For your enjoyment…

Do you feel the same as I do on weekends on or special holidays, or when you have guests over? I’d like to cook something very special, not the usual fare. Then I’m either spoiled for choice or I can’t think of anything at all. If even intensively searching the internet turns out to be fruitless or leafing through piles of cookbooks doesn’t turn up any solution, try our Recipe of the Month!

From the chefs of the Schick Restaurants in Vienna, every month there is a new, seasonal recipe from Austrian-Spanish or Viennese cuisine for you to prepare and enjoy at home! If you don’t want to have to prepare the recipe yourself, you can order the finished dish in comfort at the corresponding Schick Restaurant and indulge all around…

In December 2015 – recipe by Marcel Neumann – new chef of the decorated Restaurant “Das Schick”:

Roast fillet of sea bass . celery . potato cream . smoked paprika espuma

Ingredients for 4 servings:
1.2 kg fresh sea bass filets
100 g butter
10 g garlic
10 g fresh thyme
1 bunch celery stalks
230 g potatoes
0.4 l cream
3 red peppers (with a pointed shape)
1 long shallot
15 g smoked paprika powder
100 g sweet paprika powder
80 ml olive oil
salt
pepper
ground nutmeg
150 ml white wine
50 g sugar

Preparation:
Wash and peel potatoes, then cut them into small cubes (approx. 1 x 1 cm). Boil diced potatoes in salted water until soft.

Remove the bones from the sea bass fillets and carefully cut away the stomach flaps with a sharp knife. Set the fish aside in a cool place.

Wash pointed red peppers, slice them in half and remove the core. Dice peppers into small cubes. Peel shallot and cut into pieces the same size as the diced pepper. Sweat diced shallot in a bit of olive oil. Add diced pepper and a pat of butter and slowly sweat for approx. 3 minutes. Sprinkle with sugar and stir vigorously, until the sugar dissolves. Afterwards, dust mixture with paprika powder and brown for 1 minute. Quench with white wine, then allow the wine to boil away. Infuse with 120 ml water or vegetable stock, then allow to simmer for approx. 15 minutes.

Drain the boiled potatoes and place them in a pot, briefly allowing them to steam off. Afterwards, press them through a potato ricer and allow to cool.

Wash celery, remove the root connecting the stalks and carefully peel the individual stalks to remove the threads. Cut the celery into pieces about 1 cm in length and set them aside.

Once the peppers have softened, puree them with a hand mixer and pass them through a fine sieve. Fill the pepper stock with approx. 150 ml cream, season to taste with salt and pepper, add a pat of butter and froth up using a hand mixer.

Mix the potatoes with the remaining cream. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg and froth up well on low heat.
TIP: If you have an iSi bottle, you can fill it with the warm mixture and froth it up using 2 cartridges.

Boil celery in salt water until firm to the bite (you can boil it longer if you like it softer).

Salt sea bass fillets and sauté them in olive oil with the skin side down, until the fish detaches from the base of the pan. Then turn the fillets, add butter, thyme and garlic, dousing the fish roughly every 30 seconds with the frothed butter. Allow the fried sea bass to drip onto paper towels.

Pour off excess liquid from celery and toss with a couple pats of butter and some of the stock so that a creamy consistency ensues.

Froth up the lukewarm pepper stock once more and serve as we show in our photo (the celery is underneath the potato cream).

We wish you much success… bon appétit!