Fillet of sea bass with essence of red peppers

Dish as in the book

Out of all Marco's fish dishes in the book this was the one that caught my eye the most. Sea bass stuffed with a mousse of scallops served with pasta, vegetables and a Provençal scented pepper sauce, sounds good doesn't it? Well lets go ahead and make it!

Things didn't exactly get off to the best of starts, on opening the sea bass I discovered that some imbecile had either stuck a knife through the skin at the top of one of the fillets or while pin boning the fish had been a bit heavy handed. This lead to huge concerns that the mousse would leak out of the fillet during cooking.

Fresh pasta dough

Nevertheless I cracked on and began making the pasta for the 'pasta rostis' part of the dish. This actually surprised me as watching the clip on Youtube of Marco serving this dish to Nico Ladenis you wonder how he gets fresh pasta into a perfect nest to take the weight of the sea bass. Well in actual fact the pasta is blanched, then placed into ring moulds and toasted in hot olive oil to make it crispy and set into a cylinder shape.

Fresh pasta is a joy to make and I've had many practices with many different recipes trying to find one that works consistently. Ironically its a Frenchman who's recipe works best of all. Raymond Blanc's recipe puts 200g 'OO' pasta flour to two medium eggs and a pinch of salt, brilliant for making sensible portion size pasta if there's only a couple of you. After mixing the flour, eggs and salt together I kneaded the dough until it became firm but still with the slightest bit of give in it. This is important as many times I've ended up with a piece of dough the texture of bread dough and its become too soft and sticky to put through the machine.

Pasta made into Tagliatelle

 

 After rolling and blanching the pasta I placed two chef's rings in a pan with some olive oil, filled them with the tagliatelle and fried over a gentle heat for a couple of minutes, be careful when turning the rings over as they will be hot and pasta will try and make a break for it!



Pasta rostis in the pan

Now onto the sauce which was made by placing shallots, sliced red pepper, garlic, star anise and basil into a pan and sautéing in olive oil. Add white wine vinegar and vermouth and enjoy the smell of Provence. Adding the jus de nage (which as Marco says is 'the actual base for the actual sauce') and a little water allowing the whole lot to cook down and reduce for 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes I liquidized the sauce in a blender having removed the star anise and garlic resulting in a deep orange sauce which is passed through a muslin lined sieve. Top tip here is instead of forking out £8.50 from John Lewis or wherever you choose to buy muslin cloths, simply buy a pack of multi purpose cloths, mine were about 45p for a pack of 20, they do the job incredibly well.

First stages of the sauce

 

Straining the sauce 3-4 times gives you an incredibly smooth, silky sauce and by adding olive oil, butter and a touch of orange juice it makes quite possibly the best sauce I've ever tasted, so so fresh and the colour was incredible.

The only things left to do were to cut vegetables into squares, fry in olive oil and prepare the bass for stuffing. I made a scallop mousse earlier in the recipe by combining scallops, double cream, cayenne pepper and a little lemon juice to make a smooth creamy mousseline. Yum.

Mousseline of scallops

 

This mousse then is smeared onto the centre of the sea bass which has been sliced open to create two 'flaps'. I'd definitely recommend a sharp knife and a steady hand while doing this, the bass fillets just about met in the middle to cover the mousse leaving a basil leaf and lemon juice to be placed over the top before wrapping in cling film.

Setting up my new steamer I placed the bass in for five minutes to cook, however after five minutes the fish was still underdone so mine took between 6-8 minutes. Perhaps the steamer wasn't quite hot enough or the cooking time was a little off.



Wrapped bass ready for steaming

All the elements were in place and it was time to plate up. One of the real joys of Marco's food is plating it, there's no silly squiggles or drag quenelles, drizzles of sauces or that kind of thing, just proper portions of very tasty food.

The final plate

Time to eat and its dish that surprises for sure. The pasta under the bass is crispy, almost like super al-dente pasta bake territory. Nico Ladenis describes it as 'disintegrating when you crunch it' and hes right, it does melt in the mouth unlike any pasta I've had before. The sauce is the king of the dish, Pierre White's sauces in the book so far have been the star of most of the dishes cooked, its fresh, vibrant and the colour is beautiful. The bass itself I was little underwhelmed by, the fish was cooked perfectly but the mousse was little gelatinous, a strange texture but not unpleasant.

Could the dish be improved? I think so, by crisping up the skin on the sea bass and probably omitting the mousse, or serving a tortellini with the mousse inside it could be an idea to try in the future, overall its a perfect showstopper dish.