Coriander Haddock Sous-Vide with Sauté Potato and Asparagus

This dish is fantastic for entertaining friends and a simple saturday night witha few beers. I did the latter tonight and feel genuinely happy having eaten this. Its surprisingly easy and quick, but sounds dead flash!

I'll break the recipie down into three for each part. For timing reasons, the Haddock takes about 3 minutes prep, 11 minutes cooking, the potatoes take about 15 prep, 10 cooking and the asparagus should take no more than 90 seconds.

Coriander Haddock Sous-Vide

Sous-vide is basically houte cuisine speak for boil in the bag. Done well, it can take up to 72 hours, but I think the principle of it can be transferred to the house very easily and incredibly quickly. For me, the boil in the bag method allows for a poached texture to fish, keeping it medium rare of course, but the fact that your protecting it from the water or stock, means you can force very distinct flavours on white fish.

For this get a reasonable chunky haddock fillet, season lightly, and place in a boiling bag. You can get these bags online or in supermarkets, but for this one I was stuck and have a job lot of Morrissons Boil in the bag rice lying around, so i threw out the rice and kept the bag. In with the fish put in 1 tbsp of dry white wine and a bunch of coriander. Any flavours you use will come out really strong, so feel free to experiment with great results, but avoid garlic, as this can be almost pungent in this method.
Boil a pot of water, and place the bag in. Ensure you have pressed all the air out of the bag and closed it with two wooden pegs. Leave this in for 11 minutes, which should get you rare fish, then leave to rest in the bag out of the water, and the evapourating wine will bring it up to medium rate and infuse into the flesh beautifully.

Sauté Potatoes,

This one is fairly simple. Peel and Par boil some small to medium sized potatoes, then cut into small quarters, toss in some olive oil and shallow fry with a half clove of garlic and basil until crispy and golden brown.



Blanched Asparagus

This is dead easy, but also easy to seriously mess up and timing is key. Boil some unoiled, salted water and put the asparagus in for EXACTLY one minute, draining quickly. In the pot, put in a knob of butter and when it melted, throw in the asparagus for 30 seconds, with some salt and pepper. Do this last, as they can be served straight to plate then. Be very careful not to over cook.

Serve the Haddock on top of the asparagus bed, with the potatoes in the middle in a dish.

Enjoy!