The Culinary Tales Week 9: Thanks for All the Fish
I was really excited for Fish Week, and not just because I’m a Pisces. Truthfully, I love seafood for a number of reasons and, though it gets made far more regularly than steak, wished that I’d made it more often at home.
Salmon, mussels and snapper were on tap, and leave it to my pasta work to bring me right back up. I badly needed a confidence booster after the subpar Beef Week I had.
Our first dish was Moules Mariniere (mussels with pasta); the mussels were cooked well and the sauce and pasta were superb. I would have gotten a 100, except Chef docked me two points for not opening up the mussel shells for a prettier presentation. It turned out to be my momentum-turner nevertheless, and all of my dishes turned out to be “A” work.
As for actual fish, we mostly worked with salmon, using various techniques like poaching, grilling, baking, blackening (coating with lots of pepper and spices). We also did pink snapper (which we sauteed) and used white fish for the deep fryer when we made fish and chips.
We saw the return of some rice dishes, as well as the introduction of gaufrette potatoes (crisscross fries for more deepfrying fun) and gnocchi.
Gnocchi is one of the few foods that I just don’t enjoy at all. It’s a texture thing… nothing wrong with the taste, I just hate the way it feels in my mouth. It’s a “pasta” made with potatoes and not at all difficult to make, certainly a lot easier than regular pasta or spaetzle. While I have a tendency to make an inferior product when I’m not a fan of it, I actually did well on the gnocchi. Too bad I still don’t like it.
I continued to rock my sauce work (by the way, it’s the best way to hide overcooked meat.) To add to my sauce repertoire were beurre blanc (a delicate yet versatile sauce made with wine, vinegar and butter, perfect for seafood dishes) and tartar sauce, which is basically a mayonnaise with tarty additions such as capers and gherkin pickles (which the French call “cornichons”) plus tabasco, Worcestishire sauce and shallots. There was a lot of whisking involved, and I was getting the hang of it for sure.
The most important thing I learned was how to determine freshness and quality. Things to look out for when buying fish:
- No “fishy” smell, should smell of the ocean
- Eyes should be clear, shiny and bulgy, not red nor sunken in
- Gills should be red or pink with no brown discoloration
- The flesh should bounce after touching it
- Scales should be shiny and tight on skin, not loose and falling off
One of the best (and worst) parts of Fish Week was having to fabricate the fish, using a filet knife similar to what we used on chickens but with a flexible, bendier blade, and we learned how to cut up fillets from a whole salmon. To ease us into the stinky, gross world of fish hacking, they started off by letting us work with “drawn” fish.
“Drawn” is a term used for whole fresh fish that has been eviscerated (meaning its guts – its viscera – have been taken out) though its head, tail, fins and scales remain. It was up to us to clip the fins and scale it. Eventually we would handle whole, round fish and take out the viscera ourselves.
It was quite an experience: vomit-inducing and cool all at once.
But the highlight of the week was learning to make Salmon en Papillote: cooking salmon with wine, lemon and herbs enveloped in a paper wrapping. It was super easy to do, and super fun to eat as, when served, the paper is cut tableside for flair and effect, the fragrant steam erupting from the package an olfactory and visual tease of the treat to come.
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