Breaking Down my First Fish :)

I've been craving fish for a week or two now, so yesterday I finally I decided to make it happen. I do live in the beautiful coastal city of Charleston, SC, after all, where there's certainly an abundance of fresh, local seafood readily available at all times. So, I headed to Crosby's Seafood, my favorite little fish purveyor, to see what they had.

I named him Nemo.

 This is what I ended up with! A whole, 2 lb., locally caught red snapper.  Kind of ambitious of me, but I decided that it was high time I attempt to break down a fish myself.  I get it theoretically, but practically I've never done it.

First, I had to get those scales off.  So, I put the fishy in a plastic bag in the sink to try to make as little mess as possible.  I grasped his tail with my left hand, and with the right hand I ran a spoon down his body against the grain of the scales, and they came off pretty easily. I did this on both sides of the fish, up to just below the gills. When I was done, I rinsed him off to make sure no scales were left. 

Next, I cut off the spiny fin on his back, just because I knew I would probably hurt myself if I left it on. Because I am ridiculously clumsy.

Next, I started outlining the fillet.  I found the fish's backbone with my fingertips, and ran my knife all down one side of it, staying as close to the bone as possible.

Then, I cut through from the top to the bottom, making a little flap at the tail.

The next step is to run your knife along the belly.  You want to try to keep the bones under your knife, with the nice meaty fillet on top.

 

To finish the outline of the fillet, I ran my knife along the head, behind the gills and the little swimmy fin (yeah I have no clue what that's called).  Now there should be a nice outline of the fillet, with just the meat in the middle keeping it attached to the body of the fish.

So, this picture sucks, but I tried to sharpen it up as best as I could.  I didn't want to leave it out because its kind of an important step.  In this step, you actually finish separating the fillet from the body.  Just run your knife along the body of the fish, trying to keep most of the bones on the bottom of the knife.  It's a little tricky, but eventually, the fillet will come free.

So, do the exact same thing for the other side of the fish to get your second fillet.  I cut a little V out of the center of each fillet because there was a line of big, stubborn bones that weren't worth it to try to pull out.

This is the little piece with all the bones in it.

 Here are my two fillets.  I scored the skin before searing to keep the fish from curling up as the skin shrinks.  But wait!  What to do with the carcass? You wouldn't throw it away, would you?

I threw it in a pot with some onion, green onion stems, celery, garlic, peppercorns, star anise, fennel seed, and a couple bay leaves.

I covered all that with water, brought it to a boil, and then turned it down to a simmer.

 

I let that go for about 20 minutes, strained it a few times, and voila!

I ended up with a lovely fish fume which I then froze to have around for a later use.  I've actually got something in mind for it, so stick around and see what happens.

Okayyy so back to the snapper fillets.

Salt and pepper the fillets.  Heat some oil in a pan, and lay the fillets skin-side down first.  Cook until the skin gets nice and crispy, then right before you flip them, add some butter and garlic to the pan.  Flip, and baste in the butter for a couple minutes more.

And that's it! I had my snapper with a simple chilled cucumber / heirloom tomato / red onion salad, some pan roasted red potatoes, a squeeze of lemon, and a simple basil pesto.  The fish was sooo good.  I'm still dreaming about that crispy skin this morning.  And seriously, it probably took me just as long to post about breaking down the fish as it took me to actually do it.

Culinary School Update: Dinner Rolls, Whole Wheat Bread, & an Easy Weeknight Dinner

This week I was determined to be overly prepared for my baking class.  I did not indulge in one single drink before bed, and checked my alarm at least 3 times so as not to repeat last week's oversleeping incident.  FYI, 7:30 a.m. is very early for us Food & Bev kids. Plus, this campus is a solid 20 minutes away, so this is not like CofC where I could roll out of bed and stumble to class in my jammies.  Not that I ever did that...

The last thing I did before I went to bed last night was check my camera battery to make sure it was charged (which it was).  

At 5:30 this morning, I woke up anxiously and well before my alarm clock, deathly afraid of oversleeping.  Three cups of coffee and several hours later I found myself taking my first batch of yeast rolls out of the extra-industrial-sized classroom oven.  I rummaged around in my pocketbook for a fairly ridiculous amount of time before I finally accepted, with disbelief, that I left my camera at home.  Thankfully, again, this week's baking lesson produced results that were small enough to take home in a paper bag.  I need to get this routine figured out before we start getting into the larger, less portable goods.  Geez Dani, get it together and bring the camera, charged and ready, to class!  On time!

