Rodrigo-Style Fish Tacos

I wanted something healthy and easy for dinner tonight after feasting on black and white cookies and other baked goods today and immediately thought of seafood.  So I sent Alex off to pick up some chicken for tomorrow night's dinner and headed to the seafood counter.  Fairway had some wild striped bass fillets that looked really nice and decided that we should make fish tacos.  I love tacos.  And I love seafood.  So it is natural that I try to combine the two fairly regularly.  I found the recipe for Rodrigo-Style Fish on Serious Eats several months ago, but we never got around to making it.  I looked at it while at the grocery store and decided that we could make some variation on it and turn it into tacos.  I didn't read far enough to see that the author already suggested serving the fish with corn tortillas, but clearly we were on the same wavelength.  Since the striped bass I picked out looked so nice I adapted the cooking method to basically season it with salt and pepper and sear it using another recipe/cooking method that I found online for perfect seared fish.  I highly recommend trying the cooking method for the fish.  Our striped bass was beautifully cooked, with a wonderfully crispy skin and a moist, flaky flesh.  It was perfect.  This fish would have worked with a just a squeeze of lemon, but I thought the sauce was a really nice touch - full of citrus and herbs.  I never would have thought to use Maggi sauce because when I think of Maggi sauce I think soy sauce and Asian food, but it added a nice saltiness to the fish.  I'm a huge fan of this recipe.  I would definitely try both the fish and the tacos again separately and together, and also with other types of fish depending on what is fresh.

Recipe after the jump!

Pan-Roasted Swordfish Steaks with Peppercorn Butter

When I work too much (which happens a LOT this time of year), I end up craving seafood and veggies.  While charging delivery from Seamless to the client sounds like an interesting way to try new restaurants without having to foot the bill, it gets pretty old after awhile.  There are a few decent restaurants that I order from on occasion, but after awhile all I want is a home-cooked meal consisting of less starch, less meat and more seafood and veggies.  Alex is pretty used to it by now and given that he eats toaster oven quesadillas, peanut butter crackers, pizza and fried rice while I am gone, I would imagine that he doesn't mind when I go on one of my seafood and veggie kicks.  My current veggie obsessions are broccoli and brussels sprouts.  I was on a cauliflower kick earlier this fall, but that ran its course by mid-November.  After I eat a few good seafood and veggie meals I then switch over to craving salad, but more on that later.  This swordfish recipe was one that I found online after coveting (and then buying) some really nice swordfish steaks at Fairway.  I originally wanted to make this Sicilian-Style Swordfish, but we decided to mix it up a bit.  The amount of butter originally weirded me out (and we did end up using less of the butter than called for), but I was intrigued enough to give it a shot.  And I'm glad I did because it was good.  The swordfish was nice and moist, which is always my first requirement for good swordfish.  There is nothing worse than dried out, leather-like swordfish.  It also had nice flavor - the compound butter is rich, but it retains a really fresh and bright flavor because of the herbs, the pepper and the lemon zest.  I think I slightly prefer the Sicilian-Style Swordfish, but this is a lovely, fresh alternative.

Recipe after the jump!

Red Snapper Tacos

 

I will be the first to admit that these tacos were initially conceived of as a guacamole-delivery system.  The thought process went something like this - I wanted to make guacamole, tacos taste good with guacamole, so I should make fish tacos.  And that my friends was how lunch was planned.  I have always had a soft spot for fish tacos.  When my mother and I went to San Diego a few years ago for a mommy-daughter bonding weekend I gorged myself on fish tacos of all kinds.  One night we went to happy hour at a restaurant called South Beach Bar & Grille on a recommendation from a friend of mine and it had perhaps the best fish tacos I have ever tasted.  They were so fresh and delicious.  I love baja fish tacos (lightly battered and fried fish with a crunchy cabbage topping) and theirs were totally perfect, but I also liked their grilled fish tacos.  Every once in awhile I decide to make fish tacos at home and when I do they are always grilled.  I have tried a number of different types of fish including tuna, mahi mahi and snapper (and my usual seafood taco default is shrimp because it's cheap and easy), and they have all worked well.  I totally believe that certain types of fish lend themselves better to fish tacos than others.  Salmon and swordfish are both too meaty and heavy for me.  When I want a grilled fish taco I want something light and fresh.  These red snapper tacos fit the bill perfectly.  We have several different types of chili powder in the apartment so I picked two and seasoned the fish lightly before grilling.  I wanted to top the tacos with something (in addition to the Mango Pomegranate Guacamole) and we had some cherry tomatoes in the kitchen so I threw together a quick tomato salad.  It all came together relatively quickly and easily.  I'm not saying that these fish tacos can in any way compare to those at South Beach Bar & Grille, but they weren't half bad for some lazy fish tacos in an UWS apartment.

