Well here I am again with shrimps…when we cook we all find our inspiration from different sources, it can be our moms, grandmothers, books, chefs, travels, anything. For this particular recipe, I inspired myself from one of Alain Ducasse’s recipes that I twisted around quite a bit, but I kept his idea of wrapping the soba around the shrimps. Isn’t this a great idea? What I love about Alain Ducasse or Christophe Megel is that they mastered the art (it truly is an art) of blending contemporary influences with classical cuisine which awaken all your senses into a taste bud ecstasy.

At first, I thought it sounded strange, borderline unappealing, then after looking at it, and reading the recipe a little longer, I realized that this would be an amazing little appetizer. I made my own dipping sauce with pomegranate, chilis and garlic, and I could not get enough of those shrimps. Now, the original recipe deep fries the shrimps, I somehow refuse to deep fry anything, you can do it, if you want but I have a little “mental blockage” with fried food, so the devil did not manage to make me deep fried this, even if Alain does. Désolée Alain, je n’aime pas la friture! I am sure he would understand!

What I love about this recipe is its composition of textures and flavors.

The soba get a very pleasant crunchy bite due to the batter where ice cubes have been added at end of the process, they melted in the mixture, it helped make the batter light therefore give a particular crunchiness to the soba. There is a feast going on in your palate at first bite, and it’s such an exciting sensation!

Ingredients for about 10 shrimps

• 10 shrimps, deveined
• 2.11 oz (or 60 g) regular soba or green tea soba
• 1/3 cup (or 75 g) cornstarch
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup (or 100 g) flour
• 1/3 cup (or 75 g) water
• 1/3 (or 75 g) cup ice cubes
• salt and pepper

For the pomegranate-chili dipping sauce

• 1/2 cup pure unsweetened pomegranate juice
• 2 tbs pomegranate glaze
• 1 tbs honey
• 2 tbs rice vinegar
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 chili, finely diced
• salt

Preparation

Bring a pot of water to a boil, add soba, cook for a few minutes until still a little crunchy, then remove from heat, drain and place in chilled water. Let cool, drain and set aside.

Dip shrimps in corn starch.

In a mixing bowl, mix egg with flour and water, stir well. Add ice cubes and keep stirring until they dissolve.

Dip soba in batter, remove excess batter and wrap around the shrimps.

Heat olive oil in a pan (enough to get 2 mm of oil in the pan), then add shrimps, let them brown on all surfaces. When cooked removefrom pan, and pat dry with a paper towel to remove excess oil. Serve hot with dipping sauce.

For the dipping sauce

Mix all ingredients together except the garlic and chili and cook for a few minutes until the honey is dissolved and the sauce has a little reduced. Let it cool, then add chili and garlic.

One of the greatest gentleman in the food blogsphere, Lazaro Bernal form Lazaro Cooks kindly requested me if I could guest post on his blog. Of course, I accepted with great enthusiasm and excitement. I think it’s an honor to be a guest post on someone’s blog. Usually, it doesn’t take me forever to find a recipe to post, but this time I wanted to find the perfect recipe that would fit Lazaro Cooks and that would be a combination of creativity, flavors, colors and that represents exactly what I love, and what Lazaro’s blog is all about.

I love all kinds of cuisines but I tend to go towards light and flavorful tastes with a Mediterranean flair. Here they’re combined with Asian flavors (because I do love Asian cuisine too, did not have the time to become an expert in it, but I do love to combine Asian ingredients to more Western ones) and the result is a perfectly balanced soba dish with amazing flavors and textures.

For this dish, I got inspired by one of Alain Ducasse‘s recipe, people who have been reading my blog, must know that I am a huge Ducasse fan. I changed a few items and twisted it around but the theme of combining Eastern and Western flavors is there and since Lazaro is a huge “connaisseur” of French cuisine, I knew he would approve my choice.

Go check out his blog for the recipe!

This recipe has been adapted from an Alain Ducasse‘s recipe, one of my favorite chefs…yes I know I keep repeating this and will do so anytime I prepare something from his kitchen, because I am such a huge fan of his.