All griping aside, don't you especially like my double-knot technique on the white rolls? I was proud of myself. I've always been pretty intimidated by bread.  Can't really say I've ever made any kind of  yeast bread at all.

Side note - no cooking class this week because of MLK Jr. Day.  Remember, cooking class on Mondays, baking class on Wednesdays.  Once I actually start getting involved in cooking class I will start keeping you posted on it as well. 

~

I thought I would also include a random photo of a dinner Brandon and I enjoyed this week.  I was craving fish, so we stopped by Crosby's Seafood and picked up some really pretty local red snapper.  Diced and blanched some carrots and broccoli I had laying around.  Threw them in a saute pan with a chopped onion, thawed frozen peas, butter, mint, and parsley.  Cooked some wild rice with chicken stock.  And finally, seared the snapper, skin-on, and made a very easy parsley lemon butter sauce in the same pan.  

Easy, easy dinner, and all we paid for was the fish and a cheap white burgundy to go with it!

My First Daring Cooks Challenge: Salmon en Croute

This should have been easier 

I've been really excited about joining the Daring Cooks.  I was happy with this recipe being my first because it is a pretty simple concept.  Honestly, compared to some of the other recent challenges I've seen the Daring Cooks create (pho noodles, sushi, etc.), salmon en croute seemed like a good one to get my feet wet with.  For whatever reason, however, I completely struggled with this recipe.  We'll get to that in a minute.  Here is the recipe, posted by Simone from Junglefrog Cooking (a really gorgeous blog):

Salmon en Croute

5.2 ounces mascarpone cheese

4.2 ounces watercress, arugula, and spinach *I used equal parts of these greens*

17.6 ounces shortcrust pastry 
17.6 ounce skinless salmon filet

1 medium sized egg

For pastry:

3.2 cups all-purpose flour

7 ounces cold butter

pinch of salt

Heat oven to 390 degrees F. Blend the mascarpone cheese with the greens in the food processor until you have a creamy green puree.

A seemingly straightforward step.  This is where I hit my first problem. I don't have a food processor, so I usually try to blend things in my blender.  

This stuff did NOT want to come together.

The mixture was really dry (and rather bland), so I added some good olive oil, lemon juice, a little tarragon vinegar, salt and pepper.  FINALLY, it came together. We're talking like 30 minutes later, minimum.

It was actually really pretty when it finally came together.

For the pastry, sift the flour into a large bowl.  Add the butter and rub with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. You can do this with food processor. Hmm.  Stir in the salt, then add 2-3 tablespoons cold water and mix a firm dough.  Knead the dough briefly and gently on a floured surface.  Wrap in cling wrap and chill.

Okay, problem number 2.  This dough would NOT come together.  It was extremely crumbly.  I was finally (after a lot of struggle) able to get it into a ball to chill it.

dough ball

Roll the pastry out so you can wrap the salmon in it.   

Once I started trying to roll this out, it completely fell apart. I'm talking like, I'm about to have a meltdown.  I'm grabbing my jacket and my keys to go buy puff pastry, and Brandon intervenes. (He was hungry).

Knight in shining armor. Note the glass of wine.

Brandon, who has never baked a thing in his life, would not let me give up on this crust. So he *laboriously* rolled it out for me, until we finally had something that would work as an *albeit overworked* crust.

Lay the salmon on the pastry.  If it has a thinner tail, tuck it under. Season with salt and pepper.

gorgeous piece of salnon

Spoon half of the watercress mixture on top of the salmon.

pretty colors

Fold the pastry over in neat parcel (the join will be at the top, so trim the edge neatly), making sure you don't have any thick lumps of pastry as these won't cook properly.  Trim off any excess as you need to. Make 3 neat cuts in pastry to allow steam to escape and make some decorations with the off-cuts if you like. Brush with beaten egg. 

Bake on oiled baking sheet for 30 minutes or until pastry is crisp and browned.  To test whether the salmon is cooked, push a sharp knife through one of the cuts into the flesh, wait for 3 seconds, then touch it against the inside of your wrist; if it is hot, the salmon is cooked.  Serve with the rest of the watercress puree as a sauce.

Not as beautiful as I imagined it, but it had a lot of love put into it.

nice cross-section

If I were to do it again, I would have just used my favorite pie crust recipe.  It tasted pretty good, but for all the work, I would just as soon have seared that gorgeous piece of fish and served it with some simple veggies. Who needs all that pastry?

Not trying to sound bitter. In the end, we enjoyed a nice meal with a good bottle of Pinot Noir and laughed about it.  Maybe I'll have better luck on the next challenge!