Breaking it Down: Fish-Style Part I

Something's fishy around here...
Today we tackled filleting and cleaning fish and making fish stock. We used freshly-caught striped bass, salmon, and flounder. Below, you can see chef holding up the fish by the gills.

Taking more fish out of the cooler:

Chef showed us a picture of a wild-caught striped bass to compare to the farm-raised fish we were using. The difference is that the stripes on the farm-raised fish are broken, whereas the wild-caught fish (in the photo) has unbroken stripes.

My first fillet!

Occupational hazard: bloody hands.

Chef's fillet of flounder, the flattest, ugliest fish of the day. 

Pulling out the pin bones

Cutting salmon steaks

These are the egg sacs from the striped bass and the flounder.

I breaded these in a little seasoned flour and then pan-fried them for a few minutes. We tasted them and they basically tasted like fishy scrambled eggs. Not bad!

Stuffed fish demo

Salt-baked fish demo, before baking

Salt-crusted fish, after baking

The salt crust, made with kosher salt and egg whites seals the fish and all its juices in a controlled baking environment where the flavors mix together. To open the salt crust, break with the back of a knife or mallet and peel the chunks away. This method of cooking will only work if you are using a fish with the skin on. If you try to do this with a fillet, you will end up with cured fish that is extremely salty. Because the skin of the fish is still on, it forms a barrier between the kosher salt and the fish meat keeping it from getting salty.

I made a fish stock! Using the cleaned striped bass carcasses and carrotsonioncelery chopped small, this stock cooked for about an hour and a half before we strained it.

Gravlax! This is a type of cured fish using salt and sugar, weight, and herbs. The fish is coated with a salt and sugar mixture, fresh herbs, and pressed down with weights or a weighted tray for 2-3 days.

This is chef's piece of striped bass that he grilled and finished in the oven. Beautiful!

Poached Salmon Steaks

Striped Bass Paupiette with Salmon (bass fillet rolled around a piece of salmon)

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Raifort (Horseradish) Sauce
this sauce is great with fish.
1/3 cup prepared horseradish
8 oz. mayo (homemade preferred)
8 oz. tofu sour cream
1 TB prepared mustard
2 tsp Worchestershire sauce
1 TB sugar
1 tsp lemon juice

Squeeze excess liquid out of the horseradish and combine all ingredients.
Mix well and refrigerate until ready for use.
Use with fish fillets, on grilled fish sandwiches, as a base for a fish salad, etc.

Enjoy!

Dinner at Bonnie's

It was a spur-of-the-moment decision that a bunch of us from class gathered at classmate Bonnie's house during Chanukah for a homemade meal. We made a few recipes using techniques we learned in class. This is Bonnie's kitchen:

Avi mixing some well-received cocktails:

Esther making some butternut squash latkes:

Joshua enjoying a cocktail

Me! Enjoying another cocktail:

Bonnie demonstrating how to raise her mixer, above.

In the oven is a piece of grilled and roasted salmon and latkes to stay warm.

Part of the prep crew!

Dinner is served:

Above: Grilled Salmon with Putanesca Sauce / Below: Butternt Squash Latkes

Bonnie's roasted baby zucchinis:

Caesar Salad and Pasta A La Vodka:

A big thanks to Bonnie and her husband for hosting us once again!

Ravioli and Gnocchi

For (fancy) pasta day #2, we made gnocchi and ravioli.

Bracha making a pesto sauce for the gnocchi:

Eugenia and Bonnie pushing potatoes through a food mill.

Using a food mill shortens the potato processing time from whole or chunked to mush. The longer potatoes are handled, the more glutenous they get. If you've ever had mashed potatoes that felt like the consistency of glue, that means that they were overworked and too much gluten was released.

Chef's gnocchi:

Adding a little more flour to bind the gnocchi dough:

Next, the dough is rolled into snakes...

And cut with a knife or bench scraper:

Then the sections are rolled down a gnocchi board. The board has ridges and gives the gnocchi some texture to hold a sauce.

The gnocchi are then placed on a tray dusted with semolina flour so they don't stick together.

Then they are dropped in boiling salted water and cooked until they float.

I used a fork to give mine texture:

This is the sauce I wanted to use, which is a combination of marinara and pareve creamer.

And here you go!

This is Sheva's gnocchi rounds with pesto:

The last thing we made was ravioli with some leftover duck that we had preserved and kept chilled since duck day.

We rolled out some ravioli dough and pushed it into the molds.

Then we filled the divots with duck and covered them with another sheet of dough. 

The last step is to cut them with a ravioli cutter:

Unfortunately, the ravioli cutters we had did not cut all the way through the dough, so we had to scrap this batch :-/  When I make ravioli again, I'll do a follow-up post.

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Potato Gnocchi
2 lbs whole baking potatoes
2 beaten egg yolks
1.5 cups flour
pinch of salt
handful chopped parsley or herbs
semolina flour

Pierce potatoes with a fork and bake at 350 degrees for an hour.
Let potatoes cool and peel the skins off.
Mash the potatoes by hand or with a ricer or food mill. Add the flour, egg yolks, and salt and mix until just combined.
Dust a flat surface with flour and:
option 1: Roll out sections of it into long snakes and cut into 1" pieces.
option 2: Lightly roll dough flat with a rolling pin and use a fondant or cookie cutter to cut shapes.
If you cut the snakes, make a thumbprint in the 1" pieces and put on a pan dusted with semolina flour.
If you cut shapes, set aside on a tray dusted with semolina flour.
At this point, you can freeze the gnocchi for later use.
Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. When boiling, drop the fresh or frozen gnocchi in the water.
When they rise to the surface, remove with a skimmer or slotted spoon.
Pour cooked gnocchi into a serving dish and top with sauce.

Enjoy!