Pancetta-wrapped monkfish with asparagus risotto and a sage pine nut crunch

Pancetta-wrapped monkfish with asparagus risotto and a sage pine nut crunch

Ingredients

For the pancetta wrapped
monkfish
1 large monkfish fillet (300 gr)
15 g butter
100 g sliced pancetta
6-8 sage leaves

For the risotto
150 g risotto rice
15 g butter
1/2 small white onion
75 g Parmesan (grated)
700 ml chicken stock
300 g green asparagus

For the sage and pine nut crunch
30 g pine nuts
3-4 sage leaves
Olive oil
Salt
Method

For the pancetta-wrapped monkfish
1. Clean the monkfish fillet of fat and impurities.
2. Season the monkfish with pepper and salt. Lay the pancetta
slices on the cutting board and top them with the monkfish fillet.
Place some sage leaves on one side and wrap the fillet in the
pancetta. Refrigerate for about 15 minutes.

For the pine nut crunch
1. Toast the pine nuts at 180°C in the oven till golden brown. Leave
them to cool down. Chop some sage leaves, and then chop the pine
nuts with a knife. Season with salt and olive oil.

For the risotto
1. Chop the onion, grate the Parmesan and chop the asparagus small
pieces.
2. Slowly sweat the onions in the butter. Add the risotto rice and coat
evenly. Add 3/4 of the stock in several stages. Cook whilst stirring
the rice for about 10 minutes.
3. Add the chopped asparagus and cook for 3 more minutes. The rice
should be cooked “al dente”. Keep on the side.

To finish
1. Place a non-stick pan over medium heat and add a drop of oil. Fry
the pancetta-wrapped monkfish on all sides till the pancetta is crispy
and brown. Add a spoonful of butter and roast the monkfish gently till
it’s just cooked. Leave to rest for 4-5 minutes.
2. Finish the risotto with the Parmesan, the remaining stock and stir
until it forms a beautiful sauce around the rice grains. Season to
taste with salt if necessary.
3. Spoon the risotto into the plate. Carve the monkfish into slices and
add it on top. Finish with the pine nut crunch, sage leaves and serve
right away.

Now, this is a dish that I really, really love to eat. It has been something I’ve been cooking for years throughout my career and I’ve cooked it in all different types of places. I cooked it in restaurants, on boats, in private residences, in my own home, on the market from a Dutch box bicycle and it is risotto. I find it just so delicious. The creaminess, the parmesan cheese, the bite in the rice grain and then pair it with a beautiful fish like the mangish what we’re going to be doing today. So, the dish that I’ll be showing to you is a ponchetta wrapped monk fish with a pine nut and sage crunch. And we’ll do an green asparagus risotto that’s going to bring creaminess to this dish. We have crunch, we have texture, we have fish, but then we also have this really yummy saltiness from the ponetta. And altogether, an absolute stellar dish. This is something that I call comfort food, but we’re going to be smoothing it up a little bit. It’s going to be looking beautiful. It’s going to really go well in a nice three course menu. It’s going to also go really well on its own. It’s something that I like to cook for lunch or for dinner. When my friends come over, I want to show you exactly how I do it. Just a few things that you really need to take care of when you make a beautiful roto. You make sure that you have enough stock. Make sure you put enough Parmesan. You make sure that you heat it up last minute just before it goes to the table. That that creamy Parmesan is going to make that beautiful sauce that binds around the rice grains. Going to top that with that lovely cooked monk fish in the ponetta with a crunch of the pine nuts and a little bit of sage and all together a flavor bomb that definitely will fall into taste with anybody that you’ll be cooking for. So, let’s crack on. We’re going to start with filleting the monk fish. Now, you can go to your uh your butcher and just get a fillet, but when you get a whole tail, it’s really easy to carve it off. We’re going to take care of the senue. Going to show you exactly how it’s done. beautiful fillet of monk fish. There’s a little bit of tissue here on the end that we don’t really want to have. We’re going to be carving that off later once we have filleted off the bone. But there’s a large bone running right through the middle here. So, with a nice sharp knife, we can slice exactly along that. Follow the bones. Filing fish is a skill on its own. I’m not going in depth into filleting fish. which I will definitely show you one day how you can clean up different fishes like a turbo, like a a sea bass, like a monk fish. But as you see today, all