back to fillets, well this week I call them medallions

A while ago in This post I promised to follow up with the technique for the salmon fillet, well eventually have got round to preparing and photographing it.

I won't bore with any further 'fillet' comments so without further ado here goes, am thinking of serving with a simple risotto milanaise and a herb/tomato oil.

1st trim up 2 sides of salmon, removing the skin and scraping the worst of the meat from the skin, ensure all scales are removed, thus

do the same with the other side, roll cling film accross the board from top to bottom, leaving it attached to the roll, arrange the sides to be dusted with activa transglutaminaise

slightly overlap and lay on the film with each 'head' side on the tail of the other to maintain an even size

pulling away from the roll, roll as tightly as possible, going around the salmon about 10 times, refrigerate for at least 6 hours to allow the enzyme to work.

set up clingfilm as before and cut your skins in half, dust liberally with activa and pat the loose dust off

remove the cling film from the roll, which should now be held together, place on the skin and roll carefully ensuring no gaps, again roll tightly many times

trim the ends cleanly and vacuum pack for at least 6 hours again to allow this bit of the enzyme to do it's thing

measure a scallop from top to bottom and cut that thickness of salmon fillet, you can just cut fillets from here, but this week we are going to do a salmon and scallop medallion. Using a cutter slightly smaller than the diameter of the scallop, cut a 'polo' hole out of the centre

leaving this, the cut out piece can either be served as an aside to the dish, or reserved for canapes

push the scallop into the centre and reserve in the fridge for service, sear quickly on both sides, finish for about 3 minutes under a salamander grill and finish with a lemon beurre noisette, when I have the dish up I will post a pic of the finished dish.

quite a lengthy process but very simple to prepare, just need to allow the times between when preparing as rolling the skin in the first roll is hellish to do, so I opted for this method and definitely gave me a cleaner product at the end of the day.

Oh what a night, Birthday factor the results

Well, the weekend is all done and dusted, and would love to post a long list of pictures and comments now, but have to report that the whole day didn't go exactly to plan and as for photos, well they never stood a chance.

So will sum the day up quickly as promised and then soon move on to something more visual.

Let's start with the not so successful, beginning with waking up, not a happy moment in my day, was sick as a dog, to the point of very nearly calling the whole event off, I spent the fist couple of hours wandering round (and occasionally running for the smallest room in the house) in a complete daze.

But eventually pulled myself together, finished off the last touches and got my mis organized, most things were fine except for a quick change of plan with the spherification.

The evening before I got distracted by my kids and left the spheres in the fridge setting, and of course forgetting until the next day, I was left staring at a completely set alginate baths of olive puree and strawberry juice, many things crossed my mind including cutting them out but in the end decided to drop the introductory olives and make a fresh strawberry jam for the semolina, off to the shop I went.

As for the rest of the menu, all went as planned, the whisky sour knocked everyone for 6 to start, the surreal moment of piping my meth cel potato underwater to set them was a new experience (and quite a warm painful one) but the dish pulled off well, and most importantly my sorbet flamed up a treat.

There were a suitable number of 'oohs' and 'ahhs' in all the right places and everyone had a great evening, I was glad to see the cheese crackers and petit fours go so I could finally sit down and join in but was satisfied to pull off this menu in my shoebox of a kitchen, and bless my eldest boy Cameron for digging me out with the washing up the next morning, thank you son.

Anyway, back to work and whilst we don't have a huge amount of time to play the next post should be a more visual affair with more playing and much less working.

A very busy birthday party

I approach this perticular time of year with a small sense of dread and excitement.

My darling wifes birthday is this weekend, and for the last couple of years for one reaosn and another has been a very low key affair, so this year I thought I would put in a bit more effort. well actually a couple of weeks ago she asked 'could I have some of those little tricks you do with food at my birthday dinner?'

