Tag: gordon ramsay white sauce

Gordon Ramsay’s Sea Bass with Pepper Sauce

This wonderful looking Sea Bass dish was prepared by Gordon Ramsay on his hit show The F Word[1]. Read through my estimated ingredients quantities and instructions, then feel free to watch the video at the end to get a clearer idea of how to prepare this delightful meal.

Ingredients:

  • Filet of Sea Bass
  • Bell Pepper – 1 large red and 1 large yellow, or several of both
  • Shallots – 3
  • Star Anise – 3
  • White Wine Vinegar – 1 1/2 Tbs
  • Vermouth – 2 Tbs
  • Olive Oil
  • Fresh Thyme Sprig leaves
  • Salt
  • Fresh Basil – 1 very large sprig, or two smaller ones
  • Water

Directions for the Sauce:

Julienne the bell pepper, do the same with the shallots. Heat olive oil in a hot pan, then add the peppers and shallots, add star anise and a pinch of salt. Stir well and cook for several minutes until the peppers are beginning to soften up. Add the basil whole, and pour in the white wine vinegar and vermouth. Reduce for several minutes over moderate heat until liquid is mostly absorbed. Add enough water to the pan to cover the peppers half way. Bring to a boil and simmer until liquid is about half gone. Carefully add all of the ingredients to a blender and liquify. Be sure to hold the lid on the blender. Many of my readers discovered when making another Chef Ramsay dish which required a blender that it’s helpful to hold the lid on with a dry towel (no burns, no messes).

Directions for the Fish:

Lay the fish on a cutting board skin side up. Score the fish every half inch along the length of the filet. Add salt and thyme leaves to the inside of each score, then drizzle with olive oil. You can now lovingly hold and caress the filet in your hands if you’re as crazy as Chef Ramsay about food, if not, you can skip the caressing (see the video if you want to know what I mean, that man loves food!).

Heat olive oil in a hot pan and add the fish, skin side down. Hold the fish down with your fingers for 30 seconds to prevent curling. Ninety percent of the cooking will take place with the skin side down. Watch the fish and turn it when most of the meat has turned a bright white. Finish up cooking and remove from heat.

Serving Instructions:

Pour the sauce onto a plate with a large enough lip to hold the sauce – fill the bottom of the plate. Add cooked Sea Bass, skin side up. Drizzle olive into the sauce circling the fish. DONE.

»crosslinked«[2]

References

  1. ^ F Word (www.amazon.com)
  2. ^ »crosslinked« (gordon-ramsay-recipe.com)

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Butternut Squash Lasagne

I’m sure you get the picture now: Celebrate is a pretty good book and you ought to buy it if you like the sound of it.

But just for laughs here’s one last recipe from it, for a butternut squash lasagne, which is really great.

I don’t especially like butternut squash but I often feel, especially at this dark time of year, that one really ought to make an effort to vary one’s vegetable intake, or you can go for months just eating cheese on toast and baked beans.

This is a very good thing to do for an awful lot of people and it’s also, if this is a factor, incredibly cheap to make.

Don’t be scared of the white sauce involved in this (also called a bechamel). I will talk you through it. Now is as good a time as any to learn how to make one if you don’t know how already.

Butternut Squash Lasagne
Serves 8
this is not Pippa’s precise recipe, but it’s very close.

1 large onion, peeled and thinly sliced
1.2kg butternut squash, peeled, deseeded and sliced into crescents about 0.5cm thick (that’s about the width of a pound coin).
1 bunch sage leaves
4 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced
450g fresh spinach
some nutmeg
salt and pepper
12-15 fresh or dried lasagne pasta sheets
2 x 125g balls mozzarella

for the white sauce or bechamel
125g butter
125g flour
800ml milk
75 grated parmesan, plus extra for sprinkling between layers of lasagne

Preheat the oven to 200C

1 Put the butternut squash, onion and garlic on a baking tray and sloop over some light olive oil, a generous scattering of salt and pepper and a small handful of chopped sage leaves. Roast for 20 mins.

2 NOW – make your white sauce.

– Melt the butter in a pan. I know it seems like a lot, but this is how much you need, so just go for it. That much butter takes a while to melt, about 5-10 mins.

– When the butter is melted TAKE THE PAN OFF THE HEAT and then add the flour, a tablespoon at a time. Mix and mash together between spoonfuls until you have a thick paste.

– WITH THE PAN STILL OFF THE HEAT, splash over some milk and incorporate. Then splash over some more until you have a runny concoction.

– Now put this back over a medium flame and add the rest of the milk, whisking all the time. Keep stirring and whisking until this gets very thick, then take off the heat and add the 75g parmesan. Throw in a good pinch of salt and about 6 turns of the pepper grinder.

3 Put the spinach in a pan with about 1 cm water in the bottom and grate over a bit of nutmeg, about three swipes of the nut on the grater ought to do it as nutmeg is terribly strong and too much ruins everything.

Cook this for about 5 minutes until the spinach has wilted. Then drain in a colander or sieve and really squash it down to get all the water out. I also usually have a go at it with a pair of scissors, just to make it look and seem a less like a tangle of dead leaves caught in a drain.

4 If you are using dried lasagne sheets, you now have to blanch them for 3 mins in boiling water. Now, the minute I put my sheets into boiling water they stuck together, causing me to panic and burn my fingers off later frantically unsticking them by sliding a knife between the layers.

I have no idea how one is supposed to do this without the lasagne sticking together. A lot of oil in the water or what? All suggestions welcome in the comments box.

5 Now assemble your lasagne. Put a layer of pasta on the bottom, followed by the butternut squash and onion and the spinach. Then white sauce, then a bit of parmesan. layer this as best you can, it doesn’t really matter what you end up with on top. Although if you finish with a layer of pasta, it’s wise to make sure you’ve got quite a lot of white sauce left otherwise the pasta crisps up in the oven and crunchy pasta is a bit of a challenging mouthful.

6 Finish this off with sliced mozzarella. Stick in the oven for 25-30 mins. You can fry off some sage leaves in butter and stick them on the top if you’re feeling really flash.

Alas, I just looked through my pictures and I can’t find the one I took of this lasagne. Though I’m absolutely sure I did take one. Anyway I’ve written it now and I’m not writing up another bloody recipe for something I HAVE got a photo of – I’ve got SNOW to play in!!!! So you’ll just have to imagine what it looks like.

Or buy Celebrate, it’s there on p. 30 looking splendid.

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