Salmon with Anise Cream Sauce with Pastis

This is a recipe from the south of France.  It is great with cold fish, vegetables and hard boiled eggs.  The big thing about the sauce is that we are using some pastis which adds a real boost of anise flavour.  The sauce will be served with a locally caught Tasmanian salmon. 

INGREDIENTS  

• 100 grams fennel (bulb) 
• 2 hard boiled eggs  
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard 

• Juice of half a lemon 
• 5 tablespoons of olive oil  
• 4-5 tablespoons of pure cream (heavy whipping cream) 
• 1 tablespoon of rock salt 
• 1 teaspoon of pastis 

Cookware: a vegetable mill 

INSTRUCTIONS 

• Place a bowl into the freezer. 
• Prepare fennel by removing outer skin etc. – leave the clean bulb. It may be halved or quartered.  Place into a pot of boiling water with rock salt and boil for 25-30 minutes – the bulb must be soft. 

• Place the eggs (at room temperature) into a pot of boiling water and boil for 10 minutes.  Then plunge them into a bowl of iced water. 
• When the fennel is ready, remove it and allow it to drain on a kitchen towel.  As much water as possible must be extracted from the fennel, and to do so, it is recommended that (without passing any fennel through) the water is pressed out through a sieve. 
• Pass the halved boiled eggs through the moulin (vegetable mill) into a bowl, then pass the dried fennel through into the bowl. 
• Add a teaspoon of Dijon mustard, a pinch of salt and a grind of black pepper and blend together. 
• Bit by bit blend in the olive oil and then the lemon juice.  Place the bowl in the fridge. 

• Remove the bowl from the freezer and pour in the cream and then the pastis and whisk it until the cream thickens.  Stop the whisking before the cream becomes whipped. 
• Add the cream to the fennel mix and blend with a spatula. 
• The sauce is now ready to serve – in this case, with cold cooked fish and butter lettuce. 

With the dish, enjoy a good glass of pastis as done in Marseille.  The rules are simple but important: 

• Never add the ice cubes in the glass first. 

• Always use 1 volume of pastis (usually 20n ml) for 5 volume of water. 
• To serve: pour pastis in a small glass, add very cold water and if you like a few ice cubes.  The quality of the water matters too – if you want the best experience, use ice cold mineral water and no ice cubes.  

Anise cream sauce video recipe:

Stephane