Quite often people ask who my food heroes are, who I look up to or where I get my inspiration from. Niklas Ekstedt has been quite high on this list for quite some time now. A year ago, however, I discovered that we have our own fire fighting Viking in West Flanders. Chef Willem Hiele has been praised by many a star chief in recent years, but passionately sails his own course… Pure, wild, hospitable, gentle and with a serious dose of nostalgia for his childhood. Getting the chance to prepare a dish for Tendense’s TV together with him is an indescribable experience. In a clay workshop with Willem Hiele we made a sea bass in clay crust in the Pizza oven. In this post I try to give you an idea of the atmosphere with the accompanying dish.
Disclaimer: post in collaboration with @tendens.tv
Sea bass in clay crust from the pizza oven
Equipment
- Pizza oven or BBQ with lid
- Wecking jar
- Clay
- Baking paper
Ingredients
- 1 sea bass cleaned
Filling
- Sorrel
- fennel leaves
- lemon verbena
Salad
- Cauliflower florets from overgrown cauliflowers or ordinary
- green asparagus
- 1 handful of sorrel
- 1/2 handful of lemon verbena
- 1/2 handful of fennel leaves
- Fermented tomato can be replaced by regular tomato but is different in taste experience
- 2 tbsp Basil oil
Fermented tomato
- Fresh organic tomatoes
- water until it is completely submerged
- 2 % salt of the total weight of water + tomato
Basil oil
- 100 ml light olive oil
- 20 gr. basil
Instructions
Fermented tomato
- Weigh the weight of your fermenting jar and fill it with the tomatoes and add water until the tomatoes are completely submerged. Weigh the difference in weight.
- Drain the water and mix it with 2% of the just weighed total in salt. Dissolve the salt in the water and pour back into the clean weck jar over the tomatoes.
- Place the water lock on the weckpot and place it in a warm (25-30°C) dark place for at least 3 weeks. In this recipe fermented tomato of 1 year old was used.
Basil oil
- Heat up the oil and lightly heat it up at a low temperature fire(+-80°C) and add the basil.
- Let the oil infuse with the basil for +- 1 hour.
- Remove the basil leaves and pour the oil into a sterile bottle.
Sea bass in clay crust
- Fill the abdominal cavity of the cleaned sea bass with leaves of sorrel, lemon verbena and leaves of fennel (or fennel).
- Place the rest of this foliage on baking paper and roll it around the sea bass. In this way you can create a steam oven with herbs inside the pizza oven or BBQ.
- Roll out the clay and place the package on the clay (+-1/2cm). Then wrap the sea bass in herbs in the clay and place for +-20 minutes (depending on the size of the sea bass) in the hot pizza oven (+-300°C).
- Carefully take the sea bass in clay crust out of the oven and gently tap the clay open. Remove the foliage and serve the sea bass with the salad.
Salad
- Lightly drizzle the cauliflower florets and asparagus with oil and sprinkle with salt. Grill over medium heat until slightly charred.
- Spread the sorrel, lemon verbena over the plate and place flakes of sea bass in clay crust on top. Also place pieces of fermented tomato between the sea bass pieces.
- Place the grilled cauliflower and asparagus on top and add the fennel leaves.
- Finish with 1 tablespoon of the juice of the fermented tomato and basil oil to taste.
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