So I made my first Spanish meal last night for our family's dinner. Despite my constant fretting throughout, considering how it's cooked in such an interestingly unique way, it turned out fantastic. One admission though, I didn't make the tapas and instead got them from M&S, and not all of them were Spanish. I just couldn't resist the sun-dried tomato and mozzarella salad once I'd spotted it on the shelf. Anyways, here's the meal, the main course courtesy of Jamie Oliver's Jamie Does (Thought I'd put off cooking from the Spanish one I bought the other day until I actually moved there).
As i said before, this fish was cooked in such a way I've never come across before, and was as fun to make as it was tasty. I initially did a double take when seeing a Jamie Oliver recipe calling for a kilo of rock salt, given his (arguable) culpability for the removal of salt-shakers from our school's dinner tables during his health-crusade, and the abject despair we endured every Friday at having our chips plain. But hey, I'm over that now, or at least I should be.
His recipe called for sea bass or bream (vitally, with the scales left on), of which I ended up using the latter. The salt was then mixed with two beaten eggs, some fennel and lemon rinds, and was used to completely surround the fish in the oven dish. Before you start to though, don't worry. The scales protect the fish from the salt and the skin is discarded after cooking, whilst the salt allows the fish to cook without losing any of its moisture, whilst giving a subtle infusion of the fennel and lemon. Stuffing the fish with herbs is also a good shout as well. But the best part, however, is after you take the fish out of the oven. The salt covering became rock hard in the oven and after letting it stand for a bit I gave it a few whacks on the side with a meat tenderiser (just because I had one, the back of a spoon or the like will also suffice) before removing the salt and tucking in. You can watch this video here for a vague idea as to how the whole thing works out.
Now onto the alioli, and I guess you could say the frustration involved in making this compensated for how fun the fish was to prepare, given the amount of sheer patience it calls for. After mashing up three cloves of garlic garlic with a pinch of saffron and salt in the pestle and mortar I borrowed off my neighbour, the olive oil was added very slowly and mixed into the puree -- done in this manner with the intention of it staying as a single emulsion. This was, annoyingly, until I got a little hasty and the mixture split -- so I got my sister to take over that part whilst I tended to the fish. We poured it into another bowl, mashed up a another clove with some salt and added our previous mixture to that. One thing we discovered right at the end was that adding lemon juice helped the emulsion stay together somehow -- probably by some means of some chemical reaction that took place in the mixture I'd hazard.
I'd never tried alioli before, and I must say was a wonderful revelation. Technically a sort of garlic mayonnaise made without eggs, I'd best describe it (as it turned out, at least. I'm not sure if it's always meant to be like that) as the Spanish equivalent of wasabi; due to it's yellow/green hue and that kick it had to it. Complemented the fish very well. Muchas Gracias Jamie
ps: I'd really love to, but I can't exactly reproduce his recipe in full here methinks. He does have a slightly different recipe for this on the web you can have a look at, however.
Tapas: Tortilla omelette, sun-dried tomato and mozzarella salad, marinated Greek olives (which I personally didn't have, I don't like olives on their own)
Main: Pescado a la sal con alioli
As i said before, this fish was cooked in such a way I've never come across before, and was as fun to make as it was tasty. I initially did a double take when seeing a Jamie Oliver recipe calling for a kilo of rock salt, given his (arguable) culpability for the removal of salt-shakers from our school's dinner tables during his health-crusade, and the abject despair we endured every Friday at having our chips plain. But hey, I'm over that now, or at least I should be.
His recipe called for sea bass or bream (vitally, with the scales left on), of which I ended up using the latter. The salt was then mixed with two beaten eggs, some fennel and lemon rinds, and was used to completely surround the fish in the oven dish. Before you start to though, don't worry. The scales protect the fish from the salt and the skin is discarded after cooking, whilst the salt allows the fish to cook without losing any of its moisture, whilst giving a subtle infusion of the fennel and lemon. Stuffing the fish with herbs is also a good shout as well. But the best part, however, is after you take the fish out of the oven. The salt covering became rock hard in the oven and after letting it stand for a bit I gave it a few whacks on the side with a meat tenderiser (just because I had one, the back of a spoon or the like will also suffice) before removing the salt and tucking in. You can watch this video here for a vague idea as to how the whole thing works out.
Now onto the alioli, and I guess you could say the frustration involved in making this compensated for how fun the fish was to prepare, given the amount of sheer patience it calls for. After mashing up three cloves of garlic garlic with a pinch of saffron and salt in the pestle and mortar I borrowed off my neighbour, the olive oil was added very slowly and mixed into the puree -- done in this manner with the intention of it staying as a single emulsion. This was, annoyingly, until I got a little hasty and the mixture split -- so I got my sister to take over that part whilst I tended to the fish. We poured it into another bowl, mashed up a another clove with some salt and added our previous mixture to that. One thing we discovered right at the end was that adding lemon juice helped the emulsion stay together somehow -- probably by some means of some chemical reaction that took place in the mixture I'd hazard.
I'd never tried alioli before, and I must say was a wonderful revelation. Technically a sort of garlic mayonnaise made without eggs, I'd best describe it (as it turned out, at least. I'm not sure if it's always meant to be like that) as the Spanish equivalent of wasabi; due to it's yellow/green hue and that kick it had to it. Complemented the fish very well. Muchas Gracias Jamie
ps: I'd really love to, but I can't exactly reproduce his recipe in full here methinks. He does have a slightly different recipe for this on the web you can have a look at, however.
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