Halibut and delicious culatello ham

Posted by petra08 on November 18, 2022 · 10 Comments 

Sometimes I find an ingredient to build a dish around. This time I came across a salumi, culatello from Natoora. This salumi comes from the Parma region and it is only made in Lombardy and Emilia Romagna, Italy. The flavor is delicate yet distinct. My first instinct was to boil some angel hair pasta and slice some culatello to go with it but I wanted to make a surf and turf dish.

I went to my local fishmongers, Jenkins & Son for inspiration. I looked around and after some discussion I settled on halibut. The greengrocer at the market had fresh figs and I thought it would go with the ham.

Deal is a great place for shopping and I picked up some organic potatoes at The Merchant of Relish, a treasure of organic and mainly local produce and a delicious selection of wines.

The potatoes inspired me to make Hasselbacks potatoes. I sliced them as thinly as I could and made a topping of panko bread crumbs and seeds and it worked a treat.

I semi dried the figs in the oven to intensify the flavor.

Halibut with apple salsa, culatello, potato and apple puree & fig

preparation time 15 minutes

cooking time about 10 minutes, depending on the size of the halibut

oven 160C or 320F

serves 2-3

Ingredients

• 300 gr halibut
• 2 tbsp mirin
• rapeseed oil
• butter
• salt
• pepper

Apple salsa

• 1 crisp apple, diced fine, save the off cuts
• zest & juice of 1/2 lemon
• 1 chilli, de seeded and chopped
• coriander, chopped
• 2 spring onions, chopped fine
• olive oil

Potato & apple puree

• 1 potato
• apple off cuts
• a little butter

Garnish

• culatello ham, or ham of your choice, sliced fine

Place the halibut on a plate, skin side down and pour over the mirin. Sprinkle a little salt over and let stand for 10-20 minutes.

Heat oil and butter in an ovenproof pan and pan fry the halibut until browned and it is just starting to caramelize. Place the pan in the oven. It takes about 10 minutes but check the fish after 5 and then every 2 minutes to make sure it isn’t over cooked.

Once cooked leave the halibut to rest for 5-10 minutes.

Whilst the halibut is cooking and resting chop the apple, spring onion, chilli and coriander and place in a bowl. Zest and juice the lemon, mix and add some olive oil. Add a pinch of sea salt just before serving.

Place the halibut on the puree and add the apple salsa and semi dried fig to the halibut and garnish with the culatello ham. Serve with the hasselbacks potatoes.

The halibut and the culatello ham was a delicious pairing, my kind of surf and turf.

I am bringing my halibut to the lovely Angie’s Fiesta Friday! The best blog party around, even better is it filled with lovely recipes, like this garlic pepper beef from this week’s co host Juhls!

Filed under Allotment/Veg, Apples, Chilli, Fig, Fish & Seafood, Fruit, Herbs, Lemon, Main course, Pork, Potatoes, Recipe, Spring onion · Tagged with Culatello, Culatello ham, fiesta friday, Fishdish, Halibut, Halibut with apple salsa, surf n' turf