Archive for the ‘Fish Wednesday’ Category
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
While I might be a sucker for a deal, I’m picky as hell. That’s why I sorted through all the packages of tuna in the seafood case before settling on one that was good enough for me. I like tuna steaks to have a nice dense reddish color to them, I don’t like the washed out pink ones. There is no good reason for this other than that I think it’s a better color. I somehow believe that a pale pink tuna is not going to taste as good as a deep, rich, reddish tuna. I am probably wrong about this - a quick check of buying tips says that yes, your fresh tuna can be pale pink. It should not be brown or uneven in color and it should not have any kind of rainbow sheen on the surface, but pink? That’s fine.
The tuna was something like six bucks a pound, a screaming deal considering the same amount of salmon will set you back the price of a tank of gas, no small change these days. I love salmon, of course, but when it’s sitting next to fresh, thickly sliced tuna steaks that are a bargain, to boot, there’s no contest.
I marinated the steaks in sesame oil, soy sauce, wasabi, and a splash of rice vinegar. They went on a very hot grill, which I promptly turned down to low. I basted the fish with the remaining sauce and turned them three times, about once every five minutes. They were gorgeous, marked up with those grill marks that make it look like you know what you’re doing.
Folks who are meat eaters compare tuna to a nice cut of beef steak. I don’t like red meat at all; I’m a “pescatarian” by dietary preference, not by politics, though if you’ve been reading Nerd’s Eye View for any length of time you know I worry about sustainablity when it comes to my food. I won’t argue the beef/tuna comparison, but I will tell you that I like my tuna just this side of done. A properly cooked tuna steak can hold up to being well done without getting dried out - I can say that our well done tuna was not the least bit dry, though it did have quite the meaty texture.
We have a big piece leftover that we’ll eat for lunch tomorrow, I think I’ll sprinkle it with furikake and a tiny bit more wasabi powder before eating it cold. As always, yum. And eat your fish, it’s good for you.
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Further props to Coleman for their customer service, by the way. One of my grill plates is losing the enamel - Coleman responded to my inquiry, pronto, and is shipping new ones my way. If you’re on the fence about getting a gas grill because you don’t want a huge device in your yard, well, I believe I’ve mentioned I really like mine. And I have zero regrets over saying goodbye to charcoal, I adore the convenience of gas.
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Wednesday, June 11th, 2008
It’s possible I mentioned before that I got the cutest little gas grill on the planet - it sits just outside my back door on a concrete pad that acts as though it was made for back door grilling. I am quite enchanted with the convenience of it - the other day, I switched it on because I wanted to grill one single onion to include in our secret household recipe for hummus. I cooked up some exceptional chicken, after marinating it in mustard, olive oil, white wine, and sage leaves - I made sure the chicken was covered in leaves when I tossed it on the hot grill and it was, let’s just say this: “Oh yeah.” And this: “I love my gas grill.”
With the stubborn refusal of any kind of summer to arrive - it topped out around 54F today - backyard grilling doesn’t have much appeal. I am fighting it with all my might, though I am clearly weakened from lack of Vitamin D. We could probably use it in our water supply around here, Vitamin D, I mean, though in addition to making sure i eat right, I have recently added a multivitamin to my diet to make up for the lack of sunshine and for trying, trying, trying, to cut back on treats.
A slice of grilled orange is quite the luscious treat substitute, especially when it’s served up with halibut that’s marinated in orange juice, sweet chili sauce, and a splash of olive oil. Along with the oranges, we had a pile of sauteed kale, but it was a little disappointing, the greens had a bitter taste that subsided with a little salt. I cooked the halibut for about 10 minutes on the first side, a little less on the second side, basting it now and then with the leftover sauce in the bowl. I pulled it off just as it was starting to fall apart, about a minute too late. It was far from overcooked, the extra minute or two just meant that it was well cooked all the way through - I prefer to take it off the grill when it’s just short of done, that way it’s perfect by the time you stick your fork in it.
No complaints though, it was first rate, and pretty too, and the oranges, oh, they were something. Now I am psyched to grill a pineapple - that will be awesome with a sturdy white fish, and I’m eying the bananas in the fruit bowl thinking, huh, if I sprinkle them with sugar and then grill them, how mind blowing will they be on vanilla ice cream from Husky Deli? Or, oh my god, what if I got one of these griddle tops
and on one side, made pancakes, while on the other side, I was grilling up fruit to top them with over the open flame? Whoa.
I realize I’m sounding like a shill for Coleman, but really, it’s the good eating that I’m shilling. What I’m saying is that just because it’s an exceptionally crappy year weather-wise does not mean we also have to forgo eating food that makes us believe that summer will arrive some day.
Posted in Fish Wednesday, Food, Glorious Food | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008
We don’t always dish up a plate of seafood for Fish Wednesday, sometimes, we actually put on our shoes and go look at fish in some kind of habitat. We are unspeakably lucky to be near Lincoln Park, a beautiful stretch of beach (and more) - it takes 20 minutes to walk from our front door to the edge of Puget Sound. And at this time of year, we live for the low tide days. The extreme low tides, like today’s, expose sea life we don’t usually get to look at or poke, I mean, um, gently, very gently of course, so gently as to be almost unnoticeable, I swear. (Kids, don’t poke the sea life, okay? Plus, some of it is toxic, no joke.)
