Passport & Plate - Fish on the Rocks
Brazil | Thursday, March 5, 2015 | 2 photos
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VEGETABLE STOCK:
-1 onion (large)
-1 carrot
-1 celery stalk
-leeks (dark green part)
-2 garlic cloves
-small sprig of fresh thyme
-2 bay leaves
-small sprig of rosemary
-2 liters of water
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POTATO PURÉE:
-1 kg potatoes (8 medium potatoes)
-2 (tablespoon) olive oil
-salt
-squid ink (drops)/ or black food coloring __________________
LEEKS:
-500 g leeks
-1 (tablespoon) olive oil
-salt
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FISH:
-800 g fresh sardines, clean, filleted, skin on (4 fillets)
-1/2 bottle white wine (I used pinot grigio)
-small sprig fresh thyme
-small sprig fresh marjoram
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"SEAWATER FROTH”:
-500 ml filtered water
-salt
-3 g soy lecithin (big pinch)
Method of Production
VEGETABLE STOCK:
Chop the onion, carrot, celery stalk and leeks into one inch chunks. Add all the ingredients in the water and let it simmer, uncovered, for at least 1 hour. Strain and discard the vegetables. Lightly season with salt to serve. Keep it hot.
POTATO PURÉE:
Peel and cut the potatoes in medium cubes; cook it in salted boiling water until they soften, then smash and stir them with a wire whisk, adding the olive oil and a pinch of salt in the process. Adjust the quantities of salt and olive oil if necessary. After the potatoes turned into a soft purée, add drops of squid ink (or black food coloring if preferred) until it reaches the desired color. Keep warm.
LEEKS:
Slice the leeks crosswise (half inch wide), and reserve the dark green part to do a stock. Sauté the slices on a non-sticky pan with olive oil, on low heat to properly cook it without burning, seasoning with salt. Keep warm.
FISH:
In a pot, add the wine and the fresh herbs and bring to boil. Cover the pot with a round flour sifter (or steam basket, as long as the wine in the bottom doesn’t touch the fish) and put the fillets, flesh down, on it. Cover with a lid. Steam until cooked (around 5 minutes for an one inch thick fillet). Season with salt (on the flesh, since some people don’t eat the skin).
“SEAWATER FROTH”:
Heavily combine salt to the water in a big bowl (similar to the sea water taste). Add the soy lecithin and blend until it foams, with the hand blender slightly tilted. Add another pinch of soy lecithin in case it doesn’t quickly foams.
SERVING:
When plating, the first 3 elements on the dish must be the potato purée, the leeks and the fish (be as creative as you’d like). Add the stock just to cover the bottom of the plate, so I would recommend serving in a tall bowl. Finally, add the foam right before serving and garnish with leeks micro greens.
NOTES:
Try to buy the fish as fresh as possible. The sardines can be substituted by seabass and the leeks by seaweed, for example.
The story behind this recipe:
Growing up and getting older taught me a very important lesson: plans can be changed no matter how hard you flounce, and life has a special way to show you that sometimes you have no control over the future. It took years of hard work to save the money and some obstacles to be surpassed, to finally find myself temporarily living in another country, so similar and, at the same time, so different from mine, studying culinary arts.
Once a year, on my summer vacations, I go to the beach to “recharge my batteries”. The touch of my feet in the sand (I am lucky enough to be born and raised in Brazil, a country where the most of the beaches have thin, soft sand), the smell of the sea breeze, the salty water, the blue sky and warming sun, the sound of the waves… even on rainy-stormy days, with the grayest sky, the beach sounds like a place of perfection; a place that holds some of my nicest memories.
The food is paradise. Nothing compares to the taste of fresh fish, cooked or raw. Just the memory of sitting on the sand, eating a simple deep-fried triggerfish, grilled sardines or barbecued red snapper is enough to make your mouth water and warm your heart. Fresh fish also takes me to childhood moments with my grandpa. He would arrive with the most delicate-flavored fish he just caught in the pond and take it to my grandma to clean it and cook it immediately. But this is a history for another time.
Since I’ve been studying not only overseas, but also in a different hemisphere, my summer break from school actually meant 3 extra months of winter, at my parent’s house.
Therefore, it’s been 2 years since I last went to the beach, and missing it has been aggravated by my homesick feelings. So when I had the opportunity to create a dish to my final exam for one of my classes, I knew I needed to do something that would take me to that happy, comfy place. A dish in which each bite evokes the memory of a day by the beach.
