Fishmongery and general gluttony

[susie_flo]

Good afternoon dear gluttony fiends,

For those of you with a leaning towards culinary matters, I thought I'd pop in and blither (quite a lot) about the fantastic weekend that G and I just had at the Ashburton Cookery School, . 






The course we attended was called 'Fish and Seafood Plus' and promised to give a good grounding in fish and seafood preparation skills.  It ran over two days and was logged as a 'Level 3' course (meaning that it is geared up for non-professional food ponces who are comfortable cooking for dinner parties and so on but want to expand some specific skills.)  The course was my surprise birthday present for G and I dithered over whether to go with him.  Suffice to say I am so pleased I made that decision.

The school is located in a pretty town in deepest Devon...


 

Before I go into any detail about the course, I will simply say that the weekend was brilliant from beginning to end and I really could not recommend the school more highly.   The experience is somewhere between a course and a holiday.  You do learn a lot of skills, but you're treated so well while doing so that you feel less like a student and more like a VIP in a 5-star hotel.   The whole time is spent cooking and eating, with no tiresome chores whatsoever, and every time you turn around you discover that invisible house elves have been and cleaned up your work station and done all of your washing up. 

The kitchen is made up of workstations like this... 

 

And the rest of the time is spent in the lovely dining room, eating what you've made.  (By the end of it you could literally roll back to your hotel.)




The course itself is quite intensive but great fun.  The only stressful part (for me) was havng to be the agent of death for so many things that were still alive.  I realise this aspect might not bother most of you, and it is all about food honesty and so on, but as a reformed vegetarian I did struggle a bit.  I had such a 'Thank God' moment when the chef delivered the bad news that the crabs had arrived from the fishmongers already cooked.  I was also deeply relieved not to have to personally boil the living lobsters (I actually felt a bit sick during that bit).   But I did murder some living scallops (which G refused to do for me) and put some live mussels in the oven.  (I may well go to hell, but they didn't half taste good... )

As hypocritical as it may be, I fared so much better with the things that were already dead ...and am delighted to report that G and I now have pretty good filleting skils!  (Using a proper filleting knife has a lot to do with it.)





Anyway enough pre-amble... here is what we made!  If you would like any of the recipes, let me know.


Day One


Poached John Dory on a bed of griddled courgette with a red pepper coulis
(The coulis was gorgeous enough to eat with a spoon )




Seared Squid and Scallops on a bed of apple and chilli salsa
(This was my joint favourite dish - the salsa rocked and all of it was absolutely divine)

Plaice and Mussels Papillote on a bed of Fennel with Prawn and Dill Butter
(This was my other joint favourite - who knew plaice could taste so amazing?  And the prawn butter was a revelation!)

Black Bream Saltimbocca Style with Sage and Bok Choi
(It was really hard to find room for this after all of the above, but it tasted wonderful.  The meaty people wrapped theirs in parma ham)



 

Day Two


Spicy Crab Cakes with Two Dips, Salad and Edible Flowers
(These were obsecenely gorgeous and served with cucumber & dill dip and sweet chilli sauce)




Saffron Fish Soup served with Croutes and Garlic Rouille
(This was sublime and included lobster, various fish that we had filleted and tiger prawns.)

Crispy Mackerel with Crushed Potatoes and Mustard Sauce
(as with the day before, it was seriously hard to find room for this.  However it was so delicious we managed to cram it down. The mustard sauce was fabulous)

Fruit Marinated in Vanilla and Guava Syrups with Crushed Praline and Clotted Ice Cream
(This pudding was a little unexpected extra thrown in to finish off day two,  It involved painting a stripe of guava syrup onto the plate and coating with crushed praline. The fruits had been marinated in a mixture of flavours with vanilla, and the ice cream was drizzled with the guava syrup.  Thanks to the invention of the second stomach for puddings, we all managed to nom the lot.)

Summary of Skills learned:

• All of the above recipes (using various cooking techniques and sauces)
• How to gut, fillet, de-bone and skin different types of fish
• How to cook and deconstruct lobster
• How to deconstruct and prepare crabs
• How to gut and prepare a whole squid
• How to de-shell and prepare scallops
• How to make fish stock
• Plus some meaty skills for meaty people (which I failed to take careful note of)

Some general tips learned:

• How to recognise fresh fish and seafood
• When to use butter vs oil, and when to mix them
• General presentation skills (bring on the squeezy bottles!)
• General knife skills (I now know the easy way to chop shallots into tiny pieces)

Goodies brought home:

• Fish tweezers
• Bake-o-glide liner (fabulous stuff with a million uses)
• Mini spatula
• Vanilla Pods
• Squeezy bottles (aka instant presentation skills)
• Ashburton shopping bags 

Things added to my shopping list...

• A fish filleting knife
• A chinois (much better than a sieve in a lot of cases)
• Another course at Ashburton (quite fancy doing the patisserie one sometime)

And finally...  
Here are a few top tips that came up which I think are worth passing on.

• Strange but true - you can cook food with cling film on it.  (e.g. if you stuffed and wrapped steak into a sausage shape in clingfilm, you can then slice it into medallions and fry the pieces with the clingfilm still around the edges and it won't melt... but wll keep the shape)
• Adding salt to sweating onions helps the sweating process
• When you want to caramelise onions, cut them into thin strips lengthways, not 'burger-ring' style - they will cook down much better.
• Use self-raising flour to flour cake tins, not plain.  It raises in the tin and makes releasing the cake easier.
• If you want a £3 bottle of balsamic to take on the flavour and texture of a £30 bottle, cut a fig in half and heat up the vinegar in a pan with the fig.  When it thickens up, re-bottle the balsamic and job done.  (Apparently the thickening is due to an enzyme in the fig, which also adds richness to the flavour)
• In general, the chefs use loads of seasoning but are big on avoiding seasoning until near the end - especially sauces, because it gets saltier as the liquid evaporates.  (Hence they always cook with unsalted butter cos they prefer to control the salt themselves). 

