Our class began with fileting and gutting a flounder and trout. The bone structure of trout is a lot softer, so fileting it is very different and a lot more difficult. Trout is a good fish to saute or cook on wood. From the outside of the fish, we started by marking the fin and tail with little cuts so that we didn't get lost while removing the filet. The top filet is removed first with an angled cut and then the other filet is cut off the backbone. Once this is done, all the pin bones on the filet (there are about 30) have to be removed with tweezers. This was a huge pain and hard to ensure we removed them all. This was another one of those times I decided buying fileted, boned fish is the way to go!
The preparation for the flounder was breaded and deep-fried and the trout was prepared a la Grenobloise, which is fish coated lightly in flour and fried in butter. The a la Grenobloise is then served with a buerre noisette (browned butter sauce) that has capers, lemon, and croutons.
The flounder we cut into little strips and breaded. We then began preparing the two sauces to go with the flounder fish sticks. The first sauce was a homemade mayonaisse with chopped pickles, capers, and herbs (not unlike a tartar)...one of the groups near us added red pepper flakes to this and it was fabulous (I was very jealous of their sauce!). The other sauce was a red pepper sauce. To make this we sauteed sliced shallots and garlic and sweated these in butter. After cooking these a few minutes, we added sliced red bell pepper from which we had removed the seeds, a sprig of thyme, salt and pepper, and a dash of water. This was covered with a parchment paper lid and cooked until the pepper was fork tender. We then removed it from the heat (removed the thyme) and pureed this in the blender with some cream.
Chef then demonstrated how to make some garnishes. We took lemon slices and cut the peel 2/3 of the way and then curled the peel under itself to look like a swan. We then took potatoes that we had cut with mandolines into waffle cuts and blanched them in 325 oil for 2 minutes. After these were blanched, we used a basket and overlapped these potato slices in it to make into a basket shape and fry it. We also fried some parsley for less then a minute and then gave a dash of salt and pepper on this (chef explained that fried herbs are an excellent garnish because the beautiful green and slighty transparent look they get when fried). Next up was frying our breaded flounder, which also only takes a few minutes. We served the flounder in our gorgeous potato basket with the mayo sauce in a radicchio cup, the red pepper sauce drizzled around the plate, and a lemon swan swimming in the background! This was our dinner and was fantastic. Theres really nothing like a good fish stick with a mayonaisse based sauce and fried potatoes...yum!
After we ate, chef did a demo of how to make a mousseline. A mousseline is a mixture of raw white fish (or some other meat like chicken), egg white, and cream (of course with salt and pepper). This is all processed in a food processor. The fish is pureed first and then the egg white is added and then cold cream is added in a steady stream. The egg white binds the mixture and the cream smoothes it out. This can't be processed too quickly otherwise it'll make a whipped cream. Chef added some chopped herbs. He then took this mixture and pressed it through the wire basket to make spaghetti shapes, and poached this in boiling water. Alot of times chicken mousseline or fish mousseline is used to stuff the chicken or fish when cooking.
We also learned how to make compound butters. This is basically adding different elements to butter. First the butter is whipped and then the flavoring agents are added. The butter is then rolled and wrapped to chill until firm. Chef's favorite is a truffle butter on a steak (a definite note to self to try).
For the trout, we started by making croutons. Its actually amazing how much butter is used to make croutons (Remember croutons start with frozen bread because its easier to cut). The trout was salt and peppered, coated in flour, and sauteed in butter. To sautee fish, you cook on medium/medium low skin side down first until the fish is cooked about 80% of the way. Then you flip it and cook it for only about another minute. After the fish was finished, we removed it from the pan and then added cubed cold butter into the pan and uped the heat to high. We swirled the butter around and cooked it until it was a hazelnut brown (buerre noisette). We then made it into the a la Grenobloise by adding chopped capers and sliced lemon. The fish was plated with this sauce and the croutons. I was a huge fan of this sauce. Alot of people in class thought it was too lemony in flavor but I was eating it up with a spoon (probably not a good idea to eat spoonfuls of butter sauce at 10pm but who's counting).
I really enjoyed the two fish classes for a few reasons...(1) I appreciate the work of the fish mongers that filet fish and I will continue to rely on them to do this as working with fish that hasn't been fileted is incredibly messy and (2) I really liked the simple yet delicious preparations we learned.
Until next class with duck and another chicken...
No comments:
Post a Comment