A Trout in the House with White Wine Sauce

You know when you are ladling something out of a pot – and it’s dripping and dripping and you can’t get it over to the bowl you need it in…and you stand there as a stream of stuff hangs like a string, then turns into drips then turns into slower drops and you just wait for that break in the dripping to get quickly over to the bowl…and then you rush and slurp stuff all over the place? And then throw the ladle back in the pot and it splurts up the sides…okay…maybe it’s just me…

But I learned last night that if you dip your ladle in the sauce, soup, stock whatever, hold it up, then dip the base again in the surface of the sauce, soup, stock, it will stop the stream, drip, or drop and you can cleanly get whatever over to the bowl you need it in.

Huh!

That is one of the many lessons I’m picking up at cooking school. I’ll write a whole list out for you – stuff I didn’t know – that you probably do – but as home cooks we don’t necessarily run across in our books or online.

The class is very cool. We work in professional kitchens, on stainless steel islands for four people and I have a friendly, collegial group of Lisa, Sheryl and Anna…we get along great and everything is about cooperation – not a whiff of competition.

We’re now six weeks in and more and more comfortable wearing our chefs whites and hats, brandishing our chef knives, and even turning on the stoves. The ranges are big mothers – six burner Garlands. And they growl as you approach them, daring you to try.

We are in the fishbowl – so named for being right at street level, with floor to ceiling glass and we’re encouraged to wave at the people who stop to watch. One reason I grabbed the space at my island – one of the furthest from the edge of the bowl.

At the front is Chef Ian’s demo counter and stove, with cameras and monitors so you don’t miss any manoeuvre. We start the evening standing around watching him demonstrate what we’ll be cooking…taking furious notes…then we scatter like an offensive line coming out of a huddle.

They supply trays of ingredients portioned and to be shared with your teammates.

You know those towels that chefs wear tucked over their apron strings? They’re for using as pot holders – not for wiping your hands…I’ll master that one day…I still can’t bring myself to tear paper towel for every wet hand you have while cooking.

Last week we made fish. And it exercised our knife skills, our sauce skills, and our timing skills. And then as always our cleaning skills.

Ontario trout is quite lovely. These were farmed trout fillets.

We poached the fish and then made a beautiful sauce with the poaching liquid. Thought I’d share.

Poached Filets in White Wine Sauce

4 portions

1 Filet Ontario lake trout
2 oz butter
1 oz shallot, diced
2 oz white wine (recipe calls for reisling, but use a dry white if you have it)
8 oz fish stock (we cut ours in half because Chef thought it was too strong)
If you’ve cut the fish stock, make it up with water
Parchment paper cut into a circle (see video for a great tip on how to shape it easily – this is what the chef taught us too)

Sauce
1 pint fish velouté - or have on hand some more fish stock and wine to bulk up liquid once you've cooked your fish
Whipping cream to taste (although recipe called for 3 ½ oz)
1 oz butter
12 green seedless grapes, sliced in half
4 sprigs flat-leafed parsley chopped
1 stem of fresh thyme, chopped
Salt and black pepper to taste (there’s a blog to be done on white pepper)
½ lemon, juice and zest

You can make the fish velouté separately if you like, but why not use the liquid you poached the fish in? Then you dirty only one pot. Makes sense…Oui?

Okay.

The fish. If the skin is on, you’ll have to remove it. Get out your best, sharpest filet or boning knife (mine, a Victorinox, was $30 at a kitchen store and the chefs all recommended it – no, neither they, nor I get anything for that).

Lay the fish skin side down on the edge of your cutting board (make sure your cutting board has either a sheet of wet paper towel under it, or a rubber mat, to prevent slipping – I bought a roll of that rubber stuff at a dollar store and cut it into pieces).

If you’re right handed, have the tail to the left, and if you’re a southpaw, like me, you put the tail to the right.

Starting about half an inch from the tail end, slice down and toward the tail (counter intuitive, I know). Then turn the blade toward the business end of the fish – toward the main body of the fish. Laying the knife firmly and flat against the skin, and with your other hand pulling the tail and skin taut, start carefully slicing between the skin and flesh (you’re actually slicing the membrane between the two).

It’s a slight sawing motion. If your knife is sharp enough, you’ll slide through fairly easily. The trick is to hold that tail taut. As you progress through the filet, fold up the flesh to check you’re not leaving any of the red meat on the skin. Adjust your knife lower if you are.

It should come off in one piece, and you can hold it up to your neck and pretend you have a fish tie. No, seriously…do it. It’s part of the ritual.

If you’ve come through the skin or it tears…and you can’t catch the edge again with your knife, you’re probably going to have to do what I had to do the first time I tried this – flip it over and laboriously pull the skin up with your filet or boning knife until you’ve got it all off. That way takes a good five to ten minutes…the proper way takes a minute. Worth trying.

Once you’re done, you can choose whether to poach the filet whole in your sauté pan, or cut it into portions. I found cutting it into portions much easier to handle…and they fit in the pan better. 

So.

Get out your sauté pan. Do NOT put it on the heat yet.

Take a chunk of your butter and smear it along the bottom and sides of your pan (I used a pan with the vertical sides – not a true sauté pan).