we need to do is make sure you have a sharp knife and you very gently follow wherever the bone takes you. It’s almost like the fish is guiding me where I have to go. I can’t see where I go, but I can feel it. I can feel where the bone is giving resistance. I can feel where I have to cut through all the way down to the bottom. Gorgeous. Nice and clean. There’s not a bit of fish left there. And that’s where you see that you have done a great job. Do the other side as well. Always a tad more difficult because you don’t have uh the rest of the fish anymore. The rest is a little bit swimming in the air, but we still follow the bone. Let the knife do the work and gently slice down. Bones are a great ingredient for stock for a fish stock. Whenever you dye your own fish, keep the bones, roast them in the oven, boil them in a nice stock, make yourself a delicious broth. Nothing should go to waste when you have a beautiful fish and something that is really fresh. So, as we see here, few bits that we need to take care of. Going to carve the knife under and take off the bit of skin. When you get yours from the butcher, ask them to prepare your fillet. make sure that they take that off so you don’t have to do it at home if you don’t feel like it goes on here. See the knife slides on just under there. Don’t want to waste any of that beautiful fish. Just want to make sure that we get rid of the things that we don’t really like to eat. And that’s it. Perfectly prepared monkfish fillets. Really quickly, just clean up your cutting board a little bit. Get the fish off. Don’t need to change as yet. And we’re going to lay out the ponchetta. Extra thin, extra fine sliced ponchetta. But always look for the bits that has more meat than fat because really going to need it to stick around the monk fish. And we’re going to be making beautiful layers of the ponchetta. It’s going to be easiest when it comes from the fridge because ponchetta has a tendency to be really soft because there’s such a high fat content on them. So, we keep them in the fridge until just before laying out to make sure that it’s easy to handle. Then we’re going to be placing the monkfish on top. We’re going to season it a little bit. Going to put some leaves of sage inside there. It’s going to give it a beautiful flavor and a beautiful color as well. Until we have the really nice long layer of panchetta slices. Stunning. Now we will season our monkfish. little bit on the top. Nicely seasoned on the bottom. And we’re going to place that right on top. We’re going to add a few sage leaves. Just make a little line all the way across the back of that monk fish fillet. That’s about just right with your knife. I can fold over the chata all the way till there. Make sure this is a nice and tight roll. Want to push back to fill it a little bit so it fills up exactly where the boneta is. And then we roll it over. Just like that. Trim a little extras. We can leave the top and the bottom. Going to cut the monk fish fillet in half a little bit easier. Then later it fits in the pan and it’s easier to handle. So you put your two pieces on a tray. Going to put it in the fridge. Let it set really nicely and we’re going to continue with prepping our risoto. And there we are back. We have a nice clean cutting board. We are ready to prep our risoto. So we have this beautiful rice grains. Carnoli risoto. One of my favorite types of of risotto rice. There’s several variants of risotto rice. But one of my favorites always carnoli because it just has a tendency to hold a bite a little bit better than let’s say its counterpart aoreio or or other types. We have a bunch of pine nuts that we’re going to be toasting in the oven. We’ll have an onion that I’m going to show you how to chop. Give you a nice little tip on how to cut onions nicely. And a bit of butter to sweat it all together. So, we’ll start with cleaning up our onion. Cutting onions is is a big problem for many. For chefs, for home cooks, everybody knows the struggle of a perfectly cut onion. And I want to show you how I like to do it and just take away a little bit of that obstacle of these onions going all the way and I don’t really know where to cut and I have big pieces there and small pieces there and it’s falling apart and it’s just a drama. I have a little trick that’s going to make cutting onions a breeze for literally anyone with any type of knife skills, any level of knife skills. We’re going to cut onion in half. And then we’re going to take out the heart. And like that, you have way easier bits of onion to attack. Now, you can use a small knife if you’re not so