Week 23: Seafood Vol-au-Vent

The book: The Silver Spoon

The recipe: p417, "Seafood Vol-au-Vent"

Sometimes you know a recipe is going to be problematic as soon as you size up the ingredients list. Take this week's random.org choice. It's the Silver Spoon causing problems again - not with unobtainable kitchenware this time, but with the requirement that I source "1 large vol-a-vent case, about 15-20 cm".

I live in Lewisham, where (it turns out) the supermarkets don't even have dinky party-size vol-au-vent cases available; the nearest place I can imagine coming up with the goods is the Waitrose in Greenwich or, more likely, the huge branch at Canary Wharf, but I'm not Oystering it over there on a Sunday afternoon on the off-chance.

So, for "Seafood Vol-au-Vent" read "Two Slightly Smaller Seafood Puff Pastry Tarts". I mean, it's not as if vol-au-vents are particularly Italian in the first place (the translation of this dish in the Silver Spoon is the decidedly unconvincing "Vol-au-vent di mare"), so I reckon I can justify the improvisation.

The prep: There's plenty of puff pastry left in the freezer from our ventures into galette and "pie" territory earlier in the year, so no problem on that front. Otherwise, for all the ingredient list is long and initially daunting, it's actually all quite straightforward. The recipe calls for "hake or cod fillet", but since it's all going to get smushed up in the end, I'm happy to cut corners with some generic frozen white fish. Prawns (also of the frozen variety) need to be procured and, not for the first time, I'll be substituting sherry with the Shaohsing rice wine that's had pride of place in my spices 'n' seasonings cupboard since the heady days of Week 6.

The only other complication is the need for a half-portion of the Béchamel sauce as described on page 58 of the Silver Spoon. I'd consider cheating on this one if I could, but since Sainsbury's is sadly bereft of the kind of TetraPak-clad shortcuts I learned to love during my time in Germany...

...I'm just going to have to make it from scratch. (I know a packet of white sauce powder would basically do the trick too, but we're starting to veer dangerously from the original recipe now, and that kind of behaviour needs to be halted in its tracks.)

The making: The method of the recipe is a long and rambling beast, but it makes far more logical sense if you separate it out into three strands instead of the overlapping presentation preferred by the Silver Spoon, not least since I don't think the timings necessarily justify the juggling it seems to want me to indulge in.

Firstly, there's the fish. Specifically, "fish balls". Appetising! The white fish fillets are poached in a pot filled with salted water, dry white wine, a bay leaf, a garlic clove, parsley, a stick of celery, a sliced carrot and a sliced onion. I then drain the fish, reserving the stock (this bit should be in bold - I very nearly forget, which would, it turns out, have been a bit of a disaster). The carrots etc. are discarded, then the fish is flaked and smushed up in a bowl along with an egg and some bread that's been soaked in milk. The idea is to form this mixture into balls - let's call them "dumplings", it sounds nicer that way - but the recipe never specifies how many dumplings I should be making (or, if you must, how big my balls need to be), so it's difficult to know how to proceed.

I end up with two platefuls of not especially spherical dumplings that I suspect may be a little on the large side, but so be it. They're dusted with flour, then plunged back into the retained and now-boiling fish stock until they float to the surface, before being removed and dried on kitchen paper. And that's the first strand done.

I did say it was a rambling kind of recipe.

The second component is the prawns. These are more straightforward: the prawns are fried in butter for two minutes, then the rice wine is added and the mixture is cooked down until the liquid has evaporated. The prawns are then seasoned and set aside.

Finally, there's the Béchamel sauce. I've mentioned previously that I tend to be useless at making white sauces without lumps, so it's pleasing to note that the Silver Spoon method, while a little more time-consuming, is entirely successful. It basically involves taking the pan off the heat before adding the flour to the melted butter, and keeping it off the heat while you very gradually add and stir in the milk. Only then does it go back over a low flame to simmer down for a good 20 minutes. "Optional" nutmeg is added at the end of proceedings (I say yes to nutmeg and yes to some black pepper too, because fish and prawns do have a habit of being a little on the bland side), et voilà, one smooth Béchamel.

With a ready-made vol-au-vent case, all that would remain would be to assemble the contents and serve. Since I'm using a rough-and-ready puff pastry alternative, I half-cook the pastry base then arrange the ingredients as required by the recipe - a layer of the fish balls first, topped with the prawns and then the Béchamel - before returning to the baking tray to the oven for the home straight of pastry-cooking and warming-through.

The eating: First and foremost: this dish wins no prizes for elegant presentation. That's partly down to the pastry situation - a deep-sided vol-au-vent would house the contents and sauce far more efficiently - and partly because I suspect my fish dumplings are somewhat bigger than intended, hence towering over proceedings and giving the finished dish a rather lumpy and lop-sided look.

The eating, though. Oh, the eating. This is really good. The poaching process infuses the potentially bland white fish with a gorgeous subtle flavour, while the dumplings have a sticky, Chinese-like consistency that makes them really nice to eat even if they are a bit on the large side. Meanwhile, the prawns are buttery and moreish - and, let's face it, you can't really go wrong with anything that's smeared in Béchamel sauce and served in some kind of pastry.

It is a lot of work for the eventual outcome, as you might have gathered by now. A bit extravagant for a Sunday meal for two, to be honest (the recipe says "serves 6"; you can imagine how that worked out for us), but I can see it being worth the effort as a dinner party piece, especially if you can actually source a massive vol-au-vent case to serve the thing from (or even some medium-sized ones so everyone gets one each).

More importantly, I feel like I've actually learned some transferable skills here - the merits of a decent fish stock, how to make nicely claggy dumplings, how patience is the main ingredient in a lump-free sauce - and that feels good. Even if I'm still not entirely sure why an Italian cookbook is firing vol-au-vent recipes at me.

One-word summary: Rewarding.