Week 28: Omega 3 and me

Yum! Seafood.  After a week of fish, molluscs, crustaceans and cephalodpods my omega levels can only be at an all time high and my heart must have a smiley face on it.  I wonder, does all this week's good omega  fatty acids counteract the weeks and weeks of saturated fats?  Perhaps not, especially as some of what we make this week still gets the butter and cream treatment.

Regular readers will recall Week 12: two fish and a scoop please and I won't repeat the descriptions of à la française, à l'anglaise and other coating and frying techniques.  Mercifully, we do not do much frying this week except for deep frying one fillet with an egg white batter, which I have to admit is pretty delicious.  However, before the hunter gatherer gets too excited, I must say we will not be getting a deep fryer any time this millennium. And I am unanimous in that.

We begin the week with Moules Marinière - a delicious classic with a fancy French name for steamed mussels.  We are lucky here in New Zealand to have the best mussels in the world - the native green lipped mussel.  Trademarked as New Zealand Greenshell mussels, we export to more than 60 countries and mussels are responsible for around $300 million in export earnings. They are terribly good for you, being high in omega 3s and also haem iron, containing 3 times as much as steak on a per gram basis.  A 100 gram serving provides about a quarter of an adult's daily protein needs. Do I work for the Seafood Council? No!  Do we have the only green lipped mussels in the world? Yes!  Is this nature's super food?  Maybe!  But I digress. Moules Marinière - mussels steamed in white wine and shallots, thickened with a tiny bit of beurre manie (flour and butter) and finished with cream (just a little, to provide non heart friendly fats). I'll say it again - yum!

We continue the fab food fiesta with crispy skinned salmon on cauliflower puree with salsa verde; Cajun baked prawns; and Calamari. Actually we deep fried the squid rings and serve them with a tasty dressing. And it is still only Monday! 

Tuesday we get down to the business end of the fish - filleting round fish and flat fish (i.e. flounder, turbot, sole - the ones that are asymmetrical and generally have two eyes on one side of their head). We then go about abusing them in the name of classic cookery. There is a very good reason you seldom see Sole Véronique on menus these days, even if Delia Smith does think it deserves a revival - she must be deranged.  I say that in a caring way with full consideration of the facts: she is a saint in the UK and taught England how to boil an egg;  when living in London I learned a lot from her 1978 BBC TV cooking series; and I do still refer to her excellent book Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course.  However, I do not see how she can regard poached fish napped in a velouté sauce finished with a liaison (you remember liaisons from Week 6: Cold weather and hot dishes) is in any way enhanced by the addition of  - grapes.  As you and I both know, grapes should only ever be crushed, fermented, and bottled.

We all agree our favourite day is Wednesday, when we smoke fish (in a smoker, obviously) for fish cakes which are herby and delicious with the smoky fish flavour.  When we pane them we use rolled oats instead of breadcrumbs and that gives a crunchier fuller, toastier flavour than using regular breadcrumbs.  They look good too, as you can see in the picture - though bear in mind these are in an uncooked state. 

It is easier than you may think to make a smoker using things you already have in the kitchen. Put your smoke source, we use manuka wood chips -  in a roasting dish, place a rack over it with your fish on the rack, seal the unit with tin foil and put over a low gas flame. It doesn't take long, about 15 minutes to smoke fish and this method can be used for lots of other foods which may or may not need further cooking, depending on what you smoke.

We also all love the seafood tajine, for which we use white fish, prawns, mussels and squid, marvelling at how we can all use the same recipe but get such different flavours in the end result. Kenya boy's is heavy on the chili, mine with fresh coriander added at the end, others have been judicious with the turmeric, or not cooked the spices out resulting in a powdery aftertaste.

I'm not confident on assessment day. My filleting (we use terakihi on the day) goes well though I am slow, and the fish stock is lovely and clear, so no problems there. While my moules are good with the sauce just the right consistency and flavour (because of the salt water that comes out of the mussels they are easy to get too salty), I am not happy with the Véronique - well, who could be?  However it is better than I judge and chef awards me Distinction - once more the only one this week.  I'm creating a hard act for myself to follow!  You know what it's like, once you get on a roll, any fall back feels like failure even when it is still a pass.  We have only two more assessments before the grand final. Coming up, more pastry technique and you know what that means.......quite a bit a butta.