Link to cookery school here....  www.ashburtoncookeryschool.co.uk/

More pics on Flickr here...  www.flickr.com/photos/susanflockhart/sets/72157624147505471/

Comments

[childeric.livejournal.com]

Wow, that looks *lovely*! I wonder how I can cheekily wangle a dinner party invitation from you without your realising that I'm doing it. *scratches head* ;-)

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

We'd love to have you over for dinner! I always assume that people won't want to dredge themselves out to the wilds of zone 4, but I suppose an ex-Richmond boy won't feel too traumatised.

I will confer with G and organise something. (Our place is a doll's house, so we can usually only manage 2 or 3 guests at once).

[childeric.livejournal.com]

:-) Hooray! Brazenness triumphs again! That food looks seriously scrummy and awesome though!

I have a neat trick for avoidance of late-night District Line stress, as from yours I daresay I can just nip over the footbridge at Teddington Lock and lo and behold the ancestral pile is at my immediate disposal...

[nalsa.livejournal.com]

I approve of this entry. That's bloody excellent stuff you've made there. And the balsamic tip is genius.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Thank you! (And I agree that the fig trick verges on being the best tip of all time!)

[sara-lou.livejournal.com]

Sounds fantastic. I so wish I had done my month there rather than The Grange. We had to wash everything up!

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

I have a suspicion that the month-long courses at Ashburton involve doing your own washing up. (I think dilettante weekenders get special treatment) ;-)

[nalsa.livejournal.com]

They do a month-long course! Crikey, if only I had the £4k to spare...

No Washing Up at Ashburton

[(Anonymous)]

Hiya, I can confirm that there is no washing up on any course at the Cookery School, not even the 20 day one!

Re: No Washing Up at Ashburton

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's famtastic! Thanks for replying.

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

That looks and sounds absolutely delicious - though I think I'd be a bit too squeamish to do a lot of it but I'd like the recipe for prawn and dill butter please, and the spicey crab cakes.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Recipe on its way...

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

It was a fabulous way to spend a weekend. (Now we're so carried away we're planning to repeat the papillote technique with some trout fillets this evening.)

[steer.livejournal.com]

Heh... Junior Masters Chef.

I really want some of that food.

I like the fact they do a pescatarian (sp?) version.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Would you like to come over to dinner with Simon? You'd be welcome to bring Caron, if she won't mind the cram in our weeny place.

If so, let me know some dates (would prefer a Fri or Sat night... or long Sunday lunch if your diary is impossible)

[steer.livejournal.com]

Oooh.. that would be AWESOME. I'm sure we can cozy up. I'm afraid I don't have a free Friday Saturday or Sunday until August and the chances of getting Caron and I at the same time are always minimal. I could always Doodle it.

I definitely owe you and G food anyway.

Did you get my Shakey invite today by the way?

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Eek, August seems a long way off. Is that also the earliest we're likely to get a nose around Steer Towers (or are you planning to cram us in on a Tuesday or something?)

Thanks for the Shakey invitation. We're probably going to skip it, not being overt Henry fans, but I hope it's good.

What is doodle? Is it an online meeting organiser? If so, then yes lets give it a go!

[steer.livejournal.com]

You could always come to mine on a weeknight in June or July... That can be sorted easily I'm sure. Doodle is an online meeting organisational thingum so that people with busy lives can sort out when they're all free. I can set one up to find a Fri, Sat evening or Sun lunch when you, G, Dr T, Caron and I are all free.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Ooh yes, please do a doodle, that sounds ideal.
(And I will look forward to an evening at the Steer residence)

[steer.livejournal.com]

Yay -- doodles are away for meeting at mine and for meeting at yours. I don't know if you and G will fill in a joint one or just do one each. Caron and I will do one each.

[kissmeforlonger.livejournal.com]

That looks wonderful and a real holiday as well as a foodie treat.

I've often wondered about doing a Cordon Vert course at the cookery school attached to the Vegetarian Society in Alderley Edge.

Someone skinned a fish on Come Dine With Me recently by cutting into the skin and then ripping it off the flesh :-/

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

I've thought about going to Cordon Vert too. The benefit is that they seem to offer themed courses. (Most cookery schools have a single short course for vegetarian cookery, as though there is no variety within the category, whereas Cordon Vert allows you to do lots of specialist courses like Thai, Indian, dinner parties, Italian, and so on).

I don't know anyone who's been though. It would be interesting to know if it caters for proper greedy foodies, rather than handwoven diet-nuts, clad in hessian and intent on suffering for their principles.

[kissmeforlonger.livejournal.com]

Have you looked at their site recently? I've just been - loads of different courses and some in London too. Maybe worth a look. They're less expensive than I thought.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

I just had a look - you're right, the web site has been fabbed up a bit since I last looked. I think the best courses look like the ones in Cheshire.

[steer.livejournal.com]

But you HATE vegetables. I bet they use vegetables. The clue is in that Vert part.

If there was "cordon jeune" which mainly consisted of eating cheese and yellow popping candy you should do that course.

[kissmeforlonger.livejournal.com]

Green doesn't necessarily mean vegetables.

I bet childeric would do cordon beige.

Все прикольно сделано!

[slavicelixa.livejournal.com]

Действительно занятно! (http://zimnyayaobuv.ru/) (http://zimnyaya-obuv.ru/)