Best Fish Dish To Impress Your Guests In Holiday Season
Best Fish Dish To Impress Your Guests In Holiday Season
Stuffed fillets of salmon with sorrel and puff pastry.
The festive season is just around the corner and if you’re looking for fish recipes to impress your guests — and a little bit a show off your culinary skills — this is the delicious one you should go for it.
Luckily we have the best techniques and methods for you to cook this dish perfectly. Let’s jump in and enjoy the process of cooking delicious foods for your loved ones.
This recipe for 4 servings, you can multiply or divide it for your number of guests.
Happy cooking!!!
Ingredients
2 center-cut salmon 300g each
Mousse
100g scallops
200g seabass fillet
150ml fresh cream
5g parsley
Sauce
300ml fish stock
50g white onion
200ml white wine
200ml double cream
30g butter
40g sorrel leaves
half lemon
Garniture
12 button mushrooms
half lemon
20g butter
400g asparagus
fresh parsley for deco
250g puff pastry
one egg
Recipe
We will start with the butchery of salmon. First, remove the skin of salmon pieces gently with a flexible filleting knife. Then cut each piece in half horizontally. Place salmon pieces between two baking paper and flatten with the help of a cleaver — or any other heavy instrument you can find— till you will reach 4mm thickness. Rest them in the fridge until later use.
Moving on with the preparation of the mousse. Trim and cut the seabass fillets and scallops into small cubes. Process them in robot coupe with a pinch of salt and pass through a drum sieve. Chill them over on an ice bath and mix with 150ml fresh cream in a big mixing bowl. Lastly, add 5g chopped parsley into the mousse and transfer to a piping bag with plain metal nozzle number 10.
A small tip to be sure about the taste of your mousse make a test cooking in a saute pan with a little bit of olive oil before transferring them to a piping bag.
Season the salmon fillets generously and lay flat on the cling film. Pipe 3 lines of mousse in the middle of every fillet and roll the film carefully and tightly to obtain a sausage-like shape and texture. Secure both ends with the knots. Poach the paupiettes at 63 degrees celsius and put the container on top of them to make sure every part is in the water. Poach them for around 35 minutes and remove them from the water when it’s ready. Keep them hot for later use.
Shaping and cutting the puff pastry is a serious process where you should be careful about how to act — fast and precise. First, roll your puff pastry dough 3mm thick then cut half of it with a lattice cutter and rest in the fridge for at least 15 minutes. Resting the dough between processes is important otherwise you’ll end up with very elastic dough— because of the gluten working too much — which is almost impossible to work with.
Remove the dough from the fridge, dock the other half and brush both half pieces with egg wash and rest for a while again. Lastly, place the lattice cut half on top of the other half and brush again. Cut into 4cm X 6cm rectangles, rest in the fridge for another 5 minutes. Bake at 180 degrees celsius for 15 minutes.
For the garniture; cut all the asparagus the same size then trim the leaves—only on the body parts—do not trim or touch the leaves on the top. Then make small incisions on the lower part of the asparagus and very gently peel the skin from that part to the end. The color difference between the peeled part (white) and the upper body (green) must be visible. Blanch them in salted boiling water for 1 minute and immediately transfer them to ice water — to stop cooking and keep the color fresh.
Clean the mushrooms with wet kitchen paper and trim. Cut them as turn mushrooms. If you don’t know how to turn mushrooms you can watch this Youtube video. Then cook them “à blanc” which means cook them in a saucepan with butter, lemon juice, and seasoning — cover on top with cartouche.
For the sauce itself; sweat onions with butter and add white wine on top. Reduce the white wine by 80% then add the fish stock on top and reduce it by 50%. Lastly add cream to the sauce and reduce till you’ll have a coating texture. Remove the stalks of the sorrel and wash them. Then cut sorrel leaves into wide stripes — almost like a thick chiffonade cut. Add sorrels into the sauce and add some lemon juice for acidity. Finish with a little butter to give it a shine. Add salt and pepper to taste. Keep it hot till plating.
Plating; serve puff pastry as a side with a small plate. Pour over the sauce on the main plate. Cut paupiettes in 3 pieces — one side diagonal cut. Plate them on the flat side and place 3 turned mushrooms behind them. Glaze asparagus with butter and water before plating. Dry them on the kitchen paper and place them on the other side of the salmon paupiettes. Finish with the bouquet of parsley as deco and voilà!
You can pair your dish with white wine like Riesling — specifically, Alsace — which has high acidity with a freshness that comes from aromas like lime.
Bon Appétit and have a nice Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and New Year!