Thou shalt have a fishy...

Fishy day today. I do love a good bit of fish. The 'mis en place' list (chef talk for kitchen to do list) was to fillet a plaice, fillet a red mullet, sweet pastry, preserved lemons, de-vein tiger prawns, monkfish tails, mayonnaise, tartare sauce, shellfish stock, fish goujons and finish the crème brûlée. Joe showed us how to fillet and prepare the flat fish, plaice today. I have never filleted a flat fish, only a mackerel before, so I was intrigued to see how to do and and get stuck in.

Fresh fish should 'smell of the sea', have bright eyes, pink or maroon gills and have 'sea slime' all over them. This slime can be slippery when filleting, so you need to wipe it off with kitchen towel so you don't fillet your finger by mistake! A little tip, if the fish is moving around too much when working on, put some rock salt underneath it to hold it in place.

On the left is the before photo, the plaice is whole. On the right, is after, one large top fillet and the bottom two. The dark bits aren't a mistake, just the roe.

So, we made our starter of our three course lunch of deep-fried plaice goujons with home-made tartare sauce. We floured, egged and breadcrumbed the goujons and then made the mayonnaise first, turning it into tartare sauce by adding capers, parsley and gherkins. To give the mayonnaise some flavour, we added a lot of salt pepper and a good squeeze, if not two, of a lemon. Here's another tip for you, to stop seeds from falling out of the lemon when being squeezed, wrap the lemon half in cling film and poke the flesh with a knife a few times. Squeeze, and only juice will come out, not seeds. Ta-dah!

I knew that mayonnaise was bad for you as it has a lot of oil, but I didn't realise just how much!! There's nothing particularly good for you in it, apart from the lemon juice. And I found out what they do to make it white commercially. You're basically paying a lot for added water. Knowing just how much oil is in there has put me off it a bit, I have to say. This is a sad day. Maybe it can be a treat! Anyway, we each made enough for at least 3 starter portions. But I piled it all on the plate to scoff. Standard.

They were very tasty and would be great as a canapé. The trouble is, an average-sized plaice costs around £3.50 and the actual flesh you get from it isn't much in comparison. So to get your money back and a profit in a restaurant, you would have to charge about £8 a starter.

We made the main course of bouillabaisse by making fish stock from scratch, which doesn't take long to make at all. We made the rest of the French fishy soup using ingredients including vegetables, real saffron (the most expensive spice in the world), monkfish, red mullet, tiger prawns, mussels and clams. We filleted the red mullet and pin-boned it and I nicked my left index finger ironically whilst wiping the knife to get the slime off it, so I didn't slip and cut myself. So that's 2 out of 8 fingers, one week in. D'oh!

We had a treat this course, as we had some special wines that had been matched with the particular dish we were eating and it went so well together. Yum! In between this and the pudding, we whipped up, not literally, a sweet pastry to use on Monday, giving it time firm up and be rollable for a lemon tart. I'm loving how much lemon we're using on this course so far. The wonder ingredient. And great for cleaning too, as Kim and Aggie would say. A quick blast of the blow torch on some sugar on top of the crème brûlée and pudding was ready. More matched wine, which so sooooo good, I could probably drink a bottle or two of it. And the crème brûlée. Well, I'm not usually a fan of the dish, but with this recipe, I now am. It was the best one I'd ever had. Yum yum yummy!

Monday is beef day, with fillet steak for supper. Oh yes. Although I've thoroughly enjoyed every bit of the week, I'm glad it's the weekend as I can definitely feel I've been doing a lot! I need to re-charge my batteries. I still need to practice chopping and the skills I've learnt. So my challenge is to cook for the family tomorrow night. I'm going to make the supreme of chicken, followed by either the chocolate mousse or crème brûlée. Wish me luck! I can't believe that the first week is over! 25% of the course has been completed. Boo! But there's so much more to come. If we do all of this in an 'easing in' week, the next few weeks are going to be full-on. I can't wait!