Seared Chilean Sea Bass with Parsnip Puree, 3 mushrooms, Watermelon Radish, and Mushroom Gravy

To start, I roasted the parsnips in the oven at 350, with 1 cup of chicken stock in the bottom of the pan to keep them from drying out. Once cooked, I pureed them in the Vita-Prep and and added butter, cream, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

Then I roasted the mushrooms (mitayke, black trumpet, morel), after tossing them in oil, salt, pepper, and a bit of the leftover melted butter from the parsnip puree.

For the morel mushrooms (I bought them dried at Whole Foods, because I had never used dried mushrooms before, and morels are very difficult to find fresh in stores). To rehydrate the mushrooms, I submerged them in water right after it had been brought up to a boil and then taken off the stove. They sat, covered, for about half hour. I then roasted the morels with the other mushrooms. The resulting liquid is a "mushroom tea" of sorts, and I used it as the base for the gravy, along with a standard rue and mushrooms blended in.

The fish was just seared in the pan until almost cooked through and then basted with plenty of butter (technique can be seen here, demonstrated with scallops: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37IGmU1oXFQ)


Here's another view of the plate: