It's been a fabulous day and I've done things I never expected to do! It's great to have the opportunity to learn new skills, cook new recipes, prepare food that I wouldn't usually and do this with a great bunch of friends. I've gutted and filleted mackerel, plaice and red mullet and turned them into great dishes expertly led by our chef, Phil. It's been such a tiring day because we've hardly had a moment to spare between courses but as the saying goes - no pain, no gain!
We created an excellent, quick dish using our fillets of plaice. We made a beautiful, easy parcel of rolled plaice fillets on a bed of oil, thinly sliced fennel, fresh mussels topped with a prawn and dill butter. We wrapped our greaseproof paper and foil parcel adding some white wine before baking in the top of the oven for just 10 minutes. And what a triumph!
Me and my work station buddy, Chloe from Oz. She's currently working as a chef on a yacht and has been here for almost a week. She's delightful and we're having loads of fun. We all went out for Tapas last night and you can guess who ended up in the local pub whilst everyone else went to bed!! She's the best station buddy I could ask for and our dishes are definitely the BEST :)
'Stripe' - my friendly mackerel
"OUCH".. sorry Stripe.. I'm learning some useful knife skills.. !!
"Nice plaice"
~Palma wrapped red mullet fillet on a bed of pakchoi with balsamic glaze roasted cherry tomatoes - YUM!
John Dory fillets on a bed of pan fried courgettes with a red pepper coulis - my favourite dish of the day!
Our fabulous chef, Phil, scaling the red mullet before we had to do it ourselves. I've never scaled a fish before so this was another brilliant challenge for me.
The proof of the squiddling is in the eating and it couldn't have been more delicious if we'd tried. Take one fabulous hand-dived scallop in it's shell (opened and prepared by yours truly!) with different rings, strips and scored squid wings on a bed of apple, chilli, garlic and shallot salsa!!
Inky but certainly not DINKY±! These squids were enormous and it was quite a different kettle of fish to remove the guts, de-ink them and prepare them ready to cook. From inky mess to white squid flesh in less than 10 minutes. I was very proud of myself :)
Oh what a monster!! But this was just another challenge on a day of great adventures in my culinary life.
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