Monday, June 15, 2009

Fish and Fennel again

I had guests for dinner last night - and apart from a little too much of the Vino (Howard Park Reisling 2001, Mitchell Watervale Reisling 2002) - it went well.

Quite a lot too it - but it presented simply.

Started with the desert (at least I started cooking there). It was quince - six of them - peeled and cored and sliced into segments. Put in bottom of Le Cruset pot. Place a muslin cloth over it - and all the peel and core and two star anise and two cinnimin sticks above. About a cup and a half of dilute sugar syrup. Put on lid. Oven for four hours at 120c.

Yum - and served with store bought ice cream.

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Mains was a potato and caremelized onion gratin, fennel in vegetable stock, french beans with mustard and mayonaise.

Prepare the vegies first - and take the scraps and boil them up for a vege stock.

Then caremelize two spanish onions - low low heat and some butter for 45 minutes stiring every 5-10 minutes. They should go brown and not burn.

The beans you top and tail, blanche in boiling water then an ice bath. At the end reheat in some butter serve with mustard and mayonaise. Simple really.

The potatos are peeled and sliced (mandolin time). They are layered with potato and caremelized onion, salt, pepper, more potato, more onion, more potato. Stock in the bottom. Little butter on the top. Browns nicely in oven.

The fennel is prepared and then grilled. It is then baked with the rest of the stock.

The fish done as per the previous recipe - except this fish did not fit in the oven - so the barbeque was used as an oven. Then you can say you are serving barbeque fish - which hardly seems so pretentious.

Good food was had by all.

J