Dancing Spoon

Whole Fish in Salt Crust

Italy Delicious

by Ashley Bartner

Whole Fish in Salt Crust: Pesce in Crosta di Sale
This is delicious healthy fish dish that comes out super moist & buttery every time with a dramatic table-side presentation! Don't be afraid of the name - it is not salty at all. In fact the salt crust seals in moisture essentially steaming the fish inside. Because the salt absorbs the moisture, the texture and taste of the fish ultimately is more that of roasted than steamed fish.

Ingredients
Whole fish (we use Spigola or Orate but you can use any whole round fish you like or that looks good at the market on any given day)
Lemon
Parsley
Pepper Flakes
Sea Salt, course ground or rock salt
Egg
Olive Oil

Directions
1. Stuff the cavity with parsley & lemon slices.
2. In a separate bowl put 3 1/2 pounds of coarse sea salt per 1 1/2 pounds of fish, a small handful of pepper flakes, rind of one lemon and one egg for each fish & mix. (You can add any herbs you like - rosemary, thyme, garlic cloves - it doesn't matter you are just flavoring the salt.) It should have the consistency of for making good sand castles, add a water a little at a time to achieve this consistency.
3. Rub the fish down with olive oil and then lay a 1/2 inch bed of salt in the bottom of a roasting pan. Place down the fish and cover with the remaining salt. There should be a 1/2 inch crust of salt all around the fish. It is not necessary to cover the head & tail.
4. Bake at 425 degrees for 20-40 minutes depending on the thickness of the fish. You can insert a fork into the center of the fish & when the tips are hot the fish is done. The fish will stay warm in the salt crust for well over an hour - this is something you can do ahead of time as pull it out as your guests arrive.
5. Crack the salt crust table side - for a dramatic entrance of the secondo! Use a pastry knife to gently brush away excess salt.

Tutti a tavola — everyone to the table!

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Ashley Bartner is living the foodie dream in Italy. Together with her Chef-husband Jason, they own and run La Tavola Marche  an organic farm, inn and cooking school in Central Italy's region of Le Marche.

Handcrafted Kitchen Knives

Kitchen Handcrafted

by J. Michael Wheeler
Kitchen Art That Starts in Your Hand
It doesn't matter what your passion is: when you've got it, you've got it. We recently had the pleasure of meeting Adam Simha, a master at handcrafting kitchen knives. He is very passionate about his craft. He makes superlative bench-made knives. We are honored to be one of the only venues where MKS Design knives are sold.

Knife designer Adam Simha designs and handcrafts absolutely superb bench-made high-performance steel blades for his knives. These designs feature body geometry influenced by the best of both Asian and Western traditions. His blades are tempered to a Rockwell 56 hardness to provide toughness, easy sharpening, and remarkable edge holding. Steels used in the different blades are 13C26, 440-C, 154CM, and SF77 stainless.

The unique grip: MKS knives come with an injection-molded bicycle grip that is tightly fitted over a naturally bacteria-resistant stainless steel tube. The bicycle grip, with its deep grooves for the fingers, provides a perfect balance of shock absorption and control.

Each knife is tuned precisely for weight, balance, and control. They are visually remarkable and functionally exquisite and have been featured in many publications including Atlantic Monthly, the Boston Globe, City, and Kitchenware News.

Foodie's Emporium is proud to be an exclusive online retailer of Adam's amazing knives.

MKS Design Knives are produced in limited quantities and are available at Foodies Emporium.

For a very limited time we are offering our readers
10% OFF any MKS Design Knife Selection or Knife Set.
Use Promo Code MKSPRCNT at check out.

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Espresso 101

RoastMaster From the

by Adam Desrosiers

A Roast or A Brew?  
It is one of the more persistent myths in the coffee biz, that “espresso” signifies a style of roasting. In the popular conception this style would be expected to look extremely dark and showing a glossy sheen from the emergence, to the coffee bean's surface, of the oils that such a dark roast forces out. Certainly, this is a popular way to roast coffee for espresso; for one it's quite easy, with such an approach, to achieve consistent results but, and maybe more pertinently, it's also a lot cheaper.

The Right Coffee Roast

RoastMaster From the

by Adam Desrosiers

The Right Roast 
The prevalent philosophy among roasters in the U.S. today, influenced by the success of Seattle-based companies like Peets and Starbucks, almost wholly relies upon the smoky, simple intensity of dark roasts. Even to a fault, large and small roasters alike have relied upon the popularity of roasting coffees to the point at which the beans' oils have been brought to the surface and many complex flavor and aromatic compounds have been simply baked out.

Not to say that we disrespect any and all dark roasts (our own Diesel Dark Roast is a favorite both of ours and of our customers) but not every coffee is best suited by such an approach. It is rather our goal to set aside simplistic formulas for roasting and, instead, to treat every coffee individually – to find what is, for it, the optimum roast degree. This emphasis on flexibility continually leads us to exciting discoveries in the flavor potential of new coffees.