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.

Brandade De Morue

I first had Brandade de Morue (or baked salt cod) in approximately 1978 in Brasserie Lipp on the Boulevard St Germain in Paris and I was not especially impressed. Problem was that I was a teenager from a country where you have fish for every other meal at least and having fish in a restaurant was a wasted opportunity to eat meat as far as I was concerned. I returned to Brasserie Lipp about four years later and found that I loved the stuff. As a matter of fact to this day I return to Brasserie Lipp for no other reason than to have their Brandade.

Everybody seems to agree that the dish originates from Nimes in the South of France but there are a number of stories as how exactly the dish was invented and why it originates in a region that does not fish cod. The most likely explanation as far as I’m concerned is that Bretons traded salt cod with the Provençales in exchange for salt from the region. Local cooks then developed the dish over time to incorporate local ingredients and to adapt it to local tastes. Over time they then grew to love the taste.

My favourite tale of the origins of Brandade de Morue is that it was invented by Benedictine monks who decided to stretch their insufficient stock of Bacalao (Provençal for salt cod) with potatoes when faced with the sudden and unannounced appearance of an important visitor for lunch. This story, which I’ve come across several times, rings true (i.e. all the ingredients are what a Provençal kitchen would contain as a minimum even if they are broke) and the dish is sometimes know as Brandade de Morue à la Bénédictine. Unfortunately, things almost never happen in such an exciting manner and the more probable explanation is that years of trying to make a foreign food palatable was how we came to have this excellent dish.

The recipe for a basic or if you will classic Brandade is as follows:

Ingredients:

1. 750 gr. Salt cod;
2. 1 large potato;
3. 2 garlic cloves;
4. 250 ml olive oil;
5. Freshly ground black pepper to taste;

Preparation:

• Soak salt cod at least 12 hours in cold water in the fridge, make sure you change the water at least 3 times preferably more often to remove excess salt. There is no consistency to how salty the cod is when sold so the time it takes to water the fish will vary. The idea is that the fish should be slightly more salty than a fresh fish that you’ve cooked covered in salt;
• Put the cod in a pan of cold water and bring to a boil. Lett simmer for about 10 minutes;
• Drain cod, and place in fresh water for 10 minutes;
• Boil potato, remove skin and pass it through a sieve;
• Flake the cod to remove any skin or bones;
• Pound the cod and garlic to a paste in a mortar and combine with the potato;
• (or you can just put the cod, garlic and potato in to a food processor and wiz it into a paste but where is the fun in that)
• Place the cod paste in a sauce pan over low heat and combine, slowly, with the olive oil while stirring constantly;
• Season with pepper to taste.

That’s your basic homemade Provençal Brandade but as far as I’m concerned this is where the fun starts. There are literally a million variations that start from this point. The first variations are to add herbs (bay leaves, thym) and/or vinegar (white vine) to the soaking water. Depending on how you are actually planning on consuming the Brandade this will give a little added flavour to the dish.

It is for also very common to replace the oil with warm milk or to mix milk or oil with warm cream. I’ve even seen recipes with cream only but that is way rich for my tastes. Lemon juice as seasoning is also very common as is mixing in parsley.

The next step is in serving the Brandade. Brasserie Lipp gratinates the Bradade with cheese (I think they use Cantal) before serving it with a small salad. Another classic is to drizzle olive oil, bread crums and paprika on top before warming the Brandade up in the oven.

This weekend I intend to serve Brandade warmed up in ramekin and covered in the Mojo Rojo I discovered in the Canaries. I figure that if the Mojo Rojo made regular potatoes excellent then potatoes and salt cod should also benefit greatly from the mixture.