For this next post, I decided to stretch out a little bit and pick a more composed entrée from the cookbook to make. The decision to make this dish featuring black bass was a no-brainer after walking around my local Whole Foods store. They really have an excellent selection of products, and as Mario states in the introduction to this chapter, 'bass is truly a seasonal delicacy much like strawberries and quince that are perfect only for a short time each year.'
In the brief chapter introduction, Mario outlines how he chooses his fish, whether he would be found in his New York City restaurant or Italy. While it may be a little difficult to choose from the range of specimen that he gets in New York City from your neck of the woods, there are some standard guidelines as to choosing your fish wisely.
Mario notes that when he is eating seafood in Italy that it is generally caught that day. You may not have the ability to find fish as fresh as that, but it should be very fresh nonetheless. For example, the fish that you choose from your fishmonger should be stored properly on ice, odor free, with clear eyes that are not sunken in and flesh that springs back when touched.
It's also important to note that Mario speaks about how minimally prepared the fish is in Italy, often being served with just a little drizzle of olive oil and lemon juice or nothing at all. By now after reading my posts on this blog, you will have picked up on his recurring theme of letting the quality of the product shine through.
There needed to be some preparation on the ingredients before I started making the recipe. I started by halving and coring some Belgian endive.
Next was to fillet the Seabass. This one was about a 1 pounder. A good fishmonger would be more than happy to fillet the fish for you ahead of time. Considering that as a chef this is something that I do quite often, I decided to do that part myself. But I should have left my chef ego at the door and let my fishmonger scale and clean the fish! Way too messy for home.
Having completed that, my next step is to prepare the endive marmelatta. In a shallow pan the endive gets combined with orange juice, raisins, and honey. This gets simmered until the orange juice is reduced by half which would take about half an hour.
Some orange pulp gets heated to release its juice and then saffron is added and is allowed to steep for about 15 minutes.
Once steeped, the mixture gets combined with champagne vinegar, olive oil, and salt and pepper. This vinaigrette needs to be whisked well in order to emulsify.
At this point, my next step is to sear the Seabass fillets. Because it is such a thin fish, it will only need about three minutes per side to be fully cooked. The fillet gets patted dry with a paper towel, seasoned well, with the skin being scored lightly before being added to a very hot pan skin side down with some olive oil. For some reason I did not get a picture of this step. Hey relax it has been a long week.
Next it was ready for plating. The endive mixture gets spooned onto the plate, the bass plated on top, and the saffron vinaigrette gets spooned around both.
The bass tasted great, the vinaigrette was okay, but I was not sweating the endive at all. It was a little too overpowering on the orange. I feel like it completely over-trumped the delicate taste of the Seabass.
Would I make this dish again? No. But there are some other bass preparations in this book that look promising. If you can find it, bass is certainly worth picking up for dinner. And I can't wait to pick up bass again. I just will not be making this endive preparation in the future.
I have some really interesting dishes coming up for this blog in the near future. This dish, while not my favorite, was just the kickstart that I needed to delve into some of the deep cuts of this cookbook. There is some really interesting ingredients and technique amongst these pages and I can't wait to share it with you. Until next time...
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