Dinner for Four

Friends from the Hessian visit us, there need to be meals cooked with pleasure, and much. In the morning at the market in Münster we find everything we need. Especially the star of the evening - a whole redfish, which we christened Robert in spontaneous affection. The fish seller from Fischhaus Kittner talked me into it. Actually, I wanted fillet with skin, but she made the baked whole fish palatable to me.

To take it in advance - I did not regret it. But in order. The menu:

• Scallops on lamb’s lettuce with plum and raspberry vinaigrette.
• Redfish with chanterelles and spinach on pointed cabbage-potato mash
• Elderflower curd with lavender raspberries and almond brittle

Scallops on lamb’s lettuce with plum-raspberry vinaigrette.

So first there’s salad. I had bought it spontaneously at the last minute from an unknown dealer. Accordingly, it is a bit tousled. I can’t help it and dress it with a raspberry-plum vinegar-wild herb oil vinaigrette. I acquired the latter two ingredients from Michael Laumen at Gutshaus Woldzegarten - he can’t help it, even though he no longer produces at Kloster Rühn.

I get the raspberry part from the leftover raspberry puree from the dessert production, see below.

The scallops are fried briefly as usual and served on the salad. It’s accompanied by toast with red wine pimento butter, which I still find in the freezer.

Redfish with chanterelles and spinach on pointed cabbage and potato mash

Meanwhile, there’s real action in the kitchen. There’s plenty to prepare.

Clean 1kg of spinach and finely chop 1 clove of garlic.

250g chanterelles clean, in addition 1 bunch spring onions clean and cut into slices and 1/2 glass white wine, 1/2 cup cream as well as 2 cubes frozen mushroom stock provide for the sauce

1 kg potatoes unpeeled 1/2 cut cabbage into very thin strips 125g butter from the refrigerator

clean 1 whole redfish (scales are not necessary) and form a herb butter ball with some dill and parsley sprigs and some butter and salt. Fill Robert with the herb butter and place on a small portioning ring on a baking sheet so that it can cook standing up in the oven.

So now the fish in the oven, it will stay there at 180° for about 35 minutes, as recommended to me by the dealer.

In the meantime the semi-firm potatoes are boiling and you can peel them and mash them with the half piece of butter. I have previously steamed the pointed cabbage in butter until soft and seasoned it with nutmeg, pepper and salt. I now add it to the mashed potatoes and keep the whole thing warm.

The chanterelles are not cleaned individually today, they are just roughly pre-sorted and washed, since they are in a cream sauce anyways. I dry them and try to fry them, but I can’t - they are too moist. Never mind, I add the onions (I also add a little lard), then the white wine and the cream. Season the whole thing with salt and pepper and simmer until the dish is assembled. The spinach is easy to care for and is steamed in a little oil with the garlic and salt.

The mashed potatoes are spread on plates and the spinach is placed on top. I put the plates in the hot oven, which is now turned off because Robert’s last hour has come. He has done well on the tray and I split the skin at the top next to the dorsal fin and can then just fold it down to the side on both sides. The fillets are now perfect to lift off and place on top of the spinach. They are juicy, but cooked. Just as they should be. On top comes the chanterelle sauce and a little arugula and dill for garnish.

Yummy. I find that this fish-mushroom-potato combination suits me very well, it is structurally very similar to pike-perch with mashed potatoes after all.

Elderflower curd with lavender raspberries and almond brittle.

We are out of everything but one bowl of potatoes. So we have to wait until there is room for the dessert I made in the afternoon.

500g low-fat quark mixed with 1/2 cup of cream, some sugar, some elderflower jelly

We also have raspberry-lavender sauce as an intermediate layer. Ingredients:

1 small bowl of raspberries, 1 teaspoon of lavender flowers

Sort out about 25 nice raspberries from the small bowl and save them. Boil the rest with a little red grape juice, about 1 tsp of lavender (be careful - do not overdose) and sugar until a uniform mass is formed. Pass this mass through a sieve. so that the seeds and the lavender flowers are removed.

Layer curd in drinking glasses, filling in a red intermediate layer of the raspberry puree when half the amount is left. Fill up remaining curd and top with the whole raspberries.

Blanch and peel a handful of almonds Melt a handful of sugar in a pan without stirring

Coarsely chop the almonds and add them in. Stir until the mixture turns brownish-caramel and it smells like a Christmas market. Then pour the pan contents into a heatproof, lightly greased bowl and let cool. Be careful, the caramel will stay hot for a while and cause nasty burns if you touch it!

Roughly chop the caramel mixture and add to the curd just before serving. I add a little mint to this.

A menu that led to the premature end of the evening, as everyone got tired with a full belly and went to bed. So nothing for long parties ;)

But at least a post for a blog event….

an aesthetic view on grilled ocean perch, lying flat on the plate, side-to-side with potato-pointy-cabbage mesh, long lens, depth of field, shot from material height, hyperrealistic, chanterelle, steamed spinach, very photorealistic, food magazine style, award-winning photo, big white plate for many persons, unreal engine rendering, light background, bright image