A very simple meal with all the important food groups.
White fish in Australia is amazingly ocean fresh and very easy to cook, as long as you don't over cook! I simply coated the skin side only with seasoned flour, pan fried to seal and finished them off in a hot oven.
For the asparagus, I blanched in salted water and refreshed them. Just before serving, reheat in boiling water and a quick toss and season in clarified butter.
Potatoes, a cold water start blanch in salted water until just cooked. Drain the potatoes and just let them sit and dry out a little. Just before serving, a quick toss and season ,plus some chopped parsley, in clarified butter.
Hollandaise sauce is the tricky bit. First you need to make a reduction with 1 shallot, 10ml white wine vinegar, freshly cracked white pepper and a little water.
Over a simmering bain marie, whisk 3 egg yolks plus the reduction until you reach sabayon stage. You know you have reached sabayon stage when you can see the bottom of the bowl whilst whisking. Drop by drop, whisk in 120ml clarified butter. Season with salt, white pepper and a little cayenne pepper. Taste and add lemon juice if you need it.
Voila!
2 comments:
Funny how I've rapidly grown attached to your blog in search for "food wisdom". One thing that discourages me when browsing through cook books are all these jargons and skimping through the methods. For example..
"reduce"? I've heard of it before only because I've worked in an australian kitchen before, though I still don't understand the whole process of it- I suppose I could easily look it up google but thats not the point..Im lazy..lol..
things like "hot oven"...how long should I cook it for and etc..sounds jst a bit vague to me..=)
I'm glad you enjoy reading it, I kind of enjoy writing my posts as well.
I know it can be daunting with all the jargon in cookbooks but usually its very simple just writers trying to sound deep.
"Reduce" for example basically means taking say 100ml of liquid and 'reducing' it to 10ml. It usually means it will intensify the flavour of the liquid or achieve the consistency you want. With the hollandaise, when I said reduce, I meant taking the liquid to 1/3 of what it was. In other words, heat it until 2/3's of your liquid evaporates.
And hot oven, I guess I really was abit vague there. With the fish I'd say 180˚c.
Cooking time is the very tricky part and I have to say it definately comes with practice. It's hard to define a cooking time because every piece of fish is of different thickness.
Generally, if your fish is not thick (1-1.5cm), you wouldn't need to finish it off in an oven just pan frying for around 4 minutes in total will do. 3 minutes on the skin side and 1 minute on the other.
For fish like salmon and trout, you would undercook a little because it is very dry when you overcook it.
You would want to finish a fish off in the oven because it keeps it more moist. With thicker fish, a quick 'seal' in a hot pan ensures all the juices stay in the piece of fish hence keeping it moist.
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