Search This Blog

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

dorade en croute de sel

Last Sunday we decided (since it was so SUNNY HERE!) to check out the open air market near our place next to Bastille.  It was BUSY but great!  Since we were just talking about our trip to Guadeloupe we decided to get some lunch from a Guadeloupian/Martiniquian Creole stand.  It was great!  Then we bought some fresh veggies, fruits, sausage and some Dorade which is a white fish - which in English it's called Sea Bream (whatever that is!)

When we were in London at a French Bistro F had the best Dorade which was encrusted in salt...it looked like a pastry that covered it.  They do not serve it with the crust.  It was cooked to perfection.  So we decided we can do this!  So we bought the fish and headed home.

After doing some research online we noticed that it took A LOT of sea salt to cook two fish...1 kilogram of salt per fish (which is 2lbs of salt per fish)!!!  So we headed to a small epicere (convenience store) which are the only stores open on a Sunday evening.

We washed, gutted, scaled (which some recipes called for not doing this...next time we will not), took off all the fins.  With the 4lbs of sea salt we added two egg whites and enough water to make the salt a bit moist.  Then we laid a good 3/4 of an inch of salt down on a baking pan, laid the fish on top, and covered the remaining salt over the two fish.  Pics will show what it looked like.  They looked like big snow balls ;-)





Then we put it in the oven for 30 mins.  When the fish was done the salt mixture was as hard as a rock.  We had to hammer it out.  The skin unfortunately came off in the process but no biggie...this is why next time we will not scale the fish!



I thought with that much salt the fish might turn out too salty but it was perfect!  We rarely cook fish at home but this recipe was so simple I'm sure we will be eating fish at home more often ;-)



2 comments:

  1. That looks delicious!
    I love seafood... unfortunatly I am married to a man who is allergic to shellfish and doesn't care for cooked fish (raw is ok!)
    But maybe I can make this for my parents and fix something else for Steve... it looks easy enough.
    Do you think it works with all types of fish or just that type?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Angel,

    Not sure BUT I would think so! Maybe don't try it with a naturally salty fish. White Fish would work I think. I think it is a bit of a waste for all the salt you use up...BUT it's not like Salt is expensive ;-) And it is really easy! Like I said do not scale the fish. Just gut it and snip off the fins etc...

    Too bad about the hubs not liking fish! No shellfish that sucks! We normally don't cook fish at home either because of this too...he had a reaction on White Fish at a young age. But he has had Dorade many times since we have been here so we know it is good for him. Since we don't eat it at home I ALWAYS order fish when in restaurants!

    Good luck let me know how it turns out!

    ReplyDelete