill.

Ingredients:

• 20g of butter
• a leek
• 75g of peas
• 5 prawns
• 2 pieces of monkfish, one and a half fingers thick, approx.
• Salt and pepper
• 100cc of white wine
• a pinch of dill
• Breadcrumbs a little dry
• minced garlic and parsley
• 10 0 12 Galets of the largest we can find (or any pasta we can fill)

For the béchamel sauce:

• 40g butter
• 30g of flour
• 250cc of milk
• 250cc of fish broth
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon of romesco sauce
• Salt, pepper and nutmeg

Preparation:

1. Put the galets to cook, submerging them one by one so that water enters inside and they do not float. Once cooked al dente we leave them in cold water. It is important to put some more to cook in case one breaks. Once cold, we remove them on a plate with kitchen paper.
2. In a cocotte we sauté the prawns with oil, season with salt and pepper and reserve.
3. Cut the white part of the leek into very small pieces and cook it in the same cocotte with the butter and oil that we used to sauté the prawns.
4. When the leek is cooked, we add the monkfish cut into cubes with salt and pepper and the peeled and cut prawns into small pieces.
5. We left the leek with the prawns and monkfish for a couple of minutes and added the white wine and the cooked peas.
6. We leave it for a couple more minutes, season with salt and pepper, add the dill and reserve it.
7. To make the béchamel, melt the butter in a saucepan and add the flour. When the flour is toasted, with a deep beige color but not brown, add the fish broth and milk and mix a little. Season with salt and pepper, add a pinch of ground nutmeg and let it come to a slight boil. Remove it from the heat and add a tablespoon of romesco sauce and a teaspoon of lemon juice. If we make the sauce from one day to the next, it is important to leave it a little clear since tomorrow it will have thickened.
8. Add two or three tablespoons of the béchamel in the cocotte where we have cooked the fish and mix.
9. Put a little bechamel in a baking dish until the bottom is covered (we only have to put a light layer of bechamel).
10. We are filling the galets with the fish that we have been cooking and presenting them in the baking dish . A small "trick" so that the filling does not come out is to put a little flour on a plate and "seal" the openings of the galet by pressing them into the plate with flour before putting it in the dish.
11. Once we have the galets in the dish, we add a little bechamel sauce on top, the bread crumbs, the parsley and the garlic.
12. We cover the dish with aluminum foil and leave it in the preheated oven at 150º for about 15 minutes until it is gratin.

We serve it fresh out of the oven. It can be accompanied by a seafood salad.