Fish to Dish: seabass and seaweed

Posted on September 16, 2016 by admin

Our seabass dish is a perfect example of highlighting how produce can naturally enhance flavour profiles – roasted seabass with confit heritage tomato, pickled dulse and sea lettuce.

We stopped by the kitchen to speak to Executive Chef Dale Osborne about how he preps this dish and why he chose to match these flavours together.

 Twenty-two whole seabass come in every day ready to be filleted and prepared. This job is usually carried out by the chef de partie position and assisting Dale with the filleting, when were in the kitchen, was chef Thomas.

First thing to do is the unglamorous job of scaling and carefully cutting the fish into fillets. Next Thomas cut the fish into precise portions, each portion is then weighed to ensure consistent size and therefore quality.

The seabass is then trimmed down, weighed to make sure they are all the same size, and the skin is scored. The reason for the scoring is that when fish is cooked the skin shrinks, these cuts ensure that the skin doesn’t buckle. By cutting into the skin you are also allowing for heat to penetrate deeper into the fish, so you that you get an even cook.

Each portion is pan fried then finished off in the oven.

The seabass is served with confit Isle of Wight heritage tomatoes, and seaweed.

The tomatoes are confit with shallots and garlic. To confit is to cook the produce for a long time, over a very low heat. With tomatoes you cook them until the skin can be easily peeled off. At aqua shard we go through 15 – 20 kilos of tomatoes a day.

Chef Dale uses three types of seaweed within this dish – Red dulse, Cornish lettuce sea weed, and Peppered dulse. The reason Dale has chosen to use seaweed in this dish is because it brings natural seasoning of salt to the dish, and tomatoes work well with a lot of salt. Seafood and seaweed are a symbiotic culinary match, which make seaweed is a lovely and interesting addition to any fish dish!

Our roasted seabass dish is available on our a la carte menu, for lunch and dinner, book here to try this dish.