i am on a see food diet

As you can tell from the title, it is to most, a poorly orchestrated attempt at humor. Any food I see, I eat... Boy I wish I was born with an awesome sense of humor. Anyway with that little administration work complete, lets get back to my class.

So it is day 2 of week 5 today and we had fish on the menu today. We had to make 2 fish dishes and to tell you the truth, the only problem that came from today's menu was the Hollandaise sauce we had to make to accompany one of the dishes. First up on the menu is Filet de Breme Meuniere. An interesting fact about this dish is that meuniere means miller's wife. This dish was given the name because the bream fillet that we cut from the fish is dredged in season flour and then pan fried til it is golden brown and because the miller's wife always had access to flour. The fish was served with butter that was cooked until nut-brown and sprinkled with finely chopped parsley and lemon juice. The dish was tasty and had a nice zing from the lemon juice. The butter had a nice nutty flavour and accompanied the tender, moist fish nicely.

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Filet de Breme Meuniere

1 Whole Bream
1 Lemons (1 peeled, pift removed and sliced across into circular fillets)
1/2 Lemon's Juice (strained)
50g Butter
Parsley (very finely chopped)
Seasoned flour (flour with salt and pepper)

1) Fillet the bream and remove the skin
2) Dredge in the seasoned flour and fry over medium heat (Put it down on one side in the pan untill golden brown then flip over and fry for another 10 seconds til just cooked, it shouldn't need much longer than that)
3) Cook 50g of butter over a low-medium heat until the butter turns a nut brown and begins smelling like actual nuts.
4) Remove from heat and put in the lemon juice and parsley then immediately pour over the cooked fillets and serve. (garnish with the lemon fillets)
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Next on the menu is a soft poached whole trout with hollandaise sauce. I found the trout absolutely scary. It had a thick layer of slime that made picking the little bugger up nigh impossible and our chef wanted us to minimise the handling and not wash it because he wanted the slime on it. Imagine the number of trouts that became flying fish today.

The trout was poached in an aromatic cooking liquid called a court-bouillon which is made from boiling carrots, onions, water, vinegar, peppercorns, bayleaves and parsley. My chef recommends changing the vinegar component to a nice white wine because the vinegar flavour is too intense and this dish required the court-bouillon to be served on the dish.

Interesting fact #2, the slime was to be kept on because when vinegar was poured onto the fish, the slime would turn a blue color. It was solely for presentation but it was a pretty interesting thing to see. The slime protects the fish against disease and the chef told us that a good trout, in addition to all the normal verifications for freshness and quality such as smell, clear eyes, pink gills etc, should be handled as little as possible and a sure sign of this is the amount of slime on the fish. If you look very carefully at the picture of the trout, you will be able to see the blue color I am talking about.


I think I cut the carrots too cute. They look for some strange reason like flowers and reminded me of this game, LOCO ROCO when I placed the carrots on the plate. Thank you IGN for having the only screenshot of the game that had flowers in it.


The dish also had hollandaise sauce that was not pictured and turned potatoes as well. I have made hollandaise sauce before when I was in Singapore and it did not come out very well. This time round though, the sauce was absolutely yummy, zingy buttery and shiok! I'm so happy they taught us to make hollandaise sauce. Now I can make egg benedicts for Sher. :-D

I did not have time to take a proper photo with all it components in place because I accidently scrambled my hollandaise sauce and had to remake one, which put me very far behind. Everything was going extremely well till then, but despite that, my final products were all pretty good so I'm happy about that.

I'm extremely happy today and as promised, I managed to get a photo of my Creme Caramel in a proper mould so here it is.


And like the photo of the trout, I didn't have time to arrange the things nicely for a camera shot so that's why the photo isn't as awesome as it could be. The creme caramel was served with a nice little whip cream that was made using cream, caster sugar and vanilla essence, mixed together in a bowl and whipped til stiff. It is called Creme Chantilly. I do not have the recipe for it but it looks simple enough. If you want it sweeter, add more sugar. If you want a stronger vanilla flavour, add abit more vanilla. Use your own discretion to make it as it's a very simple thing to make. If you look hard enough, you can see the Creme Chantilly on the Creme Caramel at the back of the photo. A simply lovely dessert combination.

Tomorrow is another day of fish. This time around though, the fish up for slaughter is salmon and whiting. I can't wait for the day when tuna is on the menu. I love tuna! Its lovely reddish colored flesh, its sublime flavour. Ummmmmm delicious, just thinking of it makes me want to go out and get some tuna sashimi.

I'm gonna go dream of some sashimi now because there are no japanese restaurants around my place so I'll leave you with an awesome picture I managed to snap. I bet that after seeing this, you'd wish you could have any number plate you wanted. So til next time, au revoir!