Seabream and prawns with ratatouille and balsamic reduction

 

This recipe has found a place on the blog very unplanned. I called my friend over to have a lunch together and I planed to prepare something nice because I passed the exam. I wasn’t planning to take a photo of the recipe, just wanted to have a nice lunch and good glass of wine after exam. But when I finshed, I realised that I must take one picture, so I placed the plate on the window and take a photo and it turned up great 🙂

I adore seabream and prawns so I don’t want to complicate the recipe with too many things. In my opinion, simplicity is the best way to show the beauty of great ingredients like seabream. I hope you’ll like it .

This recipe serve two people.

Ingredients

• two medium seabream
• to large prawns

For my version of ratatouille

• 1 small zucchini                                                           
• 1 medium onion
• 1 medium fennel
• 1-2 tomatoes
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 celery stalk
• glass of good white wine 
• pinch of saffron, oregano or marjoram and few leaves of fresh basil

 

Instructions

First, you need to slice vegetables on 2cm chunks and fry them in large pot on medium-high heat with a drizzle of olive oil. First put onion, fennel, celery and  zucchini  and when they got the color, add the tomatoes and white wine along with the saffron and marjoram. Reduce the heat on low and cook 30 minutes. If you want your ratatouille to look pretty, then don’t stir after reducing the heat and the chunks of vegetables will stay as you sliced them; but if you want to increse the flavour, then stir vegetables to make something much more interesting, but honestly not so pretty. I decided to go with the second option and then to cover the not pretty ratatouille with a beautiful fillet of seabrem. So, when you serve it, it looks and tastes absolutely amazing. Originally, white wine isn’t used in ratatouille, but at the other side, French and the wine, they put it literally in everything . So use French wine and you are good. Like white burgundy or Chardonnay.

While the ratatouille is cooking in a small sauce pan, put 50ml of balsamic vinegar and reduce it until you get syrupy structure. Leave it to cool, and while it’s cooling, it will become more and more syrupy and sticky. At the same time, fillet the fish and clean the prawns or leave them in their natural shells as I do. Drizzle a little of olive oil in the frying or grill pan that’s set on medium-high heat and grill the fish on skin side down from 4 to 5 minutes, depending on the size of the fish. You can watch how fish is cooking and notice that, as time goes by, the heat penetrating trough the fish and becoming more white from the bottom to the top. The golden rule of cooking any fish is to cook it 95% on skin side down and then just before it’s done turn it for a couple of seconds on the other side to finsh it. If you ask me, a little bit rare fish is always better then the overcooked and dry fish.

The job is done. It’s only left for you to put the food on the plates and you are done. Enjoy in this beautiful sea flavours 🙂

Orada i gambori sa ratatuijem i redukovanom balzamikom 

Veoma sa ponosan na ovaj recept , jer sam ga spremao više puta ali ga nikada nisam slikao pa je i ova slika sasvim slučajno ispala . Iskreno oduševim se svaki put kada je vidim tako da sam odlučio da obelodanim recept koji je veoma jednostavan , a opet isprepletan sa puno različitih ukusa iz ratatuija. Na ratatuiji francuzi gledaju kao corbu od mešanog povrća i po njihovom mišljenju povrće koje se stavlja zavisi od onoga ko pravi ratatuiji , naravno postoje neki osnovni sastojci koji se koriste kao što su beli i crni luk paradajz tikvice i patlidžan koji sam ja na kraju krajeva izbegao a dodao komorač. Pored njega trebate da ispečete još ribu i da redukujete balzamiku. Odparivenje ili redukovanje balzamike je trik koji sam video od jednog poznatog engleskog kuvara koji kaže da svaka balzamika koja ne košta preko 10 evra po bočici nije prava Italijanska balzamika i treba je odkuvati da bi se dobio intenzivniji ukus i slučan ukus prave balzamike koja stoji dugi vremenski period u buradima pre samog flaširanja.

Generalno recept je veoma jednostavan i fokusiran je na predivnom ukusu orade.

Sastojci

• 2 srednje orade
• 2 velika gambora

Sastojci za ratatuji

 

• jedan crni luk
• jedan komorač srednje veličine
• 1-2 paradajza
• 2 čena belog luka
• 1 stabljika celera
• 1 mala tikvica
• čaša dobrog belog vina 
• prstohvat šafrana malo svežeg bosiljka i origano ili majoran

 

Instrukcije

U srednjem loncu ugrejte malo maslinovog ulja na srednje jakoj vatri i dodajte svo povće iseckano (2cm debljine) osim paradajza i kratko propržite a zatim dodajte paradjz, začine i belo vino i kuvajte 30minuta na slaboj vatri. Ako želite da vam ratatuji izgleda lepo nemojte da mešate povrće za vreme kuvanja i svi komadi će ostati relativno uniformni ,  medjutim ako želite da unapredite ukus mešajte povrće s vremena na vreme i dobićete mnogo ukusniji mada manje lep ratatuji.

Dok se on kuva isfiletirajte ribu i oljuštite gambore ili ih ostavite u ljusci kao što sam ja uradio. Balzamiku stavite u malu šerpu i kuvajte je dok se tečnost ne smanji za više od pola i pretvori u nesto slično sirupu. Dok se hladi balzamiko će postajati sve sirupastije. Ribu je najbolje da pečete na gril tiganju mada je i običan dobar. Ugrejte ga na srednje jaku vatru i stavite ribu da se peče sa strane kože. Pecite ribu na toj strani 95 posto vremena i tik pred kraj kada vidite da je skoro skroz pečena okrenite je sa druge strane na samo par sekundi da se zapeče. Po meni je uvek bolje da vam riba ostane u sredini malo živa nego da je prepečena i nesočna. Nadam se da će vam se svideti recept 🙂