Fishy Weekend

Elif Batuman, who gave a lecture Monday night at the British Museum on "Cervantes, Balzac, and Double-Entry Bookkeeping in the Novel," has introduced a new concept into our everyday lives: that for novelists there is the time of writing, and the time of living.  You can't write unless you have lived; but while living, there is no time for writing.  We are discovering the same credits and debits in keeping track of our cooking adventures here: it is so much fun cooking and eating that we sometimes have no time for recording and writing.  So a previous weekend's meal of wild mallard duck (roasted; purchased at Marylebone Farmer's Market) and red kale; followed by lamb chump chops (also from a Marylebone stand), our own mint sauce, brussels sprouts in browned butter, and mashed potatoes, will not receive the full monty write up.  The photos are in the computer, though.

Instead, I will focus on our most recent forays into Simon Hopkinson's approach to fish.  (He of the cookbook Roast Chicken and other stories, and formerly of Bibendum restaurant, where we dined with Hannah on Saturday night during her visit here.)  Each of them introduced us to new or rare ingredients, which took us a while to seek out.

Saturday was smoked haddock baked with potatoes and cream.  Smoked haddock (also known as "smokie") is a staple of British cuisine. We chose an oak smoked filet from the Furness fish stall at Borough Market.

But now it must be skinned.

Then the skinned filet is poached in a mixture of mostly cream and a little milk for a few minutes.

Then the cooked smoked haddock is flaked, and we are ready to build our construction.  The baking dish is buttered, lined with a layer of sliced potatoes.  These are topped with some chopped parsley and some of the flaked haddock.

Next comes a layer of sliced fresh tomatoes (yes, these are out of season, but the greengrocery stall at the market imports from all over.)

Pour in the cream and milk mixture from the poaching casserole.

Then add another layer of potatoes, parsley, tomatoes, and fish, ending with a layer of potatoes.  Top the last layer with some grated nutmeg, using in a pinch the fine grating wheel from the Mouli mill.

Add some more milk to nearly cover, and then bake in the oven for a half hour or so until the potatoes are tender.  We are still trying to calibrate Hopkinson's baking times, which are perpetually underestimated.
While waiting, we had for an hors d'oeuvre some "beetroot and vodka cured" salmon from a fishmonger in Sheffield, where I'd visited the day before. Good with wine, best with Russkii Standart vodka!

Finally the meal is ready, and the final result was scrumptious, served with buttered brussels sprouts and Sancerre.  (Simon recommends this dish on a cold winter's day after a good movie.  We had the winter's day; the movie was "Black Swan"; the meal helped us recover.)

Sunday.
We've had our eye on Hopkinson's recipe for "Salmon in pastry with currants and ginger" since encountering stem ginger in Cambridge.  A trip through Google located frozen puff pastry at the local Planet Organic shop.
The recipe begins with rolling out the puff pastry to make squares.  If your kitchen doesn't have a rolling pin or a Regab bottle, you can use a wine bottle.

Meanwhile, we are also preparing the butter topping for the salmon, which consists of currants, salt and pepper, ground mace (we found "blade mace" at Waitrose), and slivered stem ginger.  This is knobs of ginger in syrup, and it took quite of bit of sleuthing to locate it even though we were told we could buy it at Waitrose.  Some people put it in jam.  Or bake chunks of rhubarb with this scattered over it (good in an Aga).

Here is how it looks in the process of being slivered.

This butter mixture, chilled and softened, is then smeared on the salmon filets and left to chill again.

The chilled pastry is now coated with egg yolk and water.  In the absence of a pastry brush, try a wine bottle cork.

The filets are placed on the pastry, butter side down.

Then they are wrapped, chilled again for about 30 minutes, then the crust is hatchmarked and egged.

The parcels are then finally baked in a 400 degree oven 20-30 minutes "until golden brown".  Serve with boiled new potatoes (seemed excessive) and watercress salad.  The solid butter melted into the salmon and the pastry, the baking time was just right, and everything was succulent and wonderful.

This was the time for eating, and there are no more photos!

Restaurant review of the week: for Monday night, we went to St John Restaurant, following the aforementioned Batuman lecture.  The fish on the menu (smokie, hake) looked good, but we opted for land animals, and had marrow bones and parsley salad, and brown crab toast for starters, and smoked Old Spot and veal pot roast for mains, splitting a dessert of blood orange sorbet with a riumka of vodka on the side.