Culinary School Chronicles - Fish

Today's class was a good one.  I learned a couple of new techniques and we made a dish that I am likely to make again.

Today's demo lab had the Chef talking about and making Duchess potatoes and a few derivatives of them.  Duchess potatoes are just mashed potatoes with egg yolks incorporated. The egg yolk gives them stability and makes them brown beautifully in the oven. They are then piped into the form of a rosette and then are baked to make them crispy on the outside.

Chances are you have eaten Duchess potatoes but just didn't know it - quite often they are served along side your chicken or steak at a wedding or function in a ballroom at a big hotel.    Sound familiar?

You know how I have talked before about the 5 Mother Sauces and how if you add certain things to each of them you get a derived sauce - such as adding grated cheese to a Béchamel sauce to give you a Mornay Sauce.  Well, Duchess potatoes are one of the "mother" potato dishes.

If you pipe them like the picture, they are Duchesse.  If you pipe them like a little cup with a space in the middle they are called Marquis potatoes.  And if you pipe them so that they are pear-shaped they are Potatoes William.  They can also be piped into little cigar shapes which are then deep fried into Croquettes.  Lots of variations and all tasty.

But this is a fish class, right? Today's main lab was making Rainbow Trout Vin Blanc - poached Rainbow Trout in a Riesling Wine Sauce with grapes.  Sounds weird, eh?  (Man, that was such a Canadian thing to say).  I was pleasantly surprised at how wonderful and delicate the flavour from the sauce was and how well it worked on the fish.

The two techniques that we learned about today were thickening a sauce with a Beurre Manié (or Burr Man-yay as Chef would say) and poaching fish after making a cartouche from parchment paper.

A Beurre Manié is an uncooked roux made by combining equal parts room temperature butter with all purpose flour.  The two ingredients are mixed together using a wooden spoon until the butter absorbs the flour and becomes a paste, rather like thick mashed potatoes.  You then add your Beurre Manié to a sauce you wish to thicken a little bit at a time.  I tried to make a Beurre Manié a few weeks ago to thicken my Coq Au Vin and I lost patience combining the two and gave up.  This time I knew it would take a good 5 minutes of working it to make the paste so I persevered and my sauce turned out perfectly!

The other thing we learned was to make a cartouche and use it to poach our fish.  A cartouche is just a paper lid made from parchment paper that is used to slow down the reduction of moisture in cooking. This kind of lid lets a little moisture escape, whereas using no lid lets lots of moisture escape and a full lid lets practically none escape.  Here's a picture of mine from class.

Making a cartouche is like making a paper snowflake.  You fold your parchment in half, then in half again, and then start folding from the corner inwards to make a conical shape, and then fold 2 more times.  It looks a bit like a paper airplane at that point, then you measure your paper tip pointing in towards the centre of your pan, then cut to size.  If you have done it correctly, you should end up with a circle of parchment that is the same size as the inside of your pan.

Rainbow Trout Vin Blanc

4 fillets of farmed Ontario Rainbow Trout, cut into 2 pieces each
20 seedless green grapes, cut in half
2 shallots, peeled and finely diced
1/2 cup medium-dry Canadian Riesling

Sauce:

2 cups fish stock
3/4 cup 35% cream or whipping cream (don't skimp here or it will separate)
4 sprigs of parsley, washed, dried and finely chopped
1/2 lemon
Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Butter a sauté pan well.  Sprinkle bottom of pan with chopped shallots.  Sprinkle pan with cut grapes.  Lay fish fillet pieces on top of grapes and shallots.  Add wine and then add  enough fish stock to just cover the fish.  Cover the fish with your cartouche and take to the stove.

Bring fish to a gentle simmer over medium heat and then cook for about 5 minutes until the fish appears cooked through.  Keep an eye on the fish once you start poaching as it does not take long to over-cook!  Remove fish from pan when cooked and place on an oven-safe tray and set aside.

Add the cream to the pan and return to a low boil, and cook for about 5-10 minutes to reduce sauce by 1/4.  A little at a time, add the Beurre Manié to the sauce, patiently stirring to incorporate fully.  Keep adding Beurre Manié until it is all incorporated.  Continue to cook on low to cook away the raw flour flavour.  When the sauce is ready, it should coat the back of a spoon.

Right before serving, pop the fish back into the oven for about 5 minutes to reheat.  To serve, place a piece of fish fillet on a plate and top with a large spoonful or two of sauce.  Sprinkle with chopped parsley and give a squeeze of lemon if desired.

Beurre Manié

1 tablespoon butter, softened
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

Combine both ingredients using a wooden spoon until the butter absorbs the flour, resulting in a toothpaste like consistency.