Bloodless Orange, Sea Bass and Fennel

The sun was shining brightly and the azure sky is drawing me away from the winter staples towards salads, fish etc. A quick look at the fridge and fruit bowl revealed a nice head of fennel, a good sized sea bass and blood oranges (or not as the case may be). I love fennel and orange which both work well with sea bass so tonight's planned meal is pan seared sea bass with a blood orange butter sauce, fennel and some green olives to add a bit of bite. I only need the juice from the blood orange but I don't want to waste the rind so I will carefully removed it so as not to take any of the bitter pith. Placed it in a bag with a little vodka to start drawing out those tasty oils. This will get cooked off in the sous vide later at 70C with the rest of a bottle of vodka that will then be added to a cup and a half of simple syrup to make a pleasant orange liqueur.

Back to the meal in hand. First I de-scaled and filleted the sea bass. Trim the spines and fins carefully with scissors. Then lay the fish on its side on a chopping board. With a sharp knife, cut towards the gill as shown.

Now, turn the knife and cut along the spine as shown (you will feel the knife running across the spine and through the lateral bones) and a good fillet will lift off.

Turn the fish over and repeat the exercise. You now have two good fillets that still contain the lateral bones. You can either use pliers to remove these or try this method. Run the knife down either side or the lateral bones taking care not to cut through the skin. Now, using fish pliers, pull the bones and connecting tissue out in one ribbon (sorry about the colour the flash failed)

Now came the horror. The blood oranges are anemic !!! No rich red colour (though there might be more rouge when I speak to my greengrocer next week).

Never mind, apart from the colour (which I could have faked with a little beetroot) I can add a slightly more tart taste with a splash of fresh lime. Panic over I cleaned 3 oranges, juiced 2.5 of them and left a half to add a segment or two to the finished dish. I now brought the juice to the boil, added some fresh coriander leaf and reduced this down to a sticky consistency. A tablespoon of clarified butter, a few green olives and we are almost ready to go.

In the meantime I brought some salted water to the boil and added some sliced fennel to soften it. While this happened, I brought a skillet to heat and seared the bass fillets. Time to bring the meal together and in less than 10 minutes (cooking time, preparing the fish takes a minute or two with practice)

Holidays are coming

I guess I have to admit that another summer has bitten the dust. I have just a few weeks to put together a few treats for friends and family. I know a lot of people feel like a cheapskate if they give a home made item as a gift but, trust me, I find that people just love a home made preserve or liqueur.

A few weeks ago, I dragged my sous vide up to a local restaurant at the request of the owner to demonstrate it's abilities. That afternoon I knocked up a batch of quick limoncello for them. I took some tuna and some sea bass and wowed them with three simple recipes that I will share with you at some point.

     While I cocked the tuna (in a fennel seed, coriander and white pepper rub) in the sous vide, we sampled the limoncello and I explained the ease with which this great after dinner drink could be made. A new chef had joined the team fresh from Italy and seemed suitably impressed with both the taste and the speed that this could be produced. He mused over other potential treats and suggested an orange version. That stuck away in a little dark corner of my mind until last weekend when I found oranges on offer at my local supermarket.

    The oranges lodged in my basket, I set off to find some white caster sugar and a bottle of the stores own vodka. There is little point in using the best vodka for this (far better to buy a bottle of the good stuff along with the cheap stuff and store it in the freezer with a couple of thick shot glasses to warm you up on a cold night)

    Ingredients obtained, I headed off home. Next, I kick started the sous vide and loaded it with water from the hot tap to speed up the heating process. In case you are not familiar with sous vide cooking then take a look here  http://www.sousvidesupreme.com . In essence a hot water bath with a thermostat accurate to 0.5C. These used to be stupidly expensive but in the last few years companies like http://www.lakeland.co.uk hve started to knock them out at sub £300 prices. To make best use you will also need a vaccum sealing machine but it can save you a fortune.

   

    Back to the recipe. I set the sous vide to 60C and left it to warm through. I used a good potato peeler to remove the orange skin, taking care to avoid the pith (if you to peel to deep then you can use a sharp knife to remove it from the peel).

I placed all the peel in a 1 Litre cooking quality ziploc bag and added a litre of vodka. Unless you want to spend at least £800 on a chamber vacuum sealer then this is the best solution for cooking liquids in a sous vide. You can use the Archimedes method (http://blog.sousvidesupreme.com/2011/06/sealing-liquids-archimedes-principle/) to remove the air from the bag or zip around 90% of the seal and gently squeeze until the liquid is just above the seal (and there is no visible air at the seal) and then close the bag. I then popped this into the sous vide for about 4 hours (2 will do but the longer the better until the peel is pale)

While this cooked out I mad a simple stock syrup. I measured 1 litre of water into a pan and added 1Kg of white caster sugar. I placed this on the stove and heated it until it started to bubble and the liquid was clear. This disolves all of the sugar into the water creating the syrup. this can now be cooled and stored.

Once the orange and vodka had cooked out I removed the bag from the sous vide and left it to cool while still sealed. The beauty of the sealed bag is that non of the alcohol vapour escapes.

As you can see, the vodka has taken on the colour, and trust me, the flavour of the orange peel. Once the vodka was cool I strained it into a large jug and added 600ml of the stock syrup to the vodka (if you try this then alter the amount according to your own taste but remember it will not taste as sweet the warmer it is). I then bottled this ready for Christmas gifts (and the chefs perks too :) )

No, I did not waste the oranges. They were juiced and ready for breakfast. An alternative would be to replace some of the water in the stock syrup with filtered juice add a sweet orange taste.