Seafood

I saw an offer for 4 fillets of trout for £5, and it was just too enticing to pass. I've never cooked trout before and was quite eager to have some. Plus, for our lab Christmas dinner last year, I had a whole trout roasted with a mixture of mushrooms (enoki, oyster, chanterelles??) that tasted extremely delicious!

I didn't hunt for those exact mushrooms but decided to use what I had in my cupboard. Shiitake seemed too light, but I did have woodears which seemed closest to providing a smoky dark flavour. I also thought of using the sun-dried tomatoes. So, with those two ingredients, a little balsamic vinegar, sugar, soy sauce, and the water used to reconstitute the dried tomatoes and woodears, I quickly braised the trout and then reduced the liquid to turn it into a sauce. Not the same, but still quite tasty after only ~10 minutes cooking time (was too hungry to attempt anything extensive)! If I have a little more time to cook next time, I may try roasting them together as that may give the fish a slightly harder texture and a more developed flavour.

Q: How many dishes can you serve with a whole salmon? One day, my friend surprised me with a whole ~1.5 kg wild salmon. If only a camera had captured my expression. One part of me was in complete awe at the possibility of seeing such a large whole fish in England. Another part of me was swooning and caressing the beautiful silvery skin and pink flesh. Then came: what should we do with it? Sashimi came to mind immediately, but as we didn't know how it was prepared after its capture, raw consumption was too risky. Instead, we made the following dishes:

1. Salmon steamed in scallion, ginger, and white wine
2. Pan-seared salmon fillet with scallion and ginger
3. Treacle-cured salmon
4. Salmon en papillote
5. Miso soup with salmon head and tail
6. Pan-fried salmon backbone
   

Needless to say, we wasted nothing. We probably could have eaten the bones, had we fried them. In any case, we were salmon happy for several days. The only shame is the lack of photos. I guess we were too hungry and excited to bother!

As part of our summer school with our Japanese counterparts, we had the conference dinner at St. John's College. The 3 course dinner involved a salad with Gressingham duck as the starter, trout fillet with vegetables and potatoes as the main, traditional english water pudding as the dessert, and coffee/tea with chocolate truffles to end the meal.

What enthralled me the most was the starter: three slices of roasted Gressingham duck accompanied by a scallop and some type of seafood (similar to uni???) laid over a bed of boiled/steamed arugula leaves and edamame-type beans. The scallop was seared to absolute perfection--slightly browned on the top and bottom with the inside just barely cooked, giving a texture of set creaminess. The duck was moist, and the strong taste of arugula dampened by the boiling/steaming. All the flavors melded well together. I would never have imagined combining duck with seafood; but somehow, they matched. My naive hypothesis was that all these individual components had a "smelliness" which allowed them to fit well together and resulted in an earthy and hearty flavour.

The dessert was a bit of a puzzle. None of the native English people recognized the name "Traditional English Water Pudding." At first glance, it looked like a pannacotta. However, it was much less creamy. There were two layers. The top, which encompassed 90% of the pudding, was like a watery jello. The bottom was the texture of almond paste with a lemony flavour; the taste and texture were familiar, but I could not put my finger on exactly what it was (lemon curd???). Accompanying the pudding was a small bowl of mixed berry compote. The pudding itself was very light and watery, and the sweet sour berry compote complemented the lemony flavour at the base of the pudding. It was a definitely a nice gentle end to the substantial meal.