Taming the beast
Chef and owner of Gather Food and Wine, Tom Tilbury, takes out his knife and with precision begins filleting a small tommy ruff. With a couple swift movements, the fish is deboned, butterflied and ready to place on the hibachi grill.
Tom’s preparing a version of the dish he’ll cooking at Beast – the event he’s involved in at Tasting Australia presented by RAA Travel.
I watch as he expertly grills the tommy ruff, glazing it with a miso marinade before plating it up with a fennel salad and macadamia cream.
Tom’s dish highlights his passion for local and ethically harvested ingredients, and the sour nature of the fennel salad complements the grilled fish perfectly. Don’t believe me? Try the dish for yourself. Watch the video and then follow the recipe below.
Grilled tommy ruff with macadamia cream and fennel salad
Ingredients
4 whole tommy ruff, butterflied from belly up with the head on – ask the fish monger to dry fillet the fish
1 cup of apple wood chips or other smoking chips
Fish marinade
50g good-quality yellow miso paste
20g grapeseed oil
7g sugar
5ml apple cider vinegar
zest of half a lemon
Macadamia cream
250g macadamia
100ml water
50g grapeseed oil
Salt to taste
Fennel salad
2 large fennel bulbs
16 fennel flowers
12 small sweet basil leaves
12 small Thai basil leaves
20 small lemon basil leaves
12 oregano leaves
4 marigold flowers
30ml apple cider vinegar
Salt
Sugar
Lemon juice from 2 lemons
10ml grapeseed oil
200ml vegetable stock
1 bay leaf
Lemon zest of one lemon
Method
- Buy your fish on the day of cooking and store it on paper towel skin-side up. Dab the fish skin with some paper towel to remove any moisture and keep it as cold and dry as possible. This will help to stop the fish from sticking when it’s grilled.
- For the fish marinade, blend all ingredients together until smooth and set aside.
- To make the macadamia cream, toast the nuts at 140C for 25 minutes until golden brown. Allow to cool and then place in blender with all other macadamia cream ingredients except for the salt. Blend for four minutes then add salt to taste. Blend for another minute. Add more salt if required then set aside.
- For the fennel salad, dice the fennel bulbs into centimetre pieces. Keep both bulbs separate and dress with juice from 1 of the lemons (this reduces oxidisation).
- Add the vegetable stock and bay leaf to a small saucepan and bring to a simmer. Place one fennel bulb in the vegetable stock and cook on low heat for 15 minutes until translucent. Take off the heat and allow to cool in the stock. Once cool, strain the fennel from the stock and reserve the stock and fennel separately. Dress fennel in 5ml of the grape seed oil and season with salt and sugar to taste.
- Place the second fennel bulb in a small plastic container that has a lid that seals. Season with one per cent of its weight in salt and sit for 30 minutes. After one hour, bring the vinegar and reserved stock to the boil. Once boiling, pour over the salted fennel bulb and place lid on to seal in the steam, let steam on bench until cold. Once the fennel has cooled, strain off the liquid. Season the fennel with lemon juice and zest.
- To cook the fish, heat a barbecue to high or Japanese charcoal grill. Place the fish on a cake rack skin side down and place above the barbecue grill. Cooking the fish on the cake rack will help ensure the skin doesn’t stick. Once the fish is almost cooked, remove from the heat and use a lightly oiled baking tray to place over the fish. Flip the cake rack with the fish over so the fish is skin side up on the tray. Brush the fish skin with the marinade and torch the skin with a blow torch to caramelise. The fish should be slightly rare in the middle
- To plate, add a tablespoon of macadamia cream off to one side of four plates, mix the two fennels together and place a pile of each next to the macadamia cream. Mix all the herbs, fennel flowers and marigold petals together and cover the macadamia cream and fennel. Place the cooked whole fish next to the fennel salad.