Marco - episode 1 clip 2

The flesh of that salmon has to be pretty firm to withstand that slicing that you're doing down there. Sure, I mean it can't be too firm, I mean sometimes salmon can be too fresh, it's got to have a couple of days rest, otherwise it's just, it's got rigor mortis within it and they're too hard to fillet. How many portions do you get out of that, say that side? Four. Four out of the whole fish. So that's the first stage of the tomato, the tomato butter sauce. Basically we've got the little cherry tomatoes, we put them in the liquidizer, skins, seeds, everything. Liquidize them for about 30 seconds just to break down the pulp and then what we do is we actually pass them through a very fine sieve to remove them. And it's just tomatoes and butter this is? Just tomatoes and butter, a little olive oil. So we have the tomato puree here which is brought to the simmer and then it's liaised with olive oil and butter, finished with a little seasoning, a little orange juice, tomato concasse and fresh truffles and then the salmon's poached for about two minutes in goose fat. Goose fat? Fish. It's got a nice subtle flavor and it gives the salmon a great flavor and salmon's a very oily fish anyway, so you're not, it's not as if it's turning it into grease because it's only poached in there and it's removed out and no flavor's lost. That will take about two minutes in there. Won't that absorb the fat though because it's not? Well you're sealing, you're sealing everything with inside the salmon. We put the puree of tomatoes on which we did to begin with by just liquidizing the tomatoes on the stove just to bring it up, not to boil it because if you boil it then you separate it, it splits out. Up the butter. It seems to me that your dishes are getting simpler the more confidence that you gain. Simplicity has been always the secret to everything, it really has. The more you add the more you're taking away really so you've got to know when to stop. So we've got the texture nice and velvety and we add a few truffles just to give it that earthy flavor. It's so fresh just to get the balance. It smells very powerful. A little orange, a little pepper, a little salt. That's ready now. Now we just warm it slowly on the stove. Heat in this kitchen seems to grow. So now then we sauce the plate. Salmon. Then we have the scallop of salmon with the tomatoes and the truffle. What's it like to take off the magazine? Which magazine? Which magazine was it? Which chef of the year? Narvik got it, didn't he? Narvik got it. Did he win it? Yeah. He was in it last year as well. When I was a kid I used to go fishing. Every week I used to fish two, three times a week. I suppose it's very nice. It allows your imagination or your mind just to drift. There's no pressure. Fishing is one of those things is you don't have to apply much thought to it. You just cast and you just sort of think. You sort of just lay there on the bank sort of just watching the end of your rod in the sky. And I mean it's very simple. It's very therapeutic. And if you catch something, you catch something. If you don't, you don't. It's great. It's great. Simple. And I suppose that is a great thing, having that at once with Colin. Bring in the log, Stephen. Yeah, wind the log in, boy. You'll do all right there, believe me. I saw a man catch a tench there last year. Okay, the next dish we're going to do is a very, very simple dish. It's just fried liver and and also don't have the skill to prepare these dishes. Two-star chefs, of course, never cry, especially when they keep peeling onions. The only time I can imagine a two-star chef crying is either if he goes from two to three or from two to one, whichever way. Carrots, liver, and onions. Great marriage. Half of Britain was brought up on it. But not car's liver, of course. Depends where you came from. I suppose if you came from Yorkshire, it was pig's liver. I suppose if you're in the south, it was car's liver. Did you eat pig's liver as a child? Um, well, I suppose as a kid I didn't know whether it was pig's liver or car's liver. But now, thinking back when I was a kid, it can't be car's liver. You didn't like it? I don't think. No, no, no, no. So you take a little butter, just a little. Don't need that much. That's for the onions, is it? Yeah. First we've got to melt that. Car's liver isn't a stranger to your menu, but onions would be. No, when we do the, say for example, we do the car's liver with limes for lunch menu, we always serve it on a bed of caramelised onions. Do you? Always. So your butter's starting to sizzle now. It's getting there. Right. How can you cook anything slowly on such a hot oven? Who said fried onions should be cooked slowly? Well, I always thought they should be. I thought that was the secret of them. It obviously isn't. If you cook them very, very slowly, you remove the acidity, sure, and you bring out the natural sugar, which will give them a natural sweetness. But I want that nice roasted flavour, so I want them to get nice and brown. There's nothing quite like the smell of frying onions, is there? I don't know, I could think of a few things much nicer. So as you can see now, they're nicely caramelised. I'm going to drain them of their fat. I personally like it with such a vinegar. That's sherry vinegar. Yeah, it helps cut the richness of the car's liver. Yeah, it's horses for courses.