In the Le Halle Cookbook, Anthony Bourdain really stresses how necessary it is to have your shit together. Of course, even he isn't so gauche as to say that - the fancy name for it is mis en place, but whatever you call it, he's really spot on.
It's even more important when you're cooking a dish with about five or so parts that need to be plated more or less together. A sensitive smoke alarm really doesn't help, but doesn't seem to have hurt proceedings (other than stressing me out, and thus stressing my partner out).
And speaking of partners, this is also one of those rare occasions where I simply had to have help. Normally, I like to fly solo in the kitchen, but this was beyond me. If you're doing something like this, another set of hands is just as important as good prep. Remember: this is why kitchens have so many stations!
Scotch Fillet with spinach, mash and stuffed zucchini flowers
Woolies is starting to do a really lovely range of home-brand meats, and the scotch fillet they're doing is no exception. Vacuum-packed in clear and black plastic, it's well marbled and coloured, and cooks up a treat. Not too expensive, either.
The rest of the ingredients are pretty basic, with the possible exception of the zucchini flowers. The joy of our produce co-op arrangement is you're never quite sure what you're going to get, and will sometimes get stuff you'd never think of getting yourself in a million years. So I was determined to do these justice, and found a good basic recipe to start with.
ingredients
One scotch fillet (our was big enough to halve)
Two dutch cream potatos
One yam
Handful of baby spinach
Chicken stock
Two Swiss brown mushrooms
One Shitake mushroom
Four zucchini flowers (we had female ones, with the added tiny zucchini)
Ricotta
Shallot
Continental parsley
25ogm flour
450ml mineral water (preferably cold)
Vegetable oil
Parmesan cheese
Salt & pepper (is here in effect)
Crikey, that's a lot more ingredients than I usually cook with!
I really can't stress enough that with something like this you need to carefully work out what needs to be cooked when. Which, to be honest, I'm not sure I did - this is definitely a keeper, but it needs some serious streamlining work. However, if you want to follow this recipe slavishly, here's what to do.
Stand around looking at your pile of stuff, wishing you had the wherewithal to buy some wine while shopping. Not for the meal, but for the cook. Then work on some more prep - pour enough vegetable oil into a small pot to cover the zucchini flowers, get a pot of salted water going for the potato and yams, and get a non-stick pan ready for the steak.
Clean the tubers (it IS a tuber!), peel the yam, then chop it all up - reasonably smallish to get it to cook faster. While waiting for the water to boil (which you may want to stare at suspiciously at this point), get the flower stuffing ready.
Add a few healthy Imperial dollops of ricotta to a mixing bowl, then add finely chopped parsley and shallot. Mix well, then spoon into a kitchen bag (and chop the corner off once full to create a DIY piping bag). Realise water is finally boiling, and toss in the tubers.
Stand back, with the immense feeling that you must be missing something, and turn on the heat under the steak pan. Realise you still need to make the batter for the flowers, and call in your girlfriend.
She should mix up the flower and mineral water (this makes a really light batter), while you realise that flower stuffing, while sounding vaguely rude, is actually merely fiddly. Oh, and you should also carefully remove the stamen from the flowers - this too is fiddly. The flowers themselves are already partially split, and it's very easy to widen this as you mess about with stamen and stuffing. Just take your time; fill up each flower with the stuffing to the level of split in the petals themselves, then twist closed. Pass the finished flowers to your girlfriend (a boyfriend may suffice), and then get startled by how much your supposedly clean non-stick pan is smoking.
Toss the halved fillet into the pan after seasoning it with salt and pepper, and then squeal in rage when the smoke alarms go off in your apartment. Remove pan from heat, run around like headless chicken removing batteries from potentially lifesaving devices.
Return to steak, fuss over possibly ruining the meat (which you haven't), and get on with the job. Cook the steak a touch over a minute each side, and remove to rest. If it's a good pan and good meat, no oil is necessary at all - you'll end up with enough pan juices from the meat itself. Deglaze the pan with a bit of chicken stock, and then add the finely sliced mushrooms and some more sliced shallots.
Meanwhile, your girlfriend, other or cat should be frying the flowers. Just dip them carefully in the batter (they're pretty fragile), leave for about thirty seconds, and the remove and repeat. We wanted a slightly heavier battering, so repeated the entire process of batter and fry. Leave the flowers on a tea towel or paper towel to drain the oil.
At this time, you should have forgotten your potatoes, so remove them from the heat, drain them, and make a really rough and ready mash. Just add some milk, though to be accurate you should not have nearly enough, and you should forget to add butter. But there's some of that ricotta left, so that's worth experimenting with. Mash til... mashed.
Dash back to the mushrooms, remove from heat, and arrange around the rim of two dinner plates. Add more stock to the pan, and quickly wilt the spinach leaves. Add dollop of mash to the center of each plate, then layer the spinach on top, then add the fillet on top of that. Carefully arrange the zucchini flowers on either side of the tasty mound, and then great some parmesan onto the flowers.
Done (thank fuck).
It all turned out pretty well, with the exception of my nerves - but that's fire alarms for you. The mash has a lovely sweet flavour from the yam, and this goes nicely with the earthy taste of the mushrooms and spinach. The zucchini flowers are great - nice and crunchy because of the batter, brilliantly rich and soft from the ricotta, and fresh and snappy from the small zucchini itself.
The steak itself is simple but hard to beat. In future I think the dish could really serve from adding something with more bite to it to cut through all the creaminess. Something with balsamic seems like a good idea, or perhaps a tartly sweet berry sauce. So, more experimentation necessary on that front. I'd also like to try sharper flavours for the flower stuffing - I've read that anchovies work well on that front.
But all in all pretty good, if I do say so myself.