Evenly spread the diced shallot all over the bottom.

Carefully place your filet portions on the shallots. Fold the tail section (the thinnest probably) in half to mimic the thickness of the other portions. Salt and pepper them.

Pour in your wine (dribble it over the fish).

Pour in your fish stock. And if you’re adding water, pour in the water.

The liquid should come halfway up the fish.

Cover the fish with your perfectly-made circle of parchment paper. Remember to cut it a little larger than the pan so it comes up the sides a little. Push the parchment down to touch all the filets.

Now, carefully bring it to a boil on the stove, and then turn it down to a simmer. It should take about 10 minutes. If the fish centres are not cooperating after about 10 minutes, just carefully flip them over and put the parchment back over them for a minute or two. The filets should look done and a little flaky.

While you’re waiting for the filets to be done, you can get a jump on the sauce. Make a beurre manié in a small bowl. Sounds fancy, but it’s just equal parts of butter and flour mixed together. (You can err on the side of more fat to flour) Mix it well. Set aside.

Remove the filets when they’re done and keep them warm.

Now for the sauce.

The rule for making sauces is that the liquid and the beurre manié have to be opposite temperatures.

So as our beurre manié is at room temperature or a little cooler and our pan liquid is hot…we’re good to go. Add more fish stock/wine/water if you need more liquid in the pan, bring it up to a boil, reduce it by about ¼, then turn down to a gentle simmer. Put some of the beurre manié in the pan and whisk. Don’t put all of it in…otherwise you might have too thick a sauce. As it heats and melds with the fish stock and wine and shallots, it will start to thicken. Add more if it's not thick enough.

The sauce should coat the back of a spoon. When you run your finger along the back of the spoon it should leave a gentle trail. Feel free to add more stock or wine if needed.

Add the cream, and add this to your taste, no matter what the recipe says.

Now add the sliced grapes and the chopped thyme and parsley. Simmer gently for 10 minutes or so.
Season with salt and pepper. Add some lemon juice and zest, if you’re like me I can’t resist the zest – but fair warning, be careful with the lemon, it can get too ‘citrus-y’ quickly.

Plate your fish – and drizzle the wine sauce over it, making sure each person gets a few grape slices.
I was amazed how good the grapes were in this. I didn’t think they’d add much. But I liked it.

In fact, I like this so much I made it again the next night with the spare trout filet they gave us. It’s a quick dinner believe it or not. Great if you’ve got guests coming over on a weeknight, or weekend…

So far, our friends are pretty happy with this whole cooking school thing – mostly because I bring stuff home and need help eating it.

By the way if you replace the grapes with button mushrooms you’ve made a different sauce – something called sauce bonne femme. Just add the mushrooms earlier in the recipe so that they cook.  Use it on sole filets or whatever you like…

Just try it…See where it takes you.

The lovely thing about sauce is that it is pretty generous. It will work with you – too thick? Add liquid. Too thin? Add more beurre manié.

Generosity – that’s what cooking is all about.

Enjoy.

Don't Apologize

“When you flip anything you must have the courage of your convictions, particularly if it’s sort of a loose mass like this. Oh…that didn’t go very well...But you can always pick it up. And if you’re alone in the kitchen, who is going to see?”

Cooking. A metaphor for life. And wisdom from Julia Child.

A perfect source of wisdom for me right now. Because, believe it or not, after months of building up to it - I left chef school. In the first week.

And I learned a lot. But not what I was expecting.

Chef school is exciting. The kitchens are dazzling. The demo labs, the industrial mixers, the massive stoves, the chef whites, the knife kits, the hats, elevating you into the profession. (Although one baking teacher asked why we all wanted to go into the life of a domestic servant…)

These chefs are very passionate, determined and dedicated artists.

Through all of that I discovered something.

I really, really, really don’t want to cook to the standard of a restaurant. It was like hitting my passion for food with a nuclear bomb.

And though no one asked them to, my classmates figured out quickly that if the chef asked us if we understand, they said, in unison, Yes Chef!

I wasn’t sure if it was in me when I wrote about it before I went. And guess what? It isn’t. My neck and shoulders tighten, my lips get pursed. And I suddenly find I’m trying to shake my shoulders loose. Nope. It’s just too much. You know…set to 11.

It was a blow. I spent most of the week on the verge of tears in public and letting them overflow in private. It was shocking. The thoughts started creeping through - the money...the risk...the embarrassment...the naivete, and my age old panicky feeling of doubt followed quickly by paralysis - I can't go forward, can't go back.

The old me would have torn myself to shreds. For a long time. In a voice I wouldn't use on anyone else. I debated pushing through. I've been in these settings before (anyone in a newsroom or tv control room feels it) and wondered why I pushed on. But here no. I knew if I went back, my body would stop myself from going in the classroom. Hmmm. Journalism was what I was meant to study. What I loved. And cooking school was adding a specialty to my life. And one that I can still learn.

I had made a huge mistake.

So this time, I quit.

For me, the “courage of my convictions” was in calling it.

