Lesson 9 - More Fish!

For Lesson 9, we made 2 more fish dishes and the Chef demoed mousseline.

I didn't really discuss anything we learned in the prior post, so I'll go into some detail here.

First item: how to choose fresh fish. The way to make sure a fish is fresh is to make sure the eyes are not sunken, it should smell like the ocean or river (yes, a fish should not smell fishy, so why is it called a fish?), and it should have a shiny, brilliant appearance.  Our book also says to make sure the fish has a firm, intact stomach and a tightly closed anal cavity. Yum!

Second item: classification.  I mentioned round fish and flat fish.  Flat fish are bottom feeders, meaning they live at the bottom of the ocean.  Examples of flat fish are flounder, sole, halibut, fluke & turbot.  Round fish live in oceans, lakes and rivers.  Some round fish are sea bass, monkfish, salmon & tuna.

Third item: random facts.  Most fish are 70 percent water and 10 to 20 percent protein.  Examples of fatty fishes are salmon and herring.  Some leaner fishes are bass and barramundi.  I wish we had made salmon, because I don't care for it and everything we have made so far has been really good.

When I was pulling the innards out of the fish during lesson 8, I do have to admit to being a little nauseous, but by lesson 9, I was not freaked out at all.

In this lesson, we made bread crumb coated sole with 2 sauces.  We deep fried the fish, and it turned out much like fish sticks, but fresher and better tasting.  The 2 sauces were a red bell pepper sauce and a remoulade (which is much better than tartar sauce).

The other fish dish we made was sautéed trout, grenoble style.  I was not looking forward to this one because the fish is cooked with the skin on.  However, it turned out to be really good!  The fish is fried in a sauté pan with clarified butter and capers and topped with croutons.

The chef demoed mousseline, which I thought would be just like that fish paste from lesson 5 (brandade), but was actually much better.  It is basically fish and cream that has been blended using a food processor.  The mixture is then shaped with a spoon into quenelles (dumplings) and boiled.  Here is a picture (large shapes are moussline and smaller shapes are potatoes):

That was it for the fish.  Next lesson: Potatoes!