Sunday 24 April 2016

Cape Hake with Jersey Royals and a Parsley and Bacon Sauce

I haven't done any cooking with Regal's great fish products since December, so it clearly was overdue. Last nights dinner was Cape Hake with a Parsley and Bacon Sauce. According the the kids the fish was perfect and the sauce was "mega".

I simply steamed the fish in a parcel of aluminium foil in the oven with a little olive oil, lemon juice, four bay leaves and a couple of parsley storks at 180C for 20 minutes. Whenever I steam fish like this I salt it to firm up the flesh. It only takes a few minutes and really makes a difference. You sprinkle salt evenly on both sides of the fish and let it stand for about 10 minutes and then rinse the salt off.

for the sauce I chopped two slices of bacon and fried them off in a sauce pan with a little olive oil. I then took the bacon out, making sure the olive oil and bacon fat mix stayed in the pan. That is then the perfect base for a white sauce. So I added flour to make a rue and the I added half a pint of milk and half a liter of vegetable stock. At this point I added the finely chopped storks of the parsley and half a finely chopped onion and returned the bacon. Once this had come through the boil I let it simmer for 10 minutes. I did this quite early in the, so I just took it off the flame and covered it with cling film. If the film is directly on the sauce it prevents it from forming a skin. Letting it stand for a few hours allows the flavors to mature. Just before the fish was ready I re-heated the sauce and at the last minute I added the roughly chopped parsley leaves.

Seeing as the Jersey Royal season has just started they just had to be used. So I served with Jersey Royals and steamed asparagus.



Sunday 10 April 2016

Ketchup Leather the Experiment


Following on form my last post:

http://marcsfoodadventures.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/ketchup-leather.html

I have now done the experiment and I think it really works! Have a look at:

https://youtu.be/IMQIMXUPPdo



Lovely stuff - let me know what you think

Tuesday 5 April 2016

Ketchup Leather

I just found this on the web page of the German broadcaster ARD:

http://www1.wdr.de/verbraucher/ernaehrung/ketchupleder-100.html


Sounds absolutely brilliant - basically you spread ketchup (normal commercial version or self made) about 2mm thin on a silicon sheet and dry it out in the oven for 3-4 hours.

The result can be used in in burgers and slightly melts with the heat of the burger releasing its intensified flavor.

The idea is from Ernesto Uchimura of the Plan Check Restaurant in LA. He developed the Ketchup Leather to stop burger buns from getting soggy.

I've got to try this! I am sure the kids won't mind testing ;-)

EDIT: Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMQIMXUPPdo