Day13: Additional Methods of Cooking Fish

I haven’t looked forward to my weekends in a very long time and I’m definitely enjoying the extra sleep on Saturday mornings.

Last Fridays lesson was an addition to thursdays fish lesson with the introduction of flat fish. Flounder was the fish of the day and we learned how to filet it and cook it using two different techniques. The first was Paner A’lAnglaise which means to bread and fry. First step is two slice the flounder filet into goujonettes (small strips) dip them in flour, then into the seasoned egg mixture and then the bread crumb. After they are all breaded and our deep frying oil is set to 350 we fry them off. We served them up with two different sauces, one was a red pepper coulis and the other was some kind of tartar sauce variation.

Next we served up a braised variation of the flounder with shallots, white wine, mushrooms, and a double cream reduction called filet de limande bonne femme. An extremely heavy dish in my opinion, that poor flounder was completely over shined by the sauce.

Tomorrow we have shellfish, and for the first time in my life SNAILS!

Baking Research: 10/19/10

I read a good article on bread making this morning and figured I’d try out a few of it’s pointers and tips.

http://bit.ly/9BGdmB

I’ve been baking and baking but couldn’t consistently get those big air pockets inside my breads.One of the pointers that helped me was about forming the rolls and not overworking the dough in the process. So I tried it out with a little more TLC and have to say I saw some better results today.

Yet Another Bread Pudding…

My day off has me a little bored and left with not much to do but sit here and write on my iPad, so I decided to take some week-old bread that Dani brought home from the health food store and throw together a bread pudding. I guess I’ve been fascinated by the dessert recently and it’s endless possibilities. I don’t do much cooking at home besides the occasional scrambled eggs with bacon for breakfast, but honestly haven’t even done that in a while.

Cutting up this bread was a little difficult…being a week-old it was almost petrified! I got through it anyway, cautiously crunching off the crusts with my wusthof that we got as an engagement gift a few months ago while trying not to chop off my fingers in the process. Getting all of my ingredients together was also a little tricky…like I said I don’t do too much cooking at home so the supplies are sparse. I managed to put a few things together none the less.

-5 EGGS
-1 quart 1% MILK
-1 cup SUGAR
-1 tbsp CINNAMON
-1 tsp ALMOND EXTRACT
-1 VANILLA BEAN
-1 tbsp ORANGE ZEST
-1/4 cup DRIED FIGS chopped
-1/4 cup DRIED APRICOTS chopped
-1 stick of SALTED BUTTER

My reasoning for adding the butter was due to the fact that I had no heavy cream…so I had to rough it out with the 1% Milk in my refrigerator. But, after tasting the pudding I definitely could have done without it or maybe just a lot less…it didn’t really mix in well with the rest of the ingredients. I whisked all the wet ingredients together, tossed in the chunks of bread and let them soak for a half an hour. Then I transferred everything into my baking tray loosely covering it with aluminum foil and slid it in to the oven which I preheated @325.

Baking time is normally 45 minutes-1 hour. Although the butter threw off the texture a little, I was very happy with the flavors. Next time I’ll make sure I go to the store and pick up some heavy cream…should make a huge difference.

ENJOY!