Le Cordon Bleu - Lesson 13

This week we focussed on Emulsions and Fish.  

An emulsion is the combination of 2 or more unblendable liquids, for example mixing oil and liquids - they don't naturally want to stay together, but if you get them to stay, they are very delicious.  :)

There are two main types of emulsion - temporary, where it will return to original form after an amount of time, and permanent, where, once mixed, they will stay together.  Hollandaise falls under the temporary category, making the challenge even harder.

We started the week with the Hollandaise, which needs exactly the right temperature to hold together. Too hot and it will scramble, too cold and it won't mix.   This careful work takes the care of a baine marie.   Mine was one of the many in the class to split, so i had to make a new sabayon (egg and liquid) mixture and essentially start over, all good practice and a good workout for the upper body).

So, if you were even under the impression that Hollandaise sauce was healthy, let me take a moment to tell you that it isn't!  Similarly to the saying of 'if its too good to be true', the same applies to 'if its too delicious to be healthy, you can bet your wobbly thighs it isn't'.  Hollandaise sauce consists of egg yolk (the fatty part of the egg), a dash of vinegar, and lots of clarified butter (all dairy fat has been removed, like ghee).  Its straight to the hips material.   But of course saying that it is also the 'Mother of all French sauces' and it just divine when served on veggies, or eggs benedict or in this case, fish.

Our first dish was Trout au Bleu (shallow poached trout), poached in a court bouillon, served with sliced carrots and onions and turned potatoes, and finally a serving of our beautiful Hollandaise. We poached the trout whole, with it's mouth open.  (poor trout).  I've never really been much of a fan of trout due to all the tiny bones, and this one was no different. This is also the main reason you don't find fillets of trout for sale, as no fishmonger wants to be involved in deboning a trout and no chef wants to do it either, which is why you don't see trout on many menus.  To keep the beautiful shape of the fish, we tie string through it's gill and through its mouth and through a hole at the base of its tail and poached it in the C shape.  The fish is cooked when the flesh above the spine feels like jelly, this is due to the fats throughout the fish raising to the top while poaching.  

My trout turned out well and the hollandaise very yummy, I don't know if I will go to the effort of cooking trout again at home.

Our second menu item was Filet de saint pierre a la meuriere (Fillet of mirror dory meuniere).

There are two main types of Dory in Australia, Mirror Dory, called so because of it's reflective skin.  He sells at approx $18 p/kg. And then there is John Dory, which sells at approx $30 p/kg.  Mirror Dory is normally sold as a whole fish.

Today we had a Mirror Dory each, which quickly became the first fish I had ever filleted and de-skinned.  Luckily Mirror Dory has no scales, making the job a whole bunch easier.  We used our filleting knives, which are sharp, long and bendy, allowing you to press it against the skeleton on the fish to get as much meat off the bones as possible.  The bones and other wastage of the skin can be used to create a fish stock (within 20 minutes) and then reduced to make a sauce.

We flour dusted and shallow fried our Dory fillets in a bit of grapeseed oil, this only takes 1.5-2 minutes per side, and was great.  Our Dory was served with Beurre noisette (browned butter, where the butter is browned just until the nutty flavour is released) and sprinkled with finely chopped parsley.  Very delicious, definitely a repeatable item.