Week 12: Two fish and a scoop please

This week, the fine art of frying: shallow frying, deep frying, stir frying, sauteing. I'm sure I see - and eat - more fried food this week than in the past ten years combined. Yes, it's true, fat does taste good - but only when food is properly prepared and cooked. 

All the same, I do think  it is best to interfere with fish as little as possible. In class, using terakihi, we interfere with it three different ways: 



1. Fish/Poisson Meunière - where it is simply tossed in seasoned flour and pan fried. Interestingly, the French word 'le meunier' means miller. Those of you who know French nouns have a gender may briefly ponder a potential franglais inconsistency: in French fish is le poisson (masculine) and meunière is the feminine form.  On the other hand if we refer to the dish as it probably should be referred to, that is as Fish à la Meunière then it is fish in the style of the miller's wife. She probably had plenty of flour to hand and so simply dredged the fish and fried it - in butter of course. And then, if that wasn't enough, made Sauce Meunière - melted browned butter, lemon juice and parsley.

2. Fish à l'Orly - fish in the style of Orly (which is south of Paris in case you wondered). Essentially this is battered fish as you know and love it. In class we use terakihi (yum), beer batter and the deep fryer, and it is pretty good.  Tips and tricks around this are to really make sure the batter only thinly coats the fish but coats it fully. The batter, or indeed any coating, protects the fish from the oil: the theory being it is the steam build up inside the batter than cooks the fish. How's that for justification for eating deep fried fillets??

3. Fish à l'Anglaise - English style is flour, egg and breadcrumbs - and deep fried. This is where the translation really falls apart, as we all know battered fish is an English thing. Not in classic cuisine, however. The two French students who turn up this week to spend two weeks at Weltec followed by two weeks work experience in town, confirm they too call this method of coating food 'pane anglaise'.

We make tartare sauce, of course making the mayonnaise base by hand -  beating, beating, beating the oil into egg yolks. We sauté potatoes, cook tempura vegetables, and deep fry onion rings à la française - in the French manner - which is milk and flour, and deep fry chips. For the chips we cut the potatoes evenly - 6cm x1cm x1cm awakening nightmares about carrot cuts from week one. Cooking the battered fish and chips involves two stages, just like the local fish'n'chip shop. The first frying is at a lower heat - 150°C and is called blanching - partially cook and do not colour the food. It is let cool and then the second frying is at 185°C and crisps everything up. Heston Blumenthal, having spent a long time investigating how to make the best chips ever, brings his chips to the boil before draining and cooling them right down in the fridge. His second cooking is blanching in 130°C oil before he completely cools them again. The final fry is in 190°C oil. Apparently this produces the finest fluffy on the inside crisp on the outside chip. He also spent approximately 72 years investigating which type of potato to use, but hey - he's Heston.



proving an omelette pan

It is the omelettes, however, that cause some people the most grief this week. The perfect omelette is a rare and beautiful thing, and before we start we must prove the omelette pans. Note we don't use any non stick cookware in the kitchen - non stick surfaces have a habit of flaking off eventually and finding their way into the food.  To prepare, or prove, the pan, put in rock salt (which has a nice rough surface) and then over the heat shake the pan and swirl the salt around. This essentially scours the pan and gives a clean, smooth surface which you then wipe out with kitchen towel and a wee bit of oil. We cook a two egg (nothing else except salt and white pepper) omelette in clarified butter. As it cooks, draw the sides to the centre with a fork - I need to take more photos don't I - until it reaches a stage where it is set but still moist (not runny) - the word for this is baveuse. At this point fold two sides in and turn it out onto a warm plate so the beautiful bottom is the presentation side. At this point it can be split and filling added. Most people would generally fill the omelette while it was cooking, but that is not the City and Guilds way.

Dishes of the week for me are the Falafels with yoghurt sauce, and also those we stir fry: Hokkien noodles with prawns and Stir Fried Beef with vegetables. 

The lowlight of the week happens early Monday, with tongue stud girl proclaiming her intention to get a nipple piercing. Now this isn't a quiet aside in the girls' changing room you understand. No, it is  a veritable announcement to all. By Thursday she treats us to a description of how f-ing painful it is. Not much sympathy ensues. Fortunately we aren't asked to bear witness.

Baking next week - everything from scones to fruit flans. I'll take more photos, I promise.