Sole and Salmon Timbales

Wednesday 4 August

We had some little scrappy bits of sole left over from Monday, so we decided to whip them into timbales. Sole is an ideal fish for mousses and moulds, as it is slightly gelatinous, but it has very bland flavor, so we kicked it up with a package of Trader Joe's smoked salmon pieces.

Our guide was Julia Child's Way to Cook - and it really is the way to cook.

First, Holt made a choux paste - not a polish, mind - using:

1/2 cup water

1/2 tsp. salt

2 Tbsps. butter

1/2 cup flour

2 large eggs

If you've never made choux paste, it's sort of magical. You can watch how it's done on web videos like this.

At the end, we added a tsp. of fresh thyme leaves (we used lime thyme).

In the meantime, we whizzed up the following in the robot-coupe:

5-6 oz. sole

4 oz. lox pieces

Mix in about a half cup of heavy cream, and then a dribble more at a time with the machine on pulse, till it's smooth.

Then all the choux paste when it was ready and cool.

Season with salt, white pepper, and yet more lime thyme leaves.

Put the resultant fish mousse into buttered ramekins, set them in a water-bath in a 350-degree oven, and let them bake for around 40 minutes till puffy. You can then let them cool for ten minutes and unmould them, but we just ate them out of the ramekins, and they were fine.

But we also did a little experiment. The mousse looked nice and stiff, so we took some extra and spooned it onto a silpat sheet in the same oven the ramekins were cooking in. After 30 mins, it made a nice brown puff, and tasted great.

We served our timbales with the tail end of the corn relish we made on Monday. Basically the same ingredients went into both meals, but they tasted different - and delicious - each time.