The other night I was cooking a rather tasty chicken
dish for Helen, when she commented that we should be putting stuff like this on the
blog. I agreed, “but not on these plates” I scoffed. So we bought some posh new
ones and here we are.
I intend (I intend a lot of things so don't count on this) to keep updating
this food diary every time we make a successful dish for dinner, lunch or
breakfast. I wont go into any fine
detail about how it was made, but if you are interested then drop us a comment
and we will happily fill you in or even e-mail you a cheeky recipe.
Anyway, here we go.
Week 1
Dinner
Pan Fried fillet of Seabass with triple cooked chips, tempura asparagus and a gremolata dressing.
Full Recipe as requested by venus.
For the chips.
I know its fashionable to tell people to buy maris piper potatoes for making the best chips. Which is true, maris pipers make the best chips but what I do find is that I can rarely buy them in a suitable size. What I end up doing is buying a big enough baked potato from which I can cut almost precisely two portions or chips.
...credit crunch, you see ?
So cut your potato chips. Make them chunky (2-3cm wide), then place them in a pan of cold salted water and bring the pan to the boil. Take the chips out when they start to fall apart. I usually judge this by when I can cut though the chip easily with the blunt side of a knife. Just a tip here but its a good to keep the odd cuts of the potato that your not using for the dish throughout the whole cooking posses for these kind of checks.
Take them out of the pan carefully so they don't break (a slotted spoon is best), and place them on some kitchen roll and pat them dry. Then place in the fridge till cool.
Set your fryer to about 130oC and once cool and dry place your chips in carefully (I take the basket out and lay mine in in a criss cross pattern with space in between each chip.). Leave them in till they start to develop a strong skin and gain a little colour (they wont go brown but they will darken slightly). This usually takes about 6-10 mins. Take them out and dry once more and return to the fridge to cool.
Next set your fryer to 180oC and fry the chips till the are a light golden brown, then remove and season well.
Timing wise you a best to leave this last frying stage till you are frying the fish.
For the Gremolata
This is so simple. Finely chop a big bunch of flat leaf parsley and add to it the zest of 1 lemon, the juice of two lemons, two garlic cloves (very finely chopped) and some olive oil (olive oil is not necessary but I think gives it a better consistency on the plate).
Timing wise do this while your potatoes are boiling.
For the tempura asparagus
Mix your tempura batter with water, dip asparagus in batter and deep fry at 170-190oC. Pat dry and season to taste.
Timing wise this is best done last.
For Fish.
Fillet your sea bass (I recommend buying a whole fish over buying fillets. Fist of all it is easier to tell if the fish is fresh or not, it's cheaper and you can if you want reserve the head and bones and freeze to one day to use for a stock.), and season both sides with salt and pepper (I use cayenne pepper rather than black pepper for most fish and meat seasoning) and rub in a little oil. Keep the skin on as it holds the fish together and is lovely fried and crispy. Next get your pan nice an hot. I use a iron skillet but a good frying pan will do, I also use a little grapeseed oil because it has a higher smoking point but olive olive oil or standard vegetable oil will do fine.
Lay the fish down carefully skin side down and very very quickly place a empty saucepan on top of the fish to stop it from curling up ( you could also score the skin to achieve this but I like prefer it this way). Make it a heavy sauce pan but don't push down to heavily. Be careful not to move the fish sideways on the pan of the skin will come off (as I did for me if you look closely enough).
Keep the fish cooking until the skin in deep brown and very crispy. You will notice that the fish has been cooked almost right the way through at this point. You want to just flip the fish over at this stage and cook for a matter of 5 seconds on the non skin side and then remove the fish from the pan straight away. Do not leave it there for longer or the direct heat will overcook the fish. This is the number one mistake of most cooks compared to restaurant quality food.
Timing wise you should cook this when you are frying the chips for the last time.
Overall Timing Line
1. prepare chips
2. boil chips and prepare gremolata
3. cool chips and prepare batter for asparagus
4. fry chips
5. cool chips and prepare fish.
6. fry chips and fry fish
7. fry asparagus (if your unconfident about how it will turn out you could lightly fry it previous to this, so all you need to do at this point is heat them up a little, but it will make your oil messy and you will have to clean it or replace it before frying your chips.)
8. Plate and eat.
Breakfast
Chilli, lime and pork sausages (cooked sous vide) and served in a homemade baguette.