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Monday 5 August 2013

Fish - Week 1: Pan Seared Tilapia with Olive Butter Sauce

All good things must come to an end. In mid July, I finished my BBQ class, which was one of my favourite classes so far. Without my major food supply from that class, all of sudden I had to plan out what to cook for dinner and what to pack for lunch. Then I started to look through GBC calendar, and decided to take another course to feed me for another 6 weeks in the summer. Since I have always loved seafood, I picked the course - Fish. Sometimes I find that seafood can be hard to cook. Once you over cook them, there's no turning back. The texture would become really chewy and unpleasant. So I was really eager to find out the tricks to make perfect seafood dishes! 

In the first week's class, we filleted a tilapia and prepared Pan Fried Tilapia with Olive Butter and Fennel/Potato Gratin. Tilapia is a type of round fish. Personally, I wouldn't recommend buying the whole fish, because the yield after filleting the fish is quite small. Usually you can find tilapia fillets in the stores at a very affordable price. 

Pan Friend Tilapia
Ingredients
1 tilapia, filleted, lightly seasoned with salt and pepper
some black olives, chopped
butter

Methods
1. clean the fish, fillet the meat
2. lightly season the fish with salt and pepper, then dip into flour (make sure you shake off excess flour before frying the fish)
3. take a pan, heat some oil to very high temperature, brown the floured fish both sides quickly (the presentation side down first) 
4. at the same time make the olive sauce. In a pot, melt some butter, stir fry some chopped olives, squeeze in half lemon juice, reduce the volume for a bit.                                                    5. transfer the fish to a baking sheet, pour the olive butter sauce on top of the fish. Bake at 450F for 10min, 

Fennel/Potato Gratin
Ingredients
1 kg Yukon gold potatoes
1/2 fennel bulb
1 onion slicded
2 cups of heavy cream
2 tbsp butter
parmesan cheese

Methods
1. in a pot, melt some butter, sweat the onion and fennel
2. add heavy cream to the pot, bring the liquid to a simmer for 10min, adjust salt/pepper
3. put sliced, uncooked potatoes to the liquid
4. transfer everything to a baking tray, layer the potato slices with parmesan cheese in between
5. put grated parmesan cheese on the top
6. bake with a lid on at 400F for 1.5-2hr, then with a lid off for another 10min at 450F to get a nice brown colour





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