On days when the tide is way out there, the Seattle Aquarium sends naturalists down to the beach to talk to the sea life poking visitors, sharing knowledge about what lives out there, telling us not to poke the sea life, and generally making us all a little smarter. Thanks to their help, I now know something about the Moon Snail, a big critter with a shell about the size of a baseball and a body that looks “like a giant wad of snot” according to the friendly guy that helped us understand our underwater neighbors. I also learned that those things you see everywhere are not “plungers washed up from a freighter that tipped over in the sound.” They’re actually moon snail eggs mixed with sand - they’re laid that way to create a sturdier, less appetizing place for the eggs to mature.
We saw chitons and several different kinds of sea stars, including the squishy orange ones with a zillion legs, anenomes that looked like someone hacked up an organ right there on the beach, big red crabs that would have made an excellent dinner had the gulls not got to them first, loads of rock clinging barnacle type things from very flat ones to pointy three dimensional ones…and that’s just the squishy sea life.
Birds were plentiful, tossing sea star legs around (it’s brutal at low tide), feeding on the tiny fish and shrimp that didn’t get the memo about clearing out before the tide turned, and generally feasting on the salad bar of the tidal zone. We even saw an otter scamper out of the water, hightail it across the beach, and disappear into the brush just the other side of the seawall. There was talk along the beach of an octopus sighting - Puget Sound is home to one of the largest species of octopus - and two legged critters, mostly of the smaller sized squealing with enthusiasm variety - were everywhere.
It’s a true wonder to get out there and see the breathtaking variety of nature in all it’s sticky, salty splendor. Low tide is high on the list of my hundreds of favorite things about West Seattle, even when the weather is less than ideal. It looks like the next super low minus tides are the first three days of July - if you want to join us for turning over rocks, peeling back seaweed, and generally oohing and aahing over the wonders of water dwelling critters, just drop me a line. Afterwards, we’ll go for treats at the Original Bakery down by Endolyne Joe’s.
A few more pics here. And the King County website has some pics of chitons and snails in Puget sound here.
Posted in Fish Wednesday, Playing Outside, Seattle | 3 Comments »
Sunday, June 1st, 2008
In spite of the shocking amount of nonsense information I keep in my head - the chord sequence to Roxy Music’s More than This, a good deal of the poetry in Alice in Wonderland, many, many one liners from The Simpsons, and a warehouse of shoe boxes stuffed with mental images from my travels - in spite of all that - um - detritus - I can not seem to find a place to store the contents of the Seafood Watch card. Plus, the card gets updated all the time, it’s not comprehensive, and those tricksters in the fish industry are often changing the names of fishes so’s to fool the educated into buying Chilean Sea Bass or some other endangered fish.
When you shop a good fish market, you are able to ask at the counter about the fish - getting good information at supermarkets can be trickier just because they’re so much busier than a fish only establishment. I’m pretty good at making sustainable choices, but sometimes I’ll come across something that I don’t recognize.
Today, it was the spearfish. I was suckered in not only because it was affordable - fresh salmon is 25 bucks a pound! - but because it was bearing a “Great for Grilling” sticker and I now have the cutest, shiniest, little red grill
that you have ever seen. We cooked chicken sausages and asparagus on it a few nights ago, today, we’re finding out if broccoli will give us the same yummy results when placed on the hot grill after being coated in olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt.
“D’ya think it’s the same thing as marlin?” I asked J, and he shrugged. The cashier was equally as informative saying that it looked “kinda sharky. The marlin is usually cut differently.” I looked it up pronto upon our return home and was relieved to learn that our choice was a good one. I really do wish the stores would label their sustainable seafood. It doesn’t mean every consumer has to buy that stuff, but I know I’d appreciate not having to do research to eat my dinner with a clean conscience.
The fish marinated in olive oil, garlic and herbs for a while and then spent a little time on the hot grill - side by side with the broccoli. The fish was moist and very flavorful, the broccoli a nice change from your usual steamed or sauteed state, still crispy but a little charred around the edges. I could do a lot of blowing my own horn here, but I’d rather quote my understated mate: “It’s okay, you can continue with the grilling.” This is high praise from a guy who doesn’t say much. Trust me, it was awesome.
Some pals of ours recently went grill crazy too, we had a very funny conversation about the manliness of grilling, shopping for grills, the size of your grill, manning it up about the hardware store, etc… I just went online, read some reviews, found one I liked, and clicked add to shopping cart. Our grill might be girlie as hell in its procurement methods, modest size, cute package and minimal needs for space, but I cooked up some kickass fish on it.
Tomorrow, we’re doing chicken.
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Blog note: I installed a bit of code that pulls old posts from the archives and publishes them on the home page. They’re updated daily. If you’re reading this in RSS or email, you won’t have the entertainment of seeing those old posts. It’s amusing to me - click through and maybe it will be amusing to you, too.
