Cornish mackerel on cucumber and dill salad with pea and wasabi purée, by Mickael Weiss
Ingredients
(Serves six)
For the mackerel 6 portion-size mackerel fillets, skinned (very thin clear skin removed) and boned
For the pickle liquor 500ml water
100g sugar
200ml white wine vinegar
200ml white wine
10 coriander seeds
1 onion, sliced
5 black peppercorns
1 bay leaf
1 carrot, sliced
For the cucumber salad 1 cucumber
2tbs chopped dill
3tbs creme fraîche
The juice of half a lemon
Salt and pepper
For the pea and wasabi purée 150g frozen peas
1tsp wasabi powder
Method
Place the mackerel in a stainless steel tray skin side up. Cover with the cooled pickle liquor (see below), cover with cling film and place in the fridge at least 8 hours before serving but not more then 12 hours.
For the pickle liquor, bring all ingredients to a simmer for 5 minutes and set aside to cool.
For the cucumber salad, slice the cucumber thinly and season with a touch of salt. Place in a colander in the fridge for 30 minutes, remove all excess water and add dill, cream, lemon juice and pepper to taste.
For the pea and wasabi purée, cook the peas in salted water, place in a liquidiser with the wasabi powder, adding a touch of vegetable stock for consistency, blend and pass through a tamis or chinois and set aside.
Place the mackerel, salad and purée on a plate, then decorate with golden, red and candy beetroot, baby rocket salad and mint.
Mickael Weiss, head chef, Coq d'Argent, London
This dish has many elements to it that would send many wines scuttling away, stripped of fruit and appearing lean and mean.
The vinegar in the pickle liquor means a wine with particularly high acidity is likely to cope best, and mackerel is an oily fish, another reason to make sure we pick a zesty and zippy wine. Txakoli, the spritzy young wine of the Basque country, would stand up to these elements with ease, and has an affinity for seafood imprinted in its DNA. Albariño should also cope well. The other ingredient to think about is the pea and wasabi purée, the fire of wasabi another unnerving element for wine, so a lusher style of Riesling would also work well to tame the heat, such as a Clare Valley Riesling.
Zeren Wilson is a food writer and wine consultant, who runs restaurant review site www.bittenandwritten.com.
