The Cooking Ninja

I had so much fun doing November Daring Cooks that I can't wait to know what we would be cooking for December. And I wasn't disappointed at all!

The this month's Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Simone of Junglefrog Cooking who chosed Salmon en Croute from Good Food Online. This is a delicious fillet of salmon topped with a creamy vegetable spread and baked in shortcrust pastry.

Salmon en croute

(from Good Food Online)

Ingredients

• 1 shortcrust pastry (Prepare this advance if you are using home-made)
• 500 g salmon fillet (skinless)
• 150 g mascarpone or creamcheese
• 120 g watercress, rocket & spinach
• 1 egg yolk slightly beaten with a bit of milk

Directions

1. Preheat oven at 200°C (390°F - gas mark 6).
2. Process the mascarpone or cream cheese together with the watercress, spinach and rocket in a food processor until you have a creamy vegetable puree. Season well.
3. Roll the pastry out so you can wrap the salmon in it completely (approx. 2-3 mm thick) and lay it on a buttered or oiled baking sheet.
4. Put the salmon in the middle. If it has a thinner tail end, tuck it under.
5. Spoon half of the watercress mixture onto the salmon.
6. Fold the pastry over into a neat parcel (the join will be at the top, so trim the edge neatly. Seal the join with water), making sure you don't have any thick lumps of pastry as these won't cook through properly. Trim off any excess as you need to.
7. Make 3 neat cuts in the pastry to allow steam to escape and make some decorations with the off-cuts to disguise the join if you like.
8. Brush it with milky yolk mixture.
9. Bake for 30 minutes or until the pastry is crisp and browned. To test whether the salmon is cooked, push a sharp knife through one of the cuts into the flesh, wait for 3 seconds then test it against the inside of your wrist; if it is hot, the salmon is cooked.
10. Serve it with the rest of the watercress puree as a sauce.

The Verdict

The delicious aroma of salmon and butter pastry filled my kitchen making us even hungrier (I was late in dinner preparation, as usual). The creamy sauce not only compliments the salmon very well, it also leaves, what I would describe as a refreshing aftertaste. Because of the crust, it is quite a filling dish. The sauce can be consumed cold or warm (warm it up in a microwave oven) together with the dish.

Everyone loved it and it's definitely a dish that I would make again and again for my family.

Notes

You can cook an extra set, wrap it up in aluminum foil when cooled and freeze it for later consumption. The sauce can be frozen too. And I would highly recommend to make this in individual portion, that way everyone has their own Salmon en Croute on their plate and nicer presentation.

You may replace salmon with another type of fish fillet if you wish. If you find that your crust browns too fast, cover it lightly with a baking paper or aluminum foil.

Fish is a common sight during meal time in my home (well, at my mom's), something that I took for granted for many years until I started living in France. There, I started to miss having fish, not that France doesn't have fish at all, but because I don't know how to cook fish - steamed, pan-fried or oven baked. Luckily my in-laws came to my rescue. They love fish so I get my fix whenever we dine at their place. On the other hand poor hubby hates fish (too many bones he says!) and is a true red meat eater. However, he has since come a long way living with me - now he doesn't mind eating salmon once a week. Now that's a rare treat for me. If I want to eat any other fish, I will just have to cook it for myself and he will cook himself some other stuff. At least now I have Little One, it's nicer to cook for 2 than 1. Frankly speaking, I don't know how to cook for one.

My craving for this fish dish droved me to calling my mom from France for her recipe. As usual with all traditionnal Asian cooks (from grandmothers to mothers), there aren't any exact measurements - just a bit of this & that, no exact timing either. Like they say, once we have wok a few times in the kitchen, we'll do the same like our mothers & grandmothers. I know I did with some dishes, I stopped weighing and just know the approximate amount by eye.

So when my friend Emilie (was my classmate at Nantes' University) came and spent a week with us in May, she wanted to sample some of these delicious Singapore food that she heard me bragging all the time at the university. I thought this dish would be a wonderful representation of what home-cooked Singapore food is all about, besides the Char Kway Teow, Satay and my Mutton Curry.

Steamed Fish (Teochew Style)

Ingredients

• 1 seabass or pomfret (scaled and cleaned)
• fresh coriander
• spring onion
• light soya sauce
• salt
• sesame oil
• ginger (cut into fine thin slices)
• sour pickled mustard (cut into thin slices)
• 1 or 2 tomatoes (cut into slices)

Directions

1. Prepare steamer (I use my big wok).
2. Make 2 or 3 diagonal slits on each side of the fish (depending on how big your fish is).
3. Place the fish on a big dish, rub a bit of salt, light soya sauce onto both sides of the fish including inside the belly of the fish.
4. Sprinkle some ginger, coriander, spring onion and preserved pickled mustard on the dish (underneath the fish).
5. Stuff some of the same inside the belly of the fish.
6. Sprinkle the rest of it on top of the fish.
7. Drip a bit of sesame oil on top of the fish.
8. Placed a few slices of tomatoes on top of the fish and the rest around it.
9. Place the dish inside the steamer and steam it until the fish eyes popped out which signifies fish is cooked.
10. Serve hot with white rice.

The Verdict

The aroma of this dish is enough to make your stomach go growling - the mix of tomato, ginger & seasoning giving off a sourish sweet fragrant smell that fills the air. The fish is very tender and fragrantly immersed with the spices. Do not waste the sauce - it's full of flavour and goes very well with rice. My friend Emilie loved it very much.

