' SWEET CIDER CLAMS in PEA DASHI SAUCE .'

Sweet Apple cider poached Clams in Pea Dashi sauce with Pea butter, Shelled sweet peas, Fennel blossom and Thai Purple Basil flowers.

                      This little taster dish taking you from the shores to the garden bed doesn't look like too much has gone into it and this would be a great misconception and in fact is an example of the way contempory cooking is going. This dish is actually quite refined in the flavours and the techniques to reach the outcome. Modernists chefs or cooks out there today instead of just grouping ingredients together are dissecting individual ingredients, pulling them apart so to speak and refining or enhancing individual elements of a particular ingredient. In this dish the humble sweet pea has been tampered with dividing the watery part of a pea from its solid starches, in doing this the sweet, grassy flavours of a pea are more enhanced as the flavour is not diluted in all the starch of a pea. When this pea water thats been extracted is then enhanced with kombu seaweed and bonito fish flakes, ( the ingredients of a dashi broth) and then vacuum sealed and allowed to impart in the pea water via a 53 deg. c. sous vide bath, the resulting taste of this pea water is just incredible. Thicken this water up to a sauce consistency and serve with Sweetened cider poached clams for a heavenly taste sensation.                                                                      
                     I began making this dish by cooking some sweet peas in boiling water until soft and tender. Once drained I cooled the peas in a chilled water bath, drained and pureed in a blender with the smallest amount of water, just enough to help the blending process. This was then placed into a cheese cloth lined colander allowing the puree to drain its liquid, towards the end the pulp was squeezed through the cloth to get the remaining pea water. This process was then repeated with the collected water another couple of times until most of the solid matter was out of the water, leaving the water a vibrant lime green colour. The solids captured in the cheese cloth was then scraped into a bowl and set aside in the fridge, this is the pea butter. This separation is done using a centrifuge in a commercial kitchen and gives a more pure result and it would be a true statement if the purist would say my primitive separation doesn't have the same effect. But for those of us that can't afford a centrifuge for home cooking can still appreciate the concept to a certain point. The pea water was then frozen solid into ice cubes before being placed into a food grade plastic pouch along with a piece of dried kombu kelp and some bonito flakes. The pouch was then vacuum sealed and placed into a 53 degree C. sous vide bath for 30 minutes allowing the dashi flavours to infuse with the now defrosted pea water. The pea dashi was then  removed from the pouch and strained into a saucepan which was then brought to a slow simmer and then removed from the heat. With a small amount I made a paste with a little arrowroot flour adding this back to the dashi and returning the saucepan to heat for a minute, whisking to thicken the sauce. The sauce was then set aside. Just before serving I placed a saucepan on a medium heat with enough sweet apple cider to cover some clams, when the cider reached a simmer I placed the clams and chopped shallots to the cider and placed a lid on the pot poaching the clams until they open up. These were then removed from the stove and using a slotted spoon placed into a small pool of the dashi sauce in the centre of the plate, Smearing some of the warmed pea butter to accompany and finishing the plate with a forage from the backyard garden adding a hint of anise with the fennel blossom bursting with fennel flavoured pollen and some tiny purple basil flowers also carrying the flavour of its origin.                                  

' 53 deg . C . PINK LING in ICHIBAN DASHI .'

53 degree C. sous vide cooked Pink Ling fillet in Ichiban Dashi with Aubergine & wakame miso dumplings, Wakame seaweed and lemon zest.

           This was a little Japanese influenced dish, that uses the dashi and miso dumplings to accompany an otherwise delicately flavoured fillet of fish. Ichiban dashi or 'first sea stock' is the stock collected from two ingredients Kombu, which is a type of kelp and Katsuobushi, dried bonito fish flakes. Once the stock is made a second stock can be made using the same ingredients called 'Niban dashi'. Dashi is economical and extremely easy and quick to make in comparison to other stocks where you have to boil carcasses or roast bones or fry prawn heads, dashi takes just about 30 minutes to make and is highly nutritious. The element of umami, considered one of the five basic favours in Japanese cuisine, is present in dashi by the use of Katsuobushi which contains high levels of sodium inosinate which has been identified as a source of umami.                                                                                                          
         To make this dish I started with roasting a whole eggplant in a 220 degree C. oven for about 20-25 minutes until the skin were roasted and separated from the pulp which was soft. I removed the eggplant from the oven and allowed to cool a little before peeling off the skin. I removed the seeds from the pulp and placed into the blender with some wakame miso and a little water and blended to form a runny puree. This was added to a mix of wheat and buckwheat flour to form a dough. Next I made the dashi by placing three strips of dried kombu kelp with 4 cups of water in a saucepan to soak for 15 minutes. I then place the saucepan on the stove and brought the water and kelp up to just before boiling point before removing from the heat and adding half a cup of bonito flakes scattering over the top. After about 3-4 minutes the katsuobushi had sunk to the bottom, I then strained the stock through a cheese cloth lined strainer and set aside for serving. While the eggplant was roasting a set the sous vide machine to 53 deg. C. and placed a fillet of pink ling with a little crushed ginger and some butter into vacuum sealed plastic pouch and cooked the fish at 53 degree C. for 30 minutes. To serve a placed the spent ingredients from the dashi back into the saucepan with 4 cups of water and brought the water to the boil, simmering for around 10 minutes to form a second sea stock called the Niban dashi. While the dashi was simmering I formed little rounded balls with the dough and once the dashi was ready and strained. The dashi was returned to the simmer and the dumplings were cooked in the dashi for about 2-3 minutes.
      To serve I reheated the ichiban dashi , pouring the dashi into a flat bottom bowl. I then placed the Pink Ling fillet in the centre of the bowl, arranging some seaweed and the dumplings around the fish. I then topped the fish with a little lemon zest.