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Hi, I'm chef Michael Cowan from Boathouse II on Hiltonhead Island,
and thank you for visiting SavorSouthCarolina.com.
Today we are going to be preparing a pan-seared American Red Snapper
with a sweet corn and potato hash and a roasted red pepper, celery-apple puree.
What we're going to start with, is the Snapper. What we have here is a true American Red Snapper,
which are caught right out here in the waters in front of Hiltonhead Island.
What you want to do is start from behind the gill. This is the fattiest part of the Snapper,
it's got the most amount of meat. The Snapper skin is pretty tough,
so I like to use a serrated knife to get through the skin and the flesh.
Go about halfway through the fish, that's where you're going to find the majority of the bones.
And then I'll use a boning knife to cut down the back of the Snapper and start taking the fillet off.
Once you get a nice cut down along the back, you're going to cut along the tail again with the serrated knife.
That way, you get a nice, clean cut once you're down to the bottom of the fillet.
Run your knife along the bones to get the most amount of meat as possible off the fish.
Once you get about halfway through, you'll find the middle of the fish.
You want to go ahead and poke your knife through and finish going all the way down.
So as we go down the side here, we're going to keep cutting all the way down the edge.
And you really want to be careful. These fins right here, they are sharp as needles and will really prick you.
Again, when you're cutting up through here, there's a lot of bones right inside here,
so I like to use a serrated knife to cut through the bones. Cut up through the belly,
And there's your beautiful Snapper fillet, right there. And then, to do the other side, just repeat the same process.
Now we're going to take the skin off. When you're taking the skin off, the most important thing
is to keep as much meat off the skin as possible. That way, you'll get a better fillet of fish.
So I always take a little bit of the tail off, and you're going to use that to hold the skin.
And just pull right through the fish. There you go. No meat left on the skin, and this is just trash.
OK. Next I'm going to show you, we're going to take the belly off. This part is inedible,
so you just want to cut around that. There is a lot of bones in this part of the fish,
you just want to take your knife and cut right through.
Now that's just a really nice fillet of fish right there, very fresh. You can see how it's nice and firm,
it's not too mushy. If it gets a little mushy, then you know you have an old piece of fish.
Now normally what I do, this is called the blood-line right here,
I just take my knife and I cut right down here through the blood-line.
Then up here, you're going to have some bones so we're going to take that, take our knife and cut these bones out.
And this size fillet, this is going to give us three or four courses of fish.
I'm going to show you how to prepare the pan-seared American Red Snapper.
I always keep my sautee pans in the oven, so they're already hot.
And when searing any kind of fish, normally I'll either use olive oil or butter.
And I always flour the fish, in the seasoned flour, to keep it from sticking.
You're going to let the Snapper sit for a little while and get a nice, golden brown. You're going to go ahead and flip this over.
That's exactly what you want right there. It's going to be nice and crispy,
and we're going to finish this off in the oven, for about two or three minutes.
We're going to start preparing the sweet corn hash. We'll also prepare the sauce to go with it.
So our first step for our sweet corn hash is to have a nice, hot pan.
First, we're going to add a little bit of garlic butter. Sautee that a little bit.
Then we're going to add our ingredients. Half a cup of potatoes.
These are just some white potatoes that I small-diced, tossed a little bit of olive oil, some salt and pepper
and roasted in the oven. Put about a half a cup of the charred, sweet yellow corn.
What I do, is when it's still on the husk, I put it on the grill and get a nice, black char on it.
A quarter cup of some sauteed, white onions, just sauteed until they're a nice translucent.
And about one cup of bacon. This is some applewood smoked bacon,
which is chifenon, which is real small slice.
And then I rendered it off in a sautee pan, removing all of the fat.
We're going to let that sautee, just so it gets nice and warm.
While that's going, we'll create our roasted red pepper, celery and apple puree.
This is just extra-*** olive oil, it adds a really nice flavor to the ending sauce.
First, we're going to add our roasted red peppers that I removed the seeds and the skin.
Then we're going to add our sauteed granny smith apples that I've sauteed in butter.
Then we'll add our minced celery, sauteed in olive oil.
We're going to add a little bit of fish stock. Then we always season with salt and pepper.
Now we're going to finish our potato hash, just took a little bit of scallions,
add a little salt and pepper, so this is ready to go.
We're just going to set this off to the side, keeping it nice and warm until our fish is ready to go.
We're going to put our roasted red pepper, celery and apple puree into a blender and puree until it's nice and fine.
Cover with a towel. Now I adjust the consistency,
I'll either add a little bit more of the fish stock, or sometimes just a little bit of olive oil, depending on how you like it.
We're going to plate our hash first, Snapper will go on top of that.
Then our roasted red pepper puree, this will go right around the fish.
Then sometimes you can garnish with a little bit of scallions, I always like to use a little bit of fried carrots.
There you go. It's our pan-seared American Red Snapper, with sweet corn potato hash and roasted red pepper, celery-apple puree.