Notes

Normally this dish is usually steamed with the above ingredients plus 1 or 2 sour/pickled plums, sprinkled with a tiny pinch of sugar. However if you don't have sour plums in your kitchen like me, it will taste as good sans it. If you like to have some spicy kick for your taste buds, put a few freshly sliced chili over the fish before putting it to steam. It tastes excellent.

For a prettier presentation, remove the steamed coriander and spring onion from the dish and just sprinkle some fresh ones on top right before serving. Some would even remove the fish, put it on a new platter, prepare fresh seasoning and pour it all over the fish and decorate it with fresh coriander and spring onions. As far as I'm concerned, I like it the way it comes out of the steamer.

Craving ... a wonderful feeling to have when you can satisfy that but a torture when you can't. I have had this huge craving for Assam fish for quite a long time now which I had been trying to put out of my mind, without much success (like me trying to lose weight - I only ended gaining more instead of losing ). Fish is not my specialty - as you all remember the last time when I tried cooking fish, it didn't turned out quite right. So I try to avoid cooking anything that has scales and swim...but darn it, this Assam Fish soon started to even haunt me in my sleep - yes, I dreamt that I was happily slurping up the sauce and relishing on the fish! So I said to myself "come on, are you going to let a dead fish intimidate you for the rest of your life. A cooking ninja would never cower from a challenge." So I got 3 lovely fish the next day for dinner. First I gave my fishes a royal treatment - frontal and back massage with salt, then I had a little pep talk with them. I looked at them right into their eyes (not easy when they have one on each side) and said "Ok fish, I'm going to give you a nice aromatic spa treatment of lemon grass, galangal & other spices right now and you are going to come out smelling so good and tasting so sweet."

Assam Fish

Ingredients

• 3 mackerel
• 5 tbsp paste from Mom's Chili Prawns
• 1 rounded tbsp tamarind (asam) pulp
• water
• sugar
• salt or light soya sauce

Directions

1. Clean the fish and season it with salt or light soya sauce.
2. Prepare the tamarind marinade: soak the tamarind pulp in 120 ml of warm water for 5 minutes. Squeeze the seeds and fiber with your fingers to extract as much juice and flavor as possible. Strain and discard fibers.
3. Heat wok with oil till hot, stir-fry the chili paste for a minute medium heat till fragrant.
4. Add water to the paste, stir to mix it well.
5. Stir in the tamarind juice (according to your taste of sourness).
6. Season it with light soya sauce or salt and a little bit of sugar .
7. Put in the fish to cook when you are about ready to serve dinner. This is to avoid overcooking the fish. The fish is cooked once its eyes popped.
8. Serve it with rice and a plate of vegetables by the side.

The Verdict

I was so darn excited that I managed to get my assam fish right and it tastes just like my mom's version (well, I still think mom's cook the best Assam fish). The sauce is very aromatic - the mackerel heightens the flavour of the sauce - great tasting of the spices mix with a spicy tint and a slight sourness - taste just right and it really opens up one's appetite. I love topping my rice with the sauce. My sister-in-law loves it, Pierre was less enthusiastic as he is not a big fan of fish to begin with.

Note

I usually can make a big bowl of the paste, fry them till fragrant and then keep them in the refrigerator for later use. It comes in very handy when I have to do a last minute dinner entertainment. All I need to do is just defrost and the paste is ready.

I recently learned another new trick from my local Asian store lady - you can actually store the unused portion of galangal by slicing them into pieces, freeze them, then put them all in a plastic bag in the freezer. When in need, just take out the number of pieces you need for cooking.

I have been wanting to try out some fish dishes for ages ... you see, I have never cooked any other fish in my life besides salmon - it's hard to go wrong cooking this fish. Pierre isn't willing to be the sacrificed guinea pig for my fish adventure ... he isn't, shall we say, a fish person. So when he finally agreed to it, I went out and got everything before he changed his mind. This is what we had for dinner last night:

Cabillaud à la menthe et crème fraîche

(taken from Papillotes - Sandra Mahut)

Preparation : 15 minutes
Cooking : 15 minutes
Makes : 4

Ingredients

• 4 filet Cod-fish - 150 to 200 g
• 8 stalks Fresh mint leaves - chopped
• 30 cl crème épaisse
• 1 Lime - grated (citron vert)
• A pinch Mild chili (Piment doux)
• 4 tbsp Olive oil
• Salt & Pepper
• 4 rectangular greased paper envelopes (papier sulfurisé) - 20x30 cm

Directions

1. Preheat oven at 210°C (410°F)
2. Coat each greased paper envelopes with olive oil.
3. Mix chopped mint leaves, lime zests and crème épaisse together. Season with salt and pepper to your taste and add a pinch of mild chilli.
4. Place the filet in the envelope, spread some creamy mint sauce on it and lightly sprinkle it with olive oil, some lime zests and chopped mint. Season with salt and pepper.
5. Carefully close the envelope and bake it for about 15 minutes.
6. Serve with some small potatoes and a slice of lime. (I serve it with rice instead.)

The Verdict

I didn't find this dish extraordinary. It was OK to my taste. Pierre seems to like it better. Both of us find that it didn't really have much of the mint-lime flavour in it. Perhaps I didn't put enough mint or lime zests in it. Pierre suggested adding some lime juice to the dish before baking.

Overall, I was rather disappointed. Maybe it's just me who didn't follow the recipe well. If any of you ever try this recipe, please let me know how yours turned out.

Now I just need to convince Pierre to be my guinea pig again in my fish adventure to cultiver my 'fishy fingers' ... hmm, what bait shall I use?

Note

Crème fraîche can be made at home by adding a small amount of cultured buttermilk or sour cream to normal heavy cream, and allowing to stand for several hours at room temperature until the bacterial cultures act on the cream.