Up to My Eyeballs in Fish!

And I thought I was fishmonger a month ago. I now officially feel like all I have ever done my whole life is scale, gut and filet fish and yet at the same time I haven't mastered it yet. So, I have to keep trudging forward into the abyss of fish.

If you're going to hack through a whole salmon, it pays to have a knife that looks like it could belong to Freddie Kreuger on steroids.

Chef demo-ing how to use said knife.

Daurade

One fish left whole, the other fileted, both scored.

Today we grilled saumon (salmon) and daurade (sea bream), cooked fennel, and made a bernaise sauce. Too bad that the whole time we were making the bearnaise sauce I just wanted a steak frites. I mean nothing tastes better with bearnaise than a juicy steak and some crispy french fries. Alas, that wasn't what I would be cooking or eating anytime soon, so I snapped out of my food day dream and back into the realm of fish.

The salmon was grilled quickly, finished in the oven and plated on top of the bearnaise sauce. Lucikly today, I conquered the sauce. After two days of problems with my sauces, I finally got it right. Nothing separated or thickened; it was just right. Believe me, just the fact that I had on two socks and my sauce was done right was a huge sigh of relief!

We cooked the fennel two ways. First, we used a bag vacuum and baked them in the oven with olive oil and seasoning. Second, we thinly sliced the fennel and sauteed it with essentially the same seasoning and olive oil we used in the bag vacuum. This way, we had two different textures of the fennel but the same flavors. Unfortunately for me, as I was reheating my fennel to plate it as garnish with the daurade someone who shall remain nameless in the group decided that even though a copper pot was full of fennel and being heated over a high flame that it was probably nobody's and should be thrown away. Yep. Someone threw away my fennel. I was astounded, flaberghasted even. When said person finally owned up to having thrown it out, I seriously couldn't even respond to him because I was so shocked that he would have thought for a split second that that was an appropriate action to take with someone else's food. Just because some people had finished and started to pick up the kitchen did not mean that it was time to start just throwing things away, especially when they were obviously being heated on the stove. Common sense, people. Use it. Lucikly, someone had leftover fennel, and I was able to use that to plate. Crisis averted, but not yet forgotten.

We cooked the daurade two ways as well. First, we fileted one fish (which by the way was a LOT easier than fileting the "treutle" on Tuesday). So either I am getting better or daurade is simply easier to filet. While I am sure it is a bit of both, let's just you and me pretend that it was all about me improving and not about one fish being easier than the other. Agreed?

Ok, back to the fileted daurade. We were originally going to grill this, but considering the following facts: it was 6:30 pm, we were supposed to be finished by 7 pm, there were 12 of us tryng to use a grill the size of my pinky finger and we hadn't started grilling anything yet, Chef made the executive decision to saute the filets in a pan. The other daurade we kept whole, stuffed it with fresh fennel, dried fennel and fennel seeds (you'd think that Chef is obsessed with fennel) and then grilled it and finished it in the oven.

In the end, two out of three of my dishes were acceptable: the whole daurade and the salmon. Unfortunately, the filets of daurade were slightly undercooked and Chef was more than slightly miffed about it. Oh, well, at least my sauce was good, my feet were clothed and it was quitting time!

One of the many bulbs of fennel we used.

Fennel in the bag vacuum.

And into a low heat oven.

Reduction that will be turned into the yummy bearnaise sauce.

Fearlessly whisking the egg yolks on the hot stove (which by the way we call a piano for some inexplicable reason).

Adding clarified butter to the sauce.

Sauce Bearnaise!

Grilling the salmon.

Ready for the oven.

Marinated daurade.  You might be asking yourself why did she put tree branches on her fish.  They are actually pieces of dried fennel.  I told you there was a fennel overload, but don't look at me.  Not my idea.

Grilling the daurade.

Finished daurade on top of someone else's fennel.

Finished salmon on top of bearnaise.  It's a sad looking plate.  Needs some "veg" in my opinion, but I only do what I am told.

Daurade filet on top of my own fennel before it was thrown away like trash!