This recipe combines traditional cooking with modern cuisine. Ignacio Sanchez seeks to arouse our senses with this dish by not only it retaining the flavor of its ingredients, but also their color. To achieve this he tells us his best kept secret: how to maintain the quality of asparagus.

Ingredients:

Marinaded fillets of mackerel.
Triangles of Huétor Tajar asparagus impregnated with Trevélez ham stock.
Huétor Tajar asparagus curd.
Huétor Tajar asparagus icecream.

Asparagus icecream:

300 gr. cream, 140 gr. powdered milk, 100 gr. glucose, 100 gr. sugar and ½ l raw asparagus juice.

Preparation:

1- Marinade:

Clean a medium sized mackerel and debone it thoroughly using tweezers. Marinade for 45 minutes in a mixture of 10 grammes of salt and 5 grammes of sugar. Remove from the marinade, dry off excess liquid with a damp cloth or piece of kitchen paper and set aside.

2- Impregnated asparagus:

Cut an asparagus longitudinally into slices about 5 mm thick. Put the slices into a recipient with the ham stock and place the recipient in turn in a vacuum bag at medium pressure. Run three packaging programmes (4 programmes if you are using a homemade machine). Open the bag, remove the asparagus, drain and set aside.

3- Asparagus curd:

Mix everything together and heat over a flame, without allowing it to boil. Cool and put it in the freezer, beating it every 15 minutes, until its texture is creamy. Set aside.

4- Asparagus icecream:

Mix everything together and heat over a flame, without allowing it to boil. Cool and put it in the freezer, beating it every 15 minutes, until its texture is creamy. Set aside.

5- Dish presentation:

Put a rectangle of the asparagus curd on desired type of plate, and place a marinaded mackerel fillet on top of it. Add the triangles impregnated with ham stock and a quenelle of asparagus icecream. The dish can be decorated with asparagus tips and “fideillos” – asparagus finely shredded to resemble noodles.

The Chef’s Secret:

“The quality of the asparagus must be retained. To make the chlorophyl, the curd and the ice cream we should cool the asparagus rapidly in iced water, because that way we retain not only the flavour but also the colour”.