not so handy with a big one. And just make really nice and thin slices. I’m going to use a big one. I am used to cutting a little bit. And like that I make my onion julenne. Turn it around, split in half and chop it again. And within a minute you have beautifully cut onions without the large chunks. Works with shellots, works with regular onions. What you want to do is always take out that center. We can cut it afterwards if we need it. We don’t need more than that. Goes straight in our risotto pot. Here we go. Butter. Our recipe 150 gram risoto rice. I use 10% butter for any recipe of risotto. So there’s 15 g of butter in there. And that is ready for gentle sweating. Now, we want to be gentle when we are sautéing these onions. We want to bring up the temperature. We’re going to melt the butter. We’re going to have the onions swim in there, but we don’t want to add any color. We don’t really want to burn the butter or the onions. They just need to be softened up a little bit until they’re translucent almost. Gently cook them over a medium heat. We’re going to be adding the rice grains. We’re going to stir them in well and then we’re going to be adding little bits of chicken stock bit by bit to cook it till that it’s almost cooked to perfection. So there’s going to be a little bit of time between preparing this rice and before we’re going to sit down at dinner. And what is so great about risoto is that you have the ability to cook it half. But once you finish it, it’s a dish that needs to be eaten on the spot. So we’re going to be cooking the rice grains until 95%. Just a little bit too much bite left. Then we’re going to be adding the Parmesan cheese and last bits of stock just before we serve. When the fish is already cooked, when everything is ready to go. And then you have that nice and creamy sauce filming around the rice grains, which is going to really make this risoto so delicious and creamy that everybody is going to wonder if you were Italian or not. Low heat starting to bubble. I’m turning down the fire a little bit. Making sure that these onions are cooking slowly, evenly, making sure they don’t burn or do not change color because you’re going to see it later on in the risotto. Once it’s cooked in the rice, you’re going to see all these little bit of burnt onion, which is really not nice. Want to make sure that this is done gently. These are cooked, we’ll be adding our risoto rice and stir that in nicely. Going to have to heat that grain really nice and nice through. It needs to have a little bit of heat to release those starches. Make sure that it’s going to absorb all of that stock afterwards and all that flavor. Going to put in a pinch of seasoning just already. So these rice grains already get that flavor enhancement. Gentle stirring. Wooden spoon. We don’t want to break the rice grains, but we do want to move them. The more you move the rice grains, the more it will release the starches. And that is what is in the end going to give that beautiful sauce around the risoto. And sometimes you get a risoto and it is kind of just grain swimming in a liquid. That is not what we want. That is not risoto. No, a beautiful risoto is moved all the time. It made sure that you add chicken stock or other type of stock little bit by little bit. And what it does is it makes friction on the rice grains. And these rice grains are rubbing off starch every time you move it. That’s all going to be absorbed in the sauce and going to bring this risoto to absolute perfection. So the rice grains are really nicely coated, nice and hot. Did not change color. Going to add a tiny bit of stock. So I have a large amount of stock ready because I want to make sure that I can make that risoto creamy. rice will keep absorbing moist until it is completely mush. And what we want to prevent obviously is that from happening, but we do want to have enough stock to always make sure that it is nice and creamy. That by the time we are serving, those rice grains are swimming in this beautiful sauce. So, we’re adding just a little bit at a time so we can build up friction to make sure that all that starch is rubbing off from the rice grains, cooking them nice and evenly. We have to make our pine nut crunch. We have to prepare our asparagus. And we have to grate the parmesan, of course. But we’re going to start with the pine nuts. They need about seven, eight minutes in the oven. I do that again on 180°. Try to keep track. Put your little laal alarm. Make sure that you don’t forget. We don’t want to have these pine nuts burning in the oven while we’re busy stirring our risoto, working on