Le Cordon Bleu - Lesson 18

Saumon de Tasmanie marine aux fine herbes - Marinated Tassie salmon

Today was definitely a day of Salmon at Le Codon Bleu.  First we started with our gravalax (which you'll hear about later), then we went onto our Instant marinated Tassie salmon, which was served on Wattleseed blinis.

A Blini is a little Russian pancake, which differs from crepes in the way that it gets its lift from yeast.  This also means that you need to give your yeast time to rise, so when making blini batter, you will need at least 1 hour of resting time in a warm place.   After it has rested we whisk in stiff peaked egg whites.

Wattleseed is a native Australian bush tukka seed that tastes similar to coffee.  Ideally you would want to first make a wattleseed mud or essence, but in our case, we infused our Wattleseed directly into warm milk that was later used in the batter.  Although this is fine, it only utilizes about half the taste.

Besides the use of yeast, making blinis is very similar to making little pancakes.  Melt some clarified butter and fry little pancakes, turning them over when they have a bit of colour and bubbles have raised through the batter.  Add more clarified butter between each round.

Instant marinade refers to a marinade that is added to the meat/fish just before serving.  In our case, we were instantly marinading Salmon.  The marinade was an emulsion (similar to mayo) made from lime juice, grape seed oil, and many finely chopped herbs.  The lime juice cooks the salmon instantly, so it really is important to have everything ready before you marinade your salmon.

For Mains on today's menu we have a Club Sandwich.  I'm not entirely sure if this is french, but it was delicious!

The reason why you have 3 pieces of bread in a club sandwich is to keep the warm meat (chicken and bacon) separated from the fresh crunchy salad.  This ensures that you do not cook your salad and your meat stays warm.

Putting the sandwich together is pretty basic, the work comes in getting all the ingredients together:

Roast Chicken

Grilled bacon

Toasted bread

Mayonnaise

Slice tomato and crispy cleaned and dryed lettuce

butter and assembly

Order of layers (from bottom to top):

bread, butter, mayo, chicken, bacon, bread, butter, mayo, lettuce, tomato, mayo, butter, bread, toothpick