'err birthday dinner?' I replied, I had thought of organising the babysitter, booking somewhere nice and letting someone else take care of the cooking. However she had been talking with one of her friends and had come up with the plan of us having dinner in our house, so as I said before time to put a little extra effort in and organised a menu of 5 courses with suitable 'tricks' for good measure, our other guests are blissfully unaware of restaurants such as Alinea and the Fat Duck so I could easily plagarise a few tricks without them being passe, sorry to Grant and Heston (oh and Ferran for my opening cocktail) for the odd blatant theft of recipe, but where needs must the devil drives.

Next day at work, I am thinking of her menu when I am checking the business for this week, and never have I had such a mental week at work, what am I going to do? loads of split shifts needed, when am I going to prep?!? but of course we always make time for the important things in our lives, the only true issue I have had all week is to stop adding courses.

here is the menu, in the next post I will follow up with the pictures of the dishes with comments from our guests (providing i don't forget with the stress of cooking on her birthday)

she also commented on the fact she never gets a cake for her birthday, so with the genius of G's baking skills at hand, can finally put an end to that issue too, (she is normally the one who makes the cakes in the family, so she does get short changed when it's her day)

anyway the menu

Opening cocktail

Whisky sour

(blatant robbery from el Bulli, saw him prepare it a few year ago at a demo in London)

Butternut squash risotto & Heart of palm

‘Cannelloni’

(risotto with squash fluid gel filling a palm heart)

Seafood Platter

Lemon & saffron pudding, olive oil ‘rocks’

(mix of prawns, mussels, calamari and a rocket salad, lemon fluid gel and olive oil compressed in vacuum with tapioca multidextrin)

Truffle & cipoline onion tartlet

Savoury frangipane

(puff paste, classic frangipane (using multidextrin instead of sugar) great finger food to save on the washing up)

Rack of Lamb cooked at low temperature

Melting potato, ratatouille, mint and redcurrant

(58 degrees for 2 hours, then fat rendered and browned, meth cel potato, mint espuma and redcurrants enveloped in a redcurrant gel sheet)

Flaming sorbet

Poached apple ‘on the bone’

(1st part ripped off from the big fat duck cookbook, 2nd part spawned from a post on Ideas in Food)

Love in the mist

Semolina, strawberry spheres (or caviar) and iced foam

(born from Sally's comment on her favourite dessert of all time (as usual a childhood memory as it often is) classic semolina, strawberry reverse spherification, strawberry juice and versa whip frozen)

Cheese cracker

Chutney transparency

(first saw this cracker on the madrid lab blog and thought it one of the most creative frugal ideas I had come accross in some time, as for the chutney, this is an evolution of G's agar filtered juice from an earlier post)

Bounty bars & balls

Nearly texture-free

(sitting watching the hells kitchen final the other day, munching through a box of Celebrations, well what can I say I need simple comfort sugar every now and then (usually now))

(we were discussing a scene in Zombieland where Woody Harrelson finds a hostess truck in his search for a twinky bar, only to find it full of snowballs, he said it was not the flavour that was a problem, just the texture. Sally completely related to this but loves the flavour of coconut, so I had no choice really for petit fours, but to try and re-create a texture-less bounty bar so she can savour the coconut without spitting out the dry dessicated at the end, did I succeed? I say nearly, the chocolate I have used to coast is dark so a little overpowering but the filling is exact, and with only 2 ingredients too! I have done some bars which are agar set, and filled some truffle shells with a coconut fluid gel.)

Anyway I guess only time will tell if I got it right, see you after the weekend!

Slacking off, we don't mean to honest

Only just started the blog, and it looks like we dried up.

not really, just not enough hours in the day to play at the moment, what between business picking up ( a very good thing) family wintry things a plenty keeping me busy, hallowe'en, guy fawkes night tonight and this weekend (with a barbeque for about 500, ouch) and the pressures of making sure we get the correct toys purchased for christmas (not to mention the money involved), not leaving much time to sleep, let alone blog.

I can only apologise for now but will drop in from time to time and get back into some serious funtime after the holidays.

Alex.