those starches and blah blah blah, whatever the chef said. Making sure we keep track of everything. Our monkfish is nicely getting in the fridge. That ponchetta is stiffing up. And once that comes out, we’re going to be frying it in the pan. And the ponchetta is going to be really nice and crunchy on the outside. And the fish is going to be cooked gently all the way to the inside. That’s the perfect time to serve. Going to top that up with a little bit of the sage and the pine nut crunch. And this is going to be a delicious dish. There’s few ingredients. There’s not many tricks to it. But once again, it’s really important that we get those things right. Make sure that we get the rice right. Make sure that we get the fish cookery right. Adding tiny bits of stock at a time. Stirring gently. So then we’ll do our beautiful seasonal asparagus. Then we grate the parmesan. I’ll use the box grater, but any grater will do. Doesn’t really matter. We want to make sure that we have enough. Parmesan is yummy. Gives a saltiness to the dish. Very important to keep in mind. Parmesan obviously has quite a bit of salt in it. It is a really well-aged cheese and we don’t want to be adding too much salt to our risotto initially because it’s the parmesan that is really going to give it that flavor kick in the end and it’s going to give it the saltiness that it needs. We need a touch of seasoning but not much. Lovely. Our asparagus. In the meantime, make sure that the risoto is stirred occasionally. not cooking too fierce. Some dark bits. They tend to be really tough. Really want to cut them off. Some go a bit up higher than the others. You kind of have to see it individually for each asparagus. Making sure that we only use the best, the most beautiful and most delicious bits. One more stir. You can already see the sauce forming around here. And that’s what you really what I’m trying to talk about when when you want to build up the resistance. You want to release those starches. It needs to be a little bit like that. Don’t want to put all the stock at once because the the grains won’t be rubbing against each other. They won’t release the starch. You won’t get that beautiful sauce around your roto that we’re so after. It has to reduce all together with the butter and the rice grains. Adding a little bit at a time. Adding a little bit at a time. Some say you’re only allowed to stir one time. Not sure who really believes in that. I’m not a firm believer of that for me. You can st left, right, center, in age, crissross. Do it as you please. Time for a few knife skills. Always glad to show you how the things are done. I have been banging on it already a few times, but you keep your fingertips in, put them on top, and make long motions with your knife. Try to cut as evenly as possible without putting any pressure. We don’t want to push down. We don’t want to use force. We want to use the knife. We want to use the length of the blade to make beautiful long strokes. Always the same motion. Always minding your fingers. I cut my fingers maybe once a week, twice a week on a bad week. So, if it does happen, don’t be alarmed. I think every chef has tortured fingers and tortured hands from the times they didn’t pay attention. Anyhow, with practice, you do get better. It goes easier. There we are. These are asparagus. Now, asparagus, they don’t need much cooking. We want to add them to the risoto just before finishing. They need maybe 2 minutes, 3 minutes, and we’re not there yet. We do see it’s getting thicker and thicker. You see, it’s really having a nice sauce. It’s already hanging around the rice grain. And there we go. Our pine nuts beautifully toasted. Lightly. Don’t need to be too dark. We just want to release those aromas, release those oils, give it a little light brown. They are perfect like that. I’ll give it a quick chop of sage. And then we season it with some olive oil and some salt and a really nice topping for on top of the fish. That’s going to give some texture to this dish. Give it a bit of a nuttiness. And we can cut our pine nuts. Now, this doesn’t need to be too precise. We can just give it a rough chop. Just we do want to kind of touch every nut, but they don’t have to be really fine. They are already small. Another cutting technique, the chopping. Put your hand on top of the blade and move it up and down with the others. Very safe for the fingers. Very effective way to chop nuts. Also, chop herbs. It’s a bit of an easier way, maybe on the knife skill, although it’s not as precise and as quick as folding it up underneath your fingertips. And we’ll put a pine nuts in a