Sicilian · Main
Cuscusu di Pesce alla Trapanese
- Advanced
- 70 min
- roughly 4 of 4 for cost
Leads with fresh herbs arguing happily on top, a floral thread lifting the aroma, closing toasted and warm.
Ingredients
- 500g coarse semolina (semola grossa)
- 250ml salted water at room temperature, for the incocciatura
- 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, for the grain
- 1.5kg mixed rock fish, scaled and gutted (scorfano, gallinella, tracina)
- 150g onion, chopped
- 400g ripe tomatoes, chopped
- 60g blanched almonds, ground
- 3 garlic cloves
- 0.2g saffron threads
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 small dried peperoncino
- 100ml extra virgin olive oil
- a large bunch of flat parsley
- 200g plain flour mixed to a paste with water, for the sealing rope
- salt and black pepper
The skills inside
Whipping a meringueReducing a sauceSteaming: basket, leaf and lidThe bare simmer: holding liquid below the boilSalted water & the float testBlanching & shockingStraining & passing through a sieve
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · nuts · fish
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Spread the semolina in a wide bowl, flick on the salted water a few drops at a time and work it in one direction with spread fingertips for 20 minutes, until every grain wears a skin and nothing is larger than a peppercorn. 20 min
- Rub the 3 tbsp of oil through the grain, then rake it with your fingers until it feels dry and separate again.
- Simmer the fish heads and bones with half the rock fish, the onion, garlic, tomato, almonds, saffron, bay, peperoncino and parsley in 2 litres of water for 40 minutes, until the broth runs orange and coats a spoon, then press it through a sieve. 40 min
- Load the grain loosely into the couscoussier basket, set it over the simmering broth, seal the joint with a rope of flour paste and steam 60 minutes, until steam breaks through the top of the grain. 60 min
- Poach the remaining fish in the strained broth for 8 minutes, until the flesh parts from the bone at the touch of a fork. 8 min
- Tip the grain into a warm bowl and add hot broth a ladle at a time until it drinks its fill and stands in soft peaks, cover with a cloth and leave 30 minutes before serving the fish alongside. 30 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Whipping a meringue 40 recipes
- Bowl and whisk are clean and dry with no trace of fat or yolk. Grease prevents the foam outright, and there is no recovering a bowl that had it partway through.
- The sugar went in gradually once the whites were already foaming, rather than all at once at the start.
- No grit: a little rubbed between finger and thumb feels smooth, so the sugar has dissolved into the foam rather than sitting in it.
- Stiff peaks means the tip stands with a slight bow when the whisk lifts, and the bowl can be tipped without the mass moving in it.
- Glossy and smooth rather than chalky or dull, with no liquid gathering underneath it in the bowl.
Where it goes wrong It was whipped past stiff peaks. A minute beyond glory the protein network tightens and tears, the foam turns grainy and matte, water weeps out beneath it, and folding that into anything gives a mixture that collapses on the way to the oven.
Blanching & shocking 76 recipes
- A large volume at a hard rolling boil, and enough of it that adding the food barely interrupts it; a pot that goes quiet has started stewing rather than blanching.
- Timed rather than watched, and short. This is an interruption in the cooking of something, not the cooking of it.
- The ice bath was made and standing beside the pot BEFORE anything went into the water, not started once the timer went off.
- It went straight into the ice water, fully submerged, and stayed until cold at the centre: a piece still warm inside is still cooking, and the arrest has not happened yet.
- Drained and dried afterwards rather than left sitting in water, so it does not carry that water into whatever it meets next.
Where it goes wrong The ice bath was not ready, so the food sat draining in a colander while its own residual heat carried on cooking it. By the time it cooled it was a stage past where it was pulled, and exact arrest is the entire reason for blanching rather than simply boiling.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Vermentino or Sauvignon Blanc
- Also Right
- Albariño
- From the Taps
- Witbier
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus
Lean fish, bright acid, done: coastal whites built beside the same boats; the fresher the fish, the leaner the pour.
Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.