Archive for the ‘Fish Wednesday’ Category
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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Thursday, April 17th, 2008
My pal S - she lives in Tuscany - is a fine cook. One year, I was at her place in Maremma for a birthday feast and wow, did we eat some seafood. She lives not far from Porto Ercole so we all squeezed into someone’s car and headed down to have Italian style cocoa in the January weather. Before we went home, we stopped at the fish market. Later that evening we ate and ate and ate some more.
It’s from S. that I learned you can rarely go wrong in the kitchen if you use plenty of high quality olive oil. Here in Seattle we buy olive oil in large containers at PFI - Pacific Food Importers. The folks at the counter will tell you the difference between the varieties. In the past, they’ve recommended what the tonier Seattle restaurants are using - and it’s not always the most expensive. When left to our own devices, we look for the greenest oil we can find.
This week’s Fish Wednesday Thursday recipe came from Flavors of Tuscany: Recipes from the Heart of Italy
. I won’t repeat the recipe but in short, it’s braised tuna in a roasted red pepper sauce. It’s time consuming in that you have to roast and peel the peppers and then make the sauce, but it’s not difficult. We picked up some very high quality tuna from our favorite source, Seattle Fish Company, at the West Seattle Junction. The sauce was nice and the fish, if I may gloat a little, was a perfect and tender medium rare, but I wanted a little something more, a little bite. I’ve scribbled “green olives? capers?” in the margins of the book for next time.
When I’m feeling especially pleased with my Fish Wednesday accomplishments, I like to present the tab to Mr. NEV. Tonight, after I said “That will be 32.50, please,” he replied, “No way I’m paying Fish Wednesday prices on Fish Thursday!”
Eat your fish. It makes you smart.
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Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008
Even though we live in the seafood paradise of the Pacific Northwest we are not snobs ’round here, no sir. Plus, with bad news coming from the salmon streams, we may find ourselves seeking cheap, sustainable alternatives long before we thought we’d have to.
It was just yesterday that I found myself paying a little too much for a grilled cheese sandwich at lunchtime. In spite of the expense, I remembered just how damn yummy a pan fried sandwich is. And when Mr. NEV decided we needed to make chocolate chip cookies too, the die was cast, we were going grade school weekend lunch all the way. In addition to the stuff we needed for cookies, we picked up a jar of kosher mini dill pickles, a little piece of Danish cheese, and some bread. Tuna we had at home.
I’m not going to tell you how to make a grilled tuna and cheese sandwich, plus, everyone has a method. I hear there are those who slather both sides of their bread with mayo before putting it in the pan. If that’s how you like it, more power to you.
I still love to have my grilled sammich with tomato soup, but Soup Swap has spoiled me for quality and I just can’t do the Campbell’s from the can anymore. I guess I’m not a total non-snob and yeah, that was Dijon mustard I mixed in with the tuna.
Still, if you can’t enjoy a plain old grilled sandwich from the skillet, a crispy, salty dill, and a chocolate chip cookie still warm from the oven, well, maybe it’s time to consider antidepressants.
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Monday, February 25th, 2008
I didn’t forget, you know, I’ve just been at loose ends since we got back from the other side of the planet. And yes, I know, it’s been a while, but I was stuck in kitchen reruns and lethargy. My taste buds have been resurfaced by the complicated flavors of Southeast Asia and I am psyched, psyched I tellya, to mix up Fish Wednesday with a little exotica.
Because I was suffering from traveler’s belly, I didn’t eat much more than rice in Bangkok, though I did have one stunning plate of pad thai and a shrimp salad that featured vast amounts of lime, lemon grass, and chili. Good god, it was delicious. Thai food in Thailand is blazing hot, even when you ask for it mild. Making it at home means you’ve got a lot more control over the BTUs.
We shopped at Viet Wah Market, a big Asian supermarket with a weird smell, it was just like being back in Vietnam. We picked up the stuff that you wouldn’t expect to find at your local QFC or Safeway and a few produce items. Viet Wah packs all their veggies in extended family sized bags so now I have an excessive amount of bean sprouts that I don’t know what to do with. J. made me put down the five pound bag of bok choy, but I regret it because we also bought a package of those fat yellow noodles that we both like so well.
I won’t repeat the recipe I used, a hybrid of one from the Noodle Shop Cookbook and this one from the Thai Table. It was quite good for a first attempt, though a little short on the sauce. The fact that I poured several tablespoons of it on my shirt and the floor while stirring it might have something to do with the shortage of liquids, but next time I make it, I’ll double the amount of sauce and see how that turns out. I only used one tablespoon of Sri Racha in the sauce - the recipe called for three - and it had plenty of bite.
The lion’s share of the work is in slicing and dicing; once that’s done, the cooking takes no time at all. Pad Thai is probably a fine dish to make if you have idle hands about the kitchen, you can set them to julienning things while you deal with mixing up the correct amount of sauce. I made my pad thai with shrimp and tofu, it would be just as good with chicken.
The results were better than promising, quite a good first attempt. Seattle’s diverse Asian population means that we’ve got access to all kinds of crazy ingredients. There’s a Cambodian market about three miles from here, so if I get jonesing for Khmer food, I won’t have to go far to pick up the stuff I need. Stay tuned, Fish Wednesday is going all Indochina on you.
[tags]Fish Wednesday, Pad Thai[/tags]
Posted in Fish Wednesday | 3 Comments »