little bowl. We’ll pick a couple of leaves of sage without stems because they’re a bit hard. Keep a watchful eye on your risotto. Oh, these rains are starting to cook really perfectly, actually. You can see now that the rice grains are swelling up a little bit. I think we’re about 60% of the cooking. We’re going to want to add in our asparagus. Give it a 2minut cook. And then our base for the risotto is done. Ready to finish with the parmesan and a little bit more stock just before serving. The risotto is an easy dish. There’s not many ingredients. There’s a few, but you have to make sure that you do the things correctly. You have to make sure that you take the timings right. You take the time to really move those rice grains around. You want to really make sure that you get that sauce in the end. If you don’t have the sauce, the risoto is not going to be a success. It’s not going to be the way it’s intended. But this is cooking beautifully together. The asparagus are in now. We’ll only need another minute or two. Little drop of chicken stock. And in the meantime, we’re going to have some time to finish our crunch. And we’re going to go and put the monkfish in the pan. sear that nicely around and give that a gentle cook as well. As we did before, I’ll fold it up together with my fingers and I make my nice gentle strokes, cutting them up really thinly. And I want to give it a cross cut as well so they’re not too long. Has to really go around the pine nuts. Always using my finger as a guidance. whatever technique I’m using on the cutting. There we go. You get a pinch of coarse salt, drop of olive oil. Super simple, super delicious pineapple sage crunch. You can see right here. That’s going to be an amazing topping. Now, that’s it for the moment for our risotto. So, we have added the asparagus. The rice grains are cooked for the largest part. Now we’re going to leave it like this. So once we have done the monk fish, we’re going to finish it off. We’re going to add the parmesan. Going to get it a bit more stock. We’re going to finish it off. Make the creamy sauce around the rice grains perfectly in time to do our cooked monk fish. Place it on top. Finish with the pine nut crunch. Absolutely. Wow. So for the monk fish, thick bottom skillet, nonstick over medium heat. Again, we don’t want too high of a heat. The ponetta is really thin. It can curl up. It can burn very easily. We really don’t want to do that. We’re going to be want to using a little bit of olive oil or regular oil. Don’t really mind. We don’t want to bring up temperatures to smoking hot here. We want to put gentle and really beautifully all the way around the fish so the fish cooks slowly and evenly all the way to the inside. Touch of oil. And then we’re going to be adding a little bit of butter and some sage leaf as well at the end. So once it’s already roasted and nice and crispy, we add a little touch of butter just to give that flavor. Sprinkle a few layers of sage in the pan. All that flavor is going to be absorbed. I’m going to be roasting around the monkfish. It’s going to look absolutely divine when you do that. Fish cookery is tricky. It can easily stick to the pan. It can easily get overdone. It can easily fall apart. But I do find that monkfish is a forgiving fish. It is a really nice firm flesh, beautiful product from the sea that especially prepared like this in the crunchy ponetta is going to give you such a flavor sensation. It’s going to be so delicious when this comes out perfectly. Timing is here quite important. We only have two real things to do here, but we need to make sure that we keep our focus on because here’s where we can make or break this dish. If we do one or the other wrong, it’s not going to be as nice as we wanted it to be. Just want to make sure we get the risotto cooked to absolute perfection. Mfish nicely roasted in the pan. Add that butter. Add the sage. Finish off the dish. Nice slices on top in a beautiful plate. It’s going to be such a delicious dish. Can’t wait till this is done. And we’re ready to go. Gentle, not too much heat. You feel it go in. It’s sizzling, but it’s not smoking. It’s not fiery. It’s not heavy. It’s not harsh the fire. And we really don’t want that because we want that that fish to cook gently and slowly so it retains all the moisture inside. So, it’s going to be really really nice and juicy when we bite into it. And monkfish really has that ability that when you bite and the juices flow in your mouth and it’s so delicious. The ponchetta is going to make sure that all of that stays in the pan. Make sure that all of that stays inside the