I’ve got a lovely dish for you and it looks beautiful. It’s roasted beetroot with a celeriac rémoulade and pan-fried mackerel.
The first part of this, I’m going to do now and then you won’t see again ’til probably the end. I’m just going to take some raw beetroot, which I peeled, and I’m going to cut them into little wedges. Let me do that quickly because, strictly speaking, I could have done this before. They go in there, you can cook them off first if you’d like, but actually it doesn’t really make a great deal of difference. Bit of extra virgin olive oil. Actually that’s groundnut oil, but it doesn’t matter, it has the same effect. Even better, actually. More à la mode, everyone’s doing it at the moment. On a tray, in the oven, 35 minutes, job done.
Right, the celeriac rémoulade bit. I’m going to take the top off, we may use those in the garnish later on, but the next job is just to… You see I’m using a bread knife for this, I’m just going to go all the way around. We’ll edit this down so that you don’t have to see it, because that is quite dull. Right, I’ve got all the outer skin off. I’m not going to do the whole thing, because I’m just going to do a portion for the vid. What we’re going to do is just cut these into strips for the rémoulade. It’ll be quite rough and ready. So I’m just going to cut those into strips like that, you can do them matchsticks or as raw as you like. I actually will probably go a bit thinner than that, probably that sort of level. So I’m just going to carry on doing those ’til I’ve got as many as I need. But that’s pretty much the length that I want, I’ll maybe then just cut them in half like that.
So we’re going to do a mayonnaise, which we’re then going to mix with that. So I’ve got an egg yolk, that goes in, a drop of lemon juice, and we’re also going to put some mustard in just to thicken the whole thing out. Give it a good… A little bit of seasoning as well, actually, salt and pepper, and horseradish. Give that a good old mix. The secret to a good mayonnaise is just to put little droplets of the oil in as you go along until you get a nice thick mayonnaise consistency. And then at the very end, we’re going to add the horseradish. Right, I’m quite happy with that, so the horseradish is going to go in, give it a good old mix. Tiny bit more, tiny bit more oil. And then I’m just going to throw in these, the celeriac, and give those a good old mix. And we’ll come back to those later on.
Beetroot’s cooking away and we’re just going to now, I’m going to show you how to fillet the mackerel and then we’re going to assemble everything, make a little salad, job done.
The next part of this epic is the mackerel. I’ve got quite a thin, small one here, so the idea here is to make it into a starter portion. I’m going take the fillet off. Use a flexible knife like that. I like to start at the tail, other people will do it from the head, going up. But that’s basically how to fillet a round fish, and I’ll just do the other side.
The next part of the job is to pin bone it. If you just run your finger along, you will see that there are plenty of bones, and I’ll do a few in front of the camera. The rest I will do on my own. There is another way of doing this. You can cut them out if you like. Personally, I don’t really like doing that but anyway. So I’m going to pin bone all of these, and as soon as I’ve done that we’ll start cooking the fish off.
Right, so I’m just going to gently score the skin to stop it from completely shrinking. There we go. And then it’s on a very delicate heat, but I’m going to cook them flesh side down. And the idea behind that is, move them around. They’re going to gently cook for two or three minutes and then I’m going to flip them over for the end of it, and it should mean that the skin stays together. And then we can serve it on the crispy skin side up.
Those are now done, so I’m just going to take them off. We have the leaves for the celeriac and also for the beetroot, so I’m just going to sweat those down as if they were spinach and then include those in the dish as a little green salad bit. So those will take about two or three minutes to cook down, and then we’ll put the dish together with everything.
Right, let’s take the beetroot out. And we’re ready to plate up. So I’m going to use these leaves as the base, it’s quite nice to have as colour. But obviously, they taste quite nice, too. I’m going to put a little bit of the celeriac, I don’t want to use all of it, but a little bit goes along like that. Little line of beetroot. Now, interestingly enough, here we go. I just thought of this but, if you serve this to someone as a starter in its own right, I actually think they would be quite happy with that. I think this looks like got quite a nice dish. You’ve got your beetroot along there. Chefs are obsessed with having odd numbers, so I will be no different. So there we go. And then, we’re just going to finish off with the mackerel.
I hope you enjoyed that. Next week, what we’re going to do for you is a home-baked chocolate chip cookie.
