Menu Saturday 11 August 2007

1. Brandade aux Mojo Rojo
2. Tiger Prawn Risotto
3. Pan Fried & Lemmon marinated Cod with Asparagus and Coriander Mousse
4. Mixed Berries with Mint and Sweet Wine

The Brandade is exactly as per the recipe of Mai 29 ’07 and the Mojo Rojo as per this recipe. Still tastes great. Served with Pinot Gricio from Alte Aldice that was a little bit overpowered but worked fine although the salt cod is strong enough that you could drink red.

The risotto was an experiment with a new method of getting the most out of ingredients. Normally I would make the stock for the risotto by boiling vegetables (carrot, onion, celery heart) and/or fish for a very long time before throwing them away but this time I used a food processor to pulp all the ingredients. I also pre-boiled the tiger prawns (3 per person) in the stock before removing the heads and completely bashing those in a mortar. I added bashed in prawn heads to the stock before involving the food processor.

This method produces a very rich and thick stock and this carries through to the risotto. I prepared the risotto in normal manner but poured the stock in through a sieve pressing down on the vegetable/prawn pulp to extract the maximum amount of stock goodness. Cooking the risotto takes about 20 minutes and just before serving I fried the now cold prawn tails in butter before serving with the risotto.

This produced one very fine risotto!

As the theme of the evening was fish I wanted to continue with something light and fishy for main course. I’ve not made cod for a long time and wanted to try my hand at pan frying it until the skin is crisp. The idea for the coriander mousse essentially came from the Dubai Restaurant Pisces where I had Pan roasted scallop with Lobster sausage and white aspargus tarragon emulsion. I figured that if I made mousse instead of emulsion and used the much less overpowering coriander for the tarragon I would have something that would perfectly complement the cod. I’m afraid this was not one of my most successful dishes.

The mix was very tasty but I could not get the mousse to set so in the end it resembled an emulsion more than a mousse. It was very runny but my guest at least all though it was very tasty. An very unmemorable dish however, but one I plan to perfect.

The desert was a much better story. Again the idea was to serve something light and summery. All I did was mash up mint leaves in the mortar and mix it up with Australian sweet white wine whose name I forget. I then marinated mixed summer berries in the resulting mixture for about 2 hrs. Served with whipped Mascarpone – perfection.