When a goal leads you down a fork in the road and you see another path veering away from you – you get to call quits. And you will never quite know. And that, my friends, must be what growing up feels like.

I’m a home cook. I want to get better. I want to, in fact, be the best I can be. I want to taste well (not good, that’s different). I want to practice up my palate. I want to create. And I want to share.

Cooking is generosity, not competition. Not so much the culinary Olympics. For others maybe, but not for me.

Goal/motivation psychology tells us that if your goal is taking you in the wrong direction, adapt the goal. Find a related goal – one that’ll get you near. In psychology gobbledygook it is called ‘goal disengagement’ and ‘goal reengagement’. And people who can do that apparently also have the added benefit of better physical health.

In other words, flogging yourself to death because you won’t quit what you don’t even want ain’t good for you.

When I told my closest friends, they all had the same reaction – in calls and emails…first complete support and congratulations for knowing so fast...and second, worried that I’d beat myself up…I seem to have a reputation.

The not-much-younger me could hear the muffled voice inside my head trying to break through to scream at me for failing…for quitting…for not following anything through…for thinking I could even do this in the first place. Imposter!

The not-much-older me shored up the walls. And ignored it.

I did some research – discovered a different certification program that is part-time and signed myself up. I start that in less than two weeks. I still get to wear my chef whites, carry my knife kit and learn to be a much better, and happier, cook.

And with that, by the end of Friday, I’d reached the end of my first, and last, week of chef school. I had set a goal. It hadn’t worked. I found another. I moved on.

Julia Child had it down – her philosophy was work hard, take risks and if you make a mistake – don’t apologize.

If you need me, I’ll be on the other fork in the road.

Deep Breath

Le Chef de l'Hôtel Chatham, Paris

Deep breath. It’s not as cold as I think. Go on…Dive in.

I’m going to chef school. This September.

It’s a culinary skills course. For a year. For a certificate.

And frankly, as everyone congratulates me on moving in a new direction, I’m terrified. But then, what else is new?

I’m 50 for crissakes. 

I make my own tomato sauce, salad dressing, and turkey stuffing…so what makes me think I can jump to the next level? Really. People think I’m a good cook. I read almost exclusively food books and cook books. But that does not qualify me to be a chef.

The hardest part of switching direction is trying to determine if this is the right path – if I’ll go for a month and then wake up one day saying this isn’t really what I want…or wake up one day and figure it’s too a)hard b)scary c)stupid d)authoritarian e)all of the above.

I don’t know if a chef demands I jump that I can just say how high…I’m not sure it’s in me.

I’m not sure I won’t look silly in the hat – okay…actually I’m excited about that part. And I think the chef whites will help temper my imposter syndrome.

And I’m not sure I want to go to school as the most definitely oldest student in the class. Or more realistically if I want to go to school with a bunch of kids – and yes…they could be my kids.

Out, out damn-ed doubt.

I went to the information night last fall (just back from Italy and still digesting tons of excellent food and even more excellent red wine – by the way, can anyone explain why I don’t get a headache from cheap red wine when I’m in Italy?) and listened to the chefs explain how the courses work, what to expect and how delighted they were they had chosen this line of work and that god probably created humans to become chefs – the chosen tribe. (and on that previous parenthesis thought – I wonder if red wine in France has the same effect?)

I went up to the chef who was giving most of the information to ask about the different types of programs and what I was thinking of doing – he said (with a straight face) that he’s had a lot of people come through the program in their 30s and also a fair number in their 40s who were thinking of changing direction – he’s even (and this was where the straight face thing came into play) had one person in their 50s.

I just looked at him and nodded…but inside I had fled through the door, out into the rainy, cold October night, with that familiar feeling of just not belonging…

What a freak. A flighty, quirky, weird sort…

Oh well…so I’m flighty…

I thought about it through the winter and into the spring – and a couple of weeks before my 50^th birthday, one evening, impulsively, I filled out the form – my finger hovered over the ‘Submit’ button…and I pressed down. I felt that metallic cold flush of fear like I’d just made a huge error.

I looked at Steve with my eyes wide and he just said, ‘What?’ – ‘I think I just applied for chef school.’

Steve, being Steve, just smiled. Then he said, ‘good for you’.

How I love that man.

So now the tuition is paid and I’m wrestling with the stupid, self-important educational bureaucracy, and going to orientation in just over a month. Next week I have to register for my courses and the next day have to take a placement test for English (yes, really – two degrees including one in journalism – although any journalist and especially editor will tell you that has no bearing on the quality of my English) and a test in math (just gulped). 

Of course it’s not a totally new direction. And no, I don’t want to be a Chef…no, I don’t want to work in a restaurant or, god forbid, an industrial kitchen…I want to write about food. And I want the cred to do it.

I’ve blogged on and off for a few years, but that ain’t going to cut it with what I think I want to do.

I have a project, or two, in mind for after I’m done. And they’re big.

But for now, baby steps, just drop myself into a place where I feel I know nothing – Just be there to learn…that’s my zen goal for now… how to chop an onion, how to make sauces, how to roast a chicken…and working in those beautiful, new, professional kitchens…hey maybe the excitement could actually douse the fear…maybe…staying tuned.