The recipe has been modified a little in the sense that I needed girolles mushrooms, since I couldn’t find any and a drive to whole foods was not an option, I used shiitake. The other ingredients I did not use was the ham in the beurre d’herbes, so I did not add ham but I will add it to the ingredients’ list and people can either decide to add it or not. Other than that I followed the recipe “à la lettre” (meaning word per word).

I was offered this book called “La Cuisine de Ducasse par Sophie” a few Christmas back and once in a while and dig into it to try its wonderful recipes. They’re not too time-consuming but most of all, the recipes are focusing on flavors and simplicity.

Basically, any white fish with a dense flesh works in this recipe, so that when you serve it it doesn’t fall apart. The exciting part of this dish are really two things. Don’t you think that there is always an exciting aspect to a dish, either an ingredient, or a method of cooking, but just something? Here is the beurre d’herbes, and the garlic. Beurre d’herbes (herb-butter) is a mixture of herbs, nuts, condiments, citrus and of course butter “demi-sel” (so you need a good quality butter) and it is absolutely divine. It makes me want to make a jar of beurre d’herbes, cook it in the oven and eat it with a spoon. Then the garlic gloves have been “confites” meaning candied, slowly cooked for over an hour with herbs. The great thing about this garlic is that you can make a batch and keep them in a jar in the refrigerator and use them when needed.

Beurre demi-sel (half salted butter) contains between 0.5 g and 3 g of salt per 100 grams of butter vs. beurre salé (salted butter) contains over 3 g of salt per 100 grams of butter. Usually in those butters, different types of  high valued salts have been incorporated such as Guérande salt, Noirmoutier salt, fleur de sel, etc…In the US you can find Beurre D’Isigny as a demi-sel, whole Foods sells it. A great quality butter makes an incredible difference.

Tomato concassée is quite straight forward, concasser means to chop roughly, not in tiny pieces so that’s what happened to those tomatoes. It’s a common French culinary word used to describe how something has been cut.

Ingredients for 6

For the fish and side

• 6 cod fillets or any dense white fish (about 6.34 oz or 180 g each)
• 8 tomatoes on the vine, seedless, peeled and roughly cut
• 10.50 oz (or 300 g) girolles mushrooms or shiitake
• 1 bunch basil (keep 12 leaves for decoration)
• 3 tbs olive oil
• 6 garlic cloves, candied
• salt and pepper

For the herb-butter

• 5.30 oz (or 150 g) butter, soft, demi-sel
• 1 oz (or 30 g) almonds, chopped
• 1 oz (or 30 g) walnuts, chopped
• 1 garlic clove, crushed
• 1 tsp strong Dijon mustard a l’ancienne
• 1 thin slice ham (Jabugo or Serrano), cubed
• zest of 1/2 lemon
• 2 tbs mixed herbs, chopped (parsley, chives, chervil)
• salt and pepper

For the candied garlic batch

• 30 garlic cloves
• 1 sprig rosemary
• 2 sprigs thyme
• olive oil

Preparation

For the herb-butter

Mix lemon zest with the butter and all other ingredients.

For the tomato concassée and mushrooms

Heat 2 tbs olive oil, add tomatoes and let them cook at medium heat  until the water evaporates. Add salt and pepper. In another pan, saute mushrooms in 1 tbs olive oil at high heat for about 2-3 minutes. Add 15 basil leaves, chopped, salt and pepper and mix well.

Mix tomatoes and mushrooms and candied garlic. Adjust seasoning and keep warm.

For the candied garlic

Cover garlic with olive oil, add herbs and cook slowly for about 1h30 min in a small covered pot. When cooked, pour in a jar with the olive oil and place in the refrigerator for future use.

Finishing and presentation

Pre-heat oven at 240C on circular heat mode. Add salt and pepper to the cod fillets. Spread herb-butter on top of the fillets and cook for about 10 minutes. Place tomato-mushroom mixture in the center of plates. Add cod on top. Sprinkle with Fleur de Sel and basil and serve immediately.