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Well, my newspaper is in digital form so no luck there.
When I was told that Tricolore's next Sunday lesson & lunch was fish and chips, I was rather reluctant at first.
I don't eat much fried food - I can't digest most of it - so why learn to cook it? Besides, my Love isn't exactly fond of fish either...
But, hey, that was a challenge.
But as you can see from the picture above, this wasn't just any fish and chips. This was branzino (bass) and purple potatoes (vitellotes). And tempura batter.
Plus, of course, the courses at Tricolore are always immense fun.
So we started with one branzino per person:
Which we had to fillet AND peel:
Then we attacked the potatoes (6 per person - this variety is fairly small).
which I opted to scrub and not peel.
And chipped:
They look so pretty. Who could resist?
Next we heated some peanut oil to 180C. And then magic happened. My pan turned to the eye of Sauron!
No kidding. Look:
Who knew frying could be such a pretty thing?
We did mess up by putting in the fries (Ooops. Sorry. I meant "the chips") in, as most pan started to over boil despite us having well dried our potatoes. Not that it affected the cooking or anything, just made a mess. Nobody got hurt (a miracle, most likely).
While the chips were happily and messily frying away, we made the tempura batter.
One egg yolk, a glass of iced sparkling water and enough gluten-poor flour (farina 00 - farine T45 - cake flour) to whisk (by hand) the whole thing to a batter like fluid custard (a little thicker than that used for crêpes and much more fluid than that used for pancakes).
The trick is to add the flour gradually until good consistency and to not over-whisk in order to avoid developing the gluten from the flour too much.
The chips were picked up and sprinkled with fleur de sel:
And the fish fillets dipped in batter and put into the pan (160C/170C only this time):
Until slightly golden (the tempura does not get very dark and should not otherwise you are poisoning yourselves).
Which is how we ended with the fist picture of this post.
Many thanks to Veronica and Alessandro, who guided us through this simple enough recipe, and - wonders of wonders - not greasy at all!
When I was told that Tricolore's next Sunday lesson & lunch was fish and chips, I was rather reluctant at first.
I don't eat much fried food - I can't digest most of it - so why learn to cook it? Besides, my Love isn't exactly fond of fish either...
But, hey, that was a challenge.
But as you can see from the picture above, this wasn't just any fish and chips. This was branzino (bass) and purple potatoes (vitellotes). And tempura batter.
Plus, of course, the courses at Tricolore are always immense fun.
So we started with one branzino per person:
Which we had to fillet AND peel:
Then we attacked the potatoes (6 per person - this variety is fairly small).
which I opted to scrub and not peel.
And chipped:
They look so pretty. Who could resist?
Next we heated some peanut oil to 180C. And then magic happened. My pan turned to the eye of Sauron!
No kidding. Look:
Who knew frying could be such a pretty thing?
We did mess up by putting in the fries (Ooops. Sorry. I meant "the chips") in, as most pan started to over boil despite us having well dried our potatoes. Not that it affected the cooking or anything, just made a mess. Nobody got hurt (a miracle, most likely).
While the chips were happily and messily frying away, we made the tempura batter.
One egg yolk, a glass of iced sparkling water and enough gluten-poor flour (farina 00 - farine T45 - cake flour) to whisk (by hand) the whole thing to a batter like fluid custard (a little thicker than that used for crêpes and much more fluid than that used for pancakes).
The trick is to add the flour gradually until good consistency and to not over-whisk in order to avoid developing the gluten from the flour too much.
The chips were picked up and sprinkled with fleur de sel:
And the fish fillets dipped in batter and put into the pan (160C/170C only this time):
Until slightly golden (the tempura does not get very dark and should not otherwise you are poisoning yourselves).
Which is how we ended with the fist picture of this post.
Many thanks to Veronica and Alessandro, who guided us through this simple enough recipe, and - wonders of wonders - not greasy at all!
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