fish. And then once you carve into it in your plate, bow, absolute heaven. Reduce the heat a little bit. Now slowly cooking on all the sides. Giving it a turn. Making sure none of it burns. Making sure that petta gets really nice and crisp on all the sides. That is absolutely gorgeous. Nice and roasted. Opens up a tiny bit. Doesn’t really matter. That is fine. My chapter sometimes curls up, but no problem. Now, this is beautifully roasted. Going to add a little touch of butter and get a few sage leaves. We’re going to be adding that to the pan just before the end. See how gorgeous that is roasting all the way over the mountain fish. sage leaves. It’s going to give all that aroma into the butter. Wonderful. We’ll turn off the heat, let it slowly raise into the into the monkfish and cook it very gently. We’ll finish it off in the oven just before serving. Then it’s time to finish our ratoto. Monkfish is cooking. Almost done. Pineapput crunch ready. Almost done. Heat back on the risoto. We’re going to be finishing up. Going to add a little bit of stock. Going to add a little bit of parmesan cheese. Going to make that sauce around the rice grains really beautifully. These grains are almost cooked now. So now timing is of the essence. Make sure that we have our plate ready. Make sure that we have our pineapp crunch ready. Our monkfish is beautiful, perfectly cooked. It’s just that heat is coming up from the pan very gently. Now, risoto has to run. It can’t be a soup, but it really has to run. It needs to be soft and yummy. And when you eat your spoons full of risotto rice, it’s just going to make melting in your mouth. It’s going to be absolutely delicious. I’ve always loved risotto and and to do it right, it’s not difficult, but you need to make sure that you keep note of these few details, especially with the finishing, especially making sure that once you finish your risoto, you start eating it right away. You want to make sure that the rice does not absorb all the moisture and becomes heavy to eat because that can really ruin. We’ll be adding Parmesan cheese. Loads of it is stellar. That’s going to be ready for us to carve. Going to be cooked all the way through. Doesn’t need anymore. Just going to take it out of the pan. Leave it to rest for a little bit. with fish and with meat. Both of them really benefit from a little resting time. In this case, if I was going to carve it now, the juices will run out and you’re not going to be able to eat them. So, that will be a shame. We want to make sure that we wait, give it a few minutes time to rest, then we carve into it. Have these nice slices of beautiful cooked monk fish with the ponchetta, the creamy sauce of the risotto. There it is. You can really see the sauce forming. It’s because we move the rice grains constantly. All those starches have unleashed enough together with the parmesan is going to bind it all together to this gorgeous sauce. Delicious. Want to taste for the seasoning. Make sure we’re at the right spot with the parmesan is really lifting this up all the way until exactly where we needed. We didn’t need to add any salt. Was the parmesan that really seasoned this dish. Really made it up to the rice grain is beautifully cooked. It’s runny. You can see it is running off the spoon. There’s a really nice thick sauce there. I’ll leave it to rest for a little bit. The rice is going to absorb a bit of sauce. The consistency is going to be perfect. Going to be cutting our mang fish and this dish is going to be ready for plating. We’ll finish it up with our crunch. Just a little decorative leave of the sage. And you have an absolute stunner of a dish. And when you cut into this, you can already feel it. It is melting in the mouth like butter. Absolutely gorgeous. Perfectly cooked all the way through. Just want to move that ratoto a tiny bit more. Here I really can feel the consistency coming together. If you’re too quick, the sauce is going to form on the outside of the rice. Once you plate it up, you’re going to see it. And that’s not what we want. We want to stir this a little bit more. Release a little bit more of the starches. Bind it together with the parmesan. And that’s it. And spoon the risotto into the plate. Make sure we add enough of the liquid. That’s really what makes it delicious. We want that risotto to be really nice and creamy, crispy in the ponchetta. Finish it off with a pine nut crunch right on top. Lots of texture there. Lots of flavor. Tidy up the plate just a bit. And there you go. That is my green asparagus risotto with monk fish rolled in ponchetta with a pine nut and sage crunch.