Posted in Fish Wednesday, Food, Glorious Food | 8 Comments »
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008
I’m a sucker for an exotic cookbook. Our stunning variety of ethnic grocery stores means that here in Seattle, we are able to fearlessly ferret out the bizarre and nonstandard ingredients. And our diverse community means that even the local Safeway has quite an impressive selection of ethnic foods. A good thing, diversity is. I’m for it.
The Vivid Flavors Cookbook, a very exotic selection indeed, has been on my shelf for quite along time, since I picked it up from a remainders pile somewhere. The index in this collection of complicated oddball recipes is, well, crap. I keep saying I’m going to get rid of it, and then, I crack it open and while browsing through in a half-hearted way, dammit, I find something something in there I want to make. Every time.
Case in point, tonight’s dinner. Broiled salmon glazed with honey, lemon, and chili paste served over rice noodles with garlic, ginger, roasted tomatoes, and cilantro. A lovely combination of sweet and sour, and pretty, too, with bright green cilantro leaves against the orange salmon and the red roasted tomatoes. Cookbook, you live another day.
Typically, when browsing my books, I go straight for the index. I look for the items in my fridge and then, I see what the books tell me to make. Yeah, I know, the Internet, blah blah blah, but I like flipping through cookbooks, I like that they fall open to the pages I use the most, I like seeing notes from meals past scribbled in the margins - “never mind vegan, this would be awesome with CHEESE” or “not worth the bother of baking, make the sauce and pour it over pasta.”
The sauce for tonight’s fish was very simple - the juice of a lemon, a teaspoon of red curry paste, and two big tablespoons of honey. I’m absolutely making it again, it would be good on just about any sturdy fish - halibut, salmon, cod, you name it. By next Fish Wednesday, I’ll be the proud owner of a Road Trip Grill and I think halibut steaks marinated in the aforementioned sauce and grilled are going to be oh so good.
I’m excited that grilling season is finally here. We cooked some chicken last weekend on the old Weber kettle grill (slathered in sweet chili sauce) and it was mighty nice to sit in the yard enjoying dinner in the warm evening light. Fish isn’t a summer only food, but the best of it arrives in Seattle in late spring with the long days, so it tastes like summer to me.
My mom cleaned off her bookshelves a little while back and I inherited The Barbecue! Bible
. If the index doesn’t suck, maybe it will teach me a thing or two about how to cook fish.
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Side note: I got the new grill (partly) because I’m having a solstice party. If you’re in Seattle and you’d like to come, email me, I’ll send you an evite.
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Thursday, May 1st, 2008
Pineapple curry with shrimp, before and after
My fondness for far away places means that my comfort foods are a bizarre smörgåsbord of Indian and Asian style curries, European baked goods, taco truck carbohydrates, and mundane supermarket standards like Crackin’ Oat Bran (the crack cocaine of cereals), mac and cheese, and Snyder’s pretzels. Mr NEV, bless him, has come to embrace the oddity that is my appetite (mostly) and has been known to say, unprovoked, “Get your coat, we’re going for pho” or, using his best Homer Simpson imitation, “Mmmmmmm. Spinach naan!”
Today, nothing would reassure me quite like the spicy sweet combination of a pineapple curry, preferably served up on that fluffy reddish brown rice that fancier Thai places offer you. I picked up a five pound bag of Tom Mali (unhulled jasmine) rice along with a ripe pineapple from Costa Rica, a pound of white shrimp from Ecuador, a bottle of fish sauce from Vietnam, some Thai basil from Hawaii, a few greenhouse grown red peppers from Canada, and miscellaneous other items from all over the planet. My dinner had the same carbon footprint I’d have made if I’d hopped a flight to Bangkok, eaten curry, and flown back again.
I would be delighted to do nothing but eat locally were I to live in a tropical wonderland where mangoes fall from the heavens and seafood jumps out of the ocean and on to your plate, perfectly filleted and coated in a little something - let’s say ground macadamia nuts drizzled with sweet chili sauce. We have fairly abundant produce in the Pacific Northwest but I miss California avocados, I love love love the spicy sweet food of the tropics or the complicated aroma of Indian cooking. Kale is great, but how can it compete with the wonders of, say, dragon fruit or rambutan?! Al Gore, I am sorry, but if I can not travel myself, from time to time, I like a plate that reminds of the bright variety of the outside world.
My pineapple curry was imperfect, but it was my first one. I can’t repeat the recipe since it was just a hack between a bunch of recipes I read online during the day. I did learn that the trick to a good pineapple curry is to let the coconut milk based sauce stew for a while. Our seconds - with an added half a teaspoon of red curry paste - were so much better for simmering on the stove for an extra 20 minutes. Next time, I’ll sautée the onions (probably from Walla Walla, Washington), toss in the curry paste, the coconut milk and the pineapple, and let it simmer on low for a good hour. Then, right at dinner time, I’ll add the veggies and the shrimp. That will make for a thicker, more seasoned sauce and the pineapple will be well stewed in the chili paste. There’s nothing like the amazing sweet bite of pineapple offset by the sharp fire of red chili. There’s something about the combination of contrary flavors that reassures a complicated person like me that everything is all right in the world.
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