Sherry cured monkfish, avocado, beetroot, vierge dressing

Yield 6

Author Steven Farhall

Prep time

3 Hour

Total time

3 Hour

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Sherry cured monkfish, avocado, beetroot, vierge dressing

There’s some dishes as a chef that you just keep coming back to. This is definitely one of them for me! Its incredibly simple and has a perfect balance of sharp, savoury and sweet flavours and looks impressive on the plate. It also requires the smallest amount of actual cooking. Monkfish has a texture unlike no other fish and works great in a sweet, salty cure. We pre-marinate the fish in sweet sherry before curing. Once its firm its easy to slice thinly and serve with a simple citrus dressing, alongside an avocado puree, beetroot gel and some baby herbs. Get your fishmonger to take the fillets off the bone and skin them for you. If they’re nice they will also remove the membrane covering the fillets. Ask for the bones and they can be used for a fresh fish stock in other dishes.

Ingredients

For the monkfish

• 1 1/2 lbs monkfish fillet
• sweet sherry
• 2 x 7 ounces fine salt
• 100g caster sugar
• 50g sweet paprika

For the beetroot gel

• 2 x whole beetroot raw
• 1 tbsp caster sugar
• splash red wine vinegar
• gellan gum (type f)

for the avocado puree

• 2 avocado
• 1 lime juiced
• handful fresh coriander leaves

For the vierge dressing

• Juice of 1 lime
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 125ml extra virgin olive oil
• chopped parsley
• chopped chervil
• chopped coriander

For the garnish

• Baby coriander leaves
• tomato concasse
• sweet paprika
• thinly sliced jalapeno (if you like a bit of spice!)

Instructions

For the monkfish

1. Remove the fillets from the monkfish and skin them if your fishmonger hasn’t done this for you. The flesh of the monkfish has a transparent, hard membrane covering it which needs removing before marinating. Start at the thicker part of the fillet and separate the membrane from the flesh then use your filleting knife to remove. You can also pull if off with your hands but be careful to not also rip off the flesh and ruin the fillet. Once this has been removed place the fillet in a non-reactive container which it fits in snuggly and cover with sweet sherry. Place in the fridge to marinate for a couple of hours. After this grab a bowl and make the cure. Mix together fine salt with half the amount of sugar and then half again of paprika. I’ve added measurements but feel free to do this by eye depending on the amount of monkfish you have. It just needs to cover the fish completely. Pull the monkfish out of the marinade, shake off the excess then cover completely with the cure. Put this back in the fridge to cure for about 2 hours. After this time wipe off as much of the cure as you can with a fresh j cloth. Don’t rinse it under water as this will remove the paprika flavouring. Some salt will remain but thats fine. Wrap each fillet tightly with clingfilm, twist the ends and keep in the fridge until ready to use.

For the beetroot gel

1. We only want the juice from the beetroots in this recipe. If you have a juicer then feel free to use this to juice your beetroot. I use my ninja chopper or blender, add a little water if needed to blend the beetroot into a smooth pulp. Place the pulp into a muslin cloth lined sieve over a bowl and leave to let the juice come through. You can squeeze the muslin to extract the last of the juice but be careful not to squeeze through any of the flesh as your gel will become grainy. Measure how much juice you have and then weigh out 1% of gellan gum type f. I usually get around 200ml of juice from 2 beetroots so that would be 2g of gellan gum. Bring the beetroot juice to just below boiling (ideally 90oc) then blend with the gellan gum on high speed for 1 minute. I do this whole process in my ninja soup maker so don’t need to use up a pan. Then leave this mixture in the blender until set firm then blend again for another minute until you achieve a smooth, glossy gel. Put this straight into a container until ready to use.

For the avocado puree

1. Preferably you want a nice fresh avocado. Cut and remove the stone from the avocado and scoop out the flesh. Blend with the lime juice and coriander until you achieve and smooth puree. Be careful to not over blend as the heat of the blades will cook the avocado and it will turn brown.

For the dressing

1. Juice the lemon and lime into a bowl. Gradually add the olive oil until it emulsifies. Taste the dressing, you want it to be sharp, but not too sharp! Finely chop the herbs and mix in the dressing.

To serve

1. Peel back the cling film from the monkfish, slice thinly and arrange on the plate. Drizzle over the dressing to cover the fish slices. Pipe dots of the beetroot and avocado then dress with the baby coriander, tomato concasse and sprinkle over some paprika to finish.