Recipe after the jump!

Korean Cod and Sesame Kale Salad

 
We are currently on a bit of a Korean kick.  We made six (Belated) Chinese New Year meals (I know that I still owe you guys one (Belated) Chinese New Year meal) and then a bunch of southeast Asian meals.  Now we have cycled through to Korean or Korean-inspired meals.  Randomly enough, we even went out to dinner at a Korean restaurant last night.  The inspiration for this meal actually came from a vegan food truck that I like called The Cinnamon Snail.  About a month ago I tried one of their dishes that they served with a kale salad.  I liked the dish, but I liked the kale salad better.  And two weeks ago I tried another of their dishes (Korean barbeque seitan) that also had kale in it.  The kale in both dishes had a spicy vaugly Korean flavor to it.  When I noticed how nice the Tuscan kale looked at Fairway last week I decided to buy a few bunches and try to make a Korean-y kale salad.  And then I started thinking that if I was going to do a Korean-y kale salad I could probably figure out some sort of Korean-y seafood recipe to go with it.  Cod immediately came to mind and I went home and did some Google research and came up with these two recipes.  The kale salad (recipe available here) wasn't eactly what I was looking for, but I figured it was easy and would give me somewhere to start.  I wanted to add some salted cashews but by the time I got home and went for the cashews Alex told he he had finished them off as his afternoon snack.  Oh well.

Both dishes were a little salty for me, but otherwise good.  I thought the cod had nice flavor - a little spicy, a little sweet.  I liked it.  Our cod fell apart when I tried to flip it but we have a pretty good habit of ruining fish so there is nothing new there.  Alex massacred one of our Dover sole filets the other night too.  At least he only destroyed one fillet - I managed to destroy both here (although I reassembled one of them nicely for the photos).  I am going to keep working on the salad to perfect it.  I like kale salads better when the kale is cut into thin strips (I find it easier to eat that way), although I left the kale in larger pieces for this recipe because it was going to be sauteed briefly in the warm dressing.  In the future I would probably skip the step of sauteing the kale in the warm dressing and if I wanted to wilt the kale down, I would make a warm dressing and pour it over top of the kale (like this Korean-Style Romaine).

Recipes after the jump!

Dover Sole Almondine with Brussels Sprouts

I am currently trying to wean myself from too much dairy in my diet.  I have been mildly lactose intollerant for years (which is no surprise given that my Chinese mother is violently lactose intollerant) but I think when I hit 30 it started getting worse.  Or maybe it started getting worse when I started drinking cappuchinos to keep myself awake in the afternoon after working all night.  I have discovered that coffee is a very sneaky dairy delivery system.  I have been trying to cut back on the cappuchinos (or switch over to soy milk in my cappuchinos, even though I think the taste of soy milk leaves a lot to be desired), but I'm also trying to cut out more gratuitous dairy.  The first things I thought about cutting are yogurt and Polly-O string cheese.  I know that the probiotics in yogurt are supposedly good for you, but eating a yogurt a day for breakfast might not be the best move if you're lactose intollerant.  And it's not like I love the taste of yogurt (whereas I do love the taste of Polly-o and a lot of other cheeses) so it seemed like a relatively painless sacrifice to make.  I'm in the process of trying to find good dairy-free yogurts and that effort has taken me to Fairway, Trader Joe's and Whole Foods.  Not surprisingly I discovered that most of our local markets don't stock many dairy-free options.  Thus far I have discovered the following - I do not like the taste of soy yogurt, some coconut yogurts have a really weird texture but taste okay (whereas some have a weird texture and taste), and almond yogurts seem to be the best of the bunch (at least for me).  I tried Almond Dream's low-fat strawberry and coconut yogurts over the weekend and thought both of them were pretty decent.  So Delicious also makes some almond milk yogurts that I thought were pretty good, but they are harder to find. 

While on my dairy-free yogurt hunt I decided to hit the fish counter at Whole Foods and ended up with these Dover sole filets and some cod filets.  And then I had to figure out what I wanted to do with my Dover sole that would be light and fresh and springy, but still hearty enough to withstand the neverending winter.  With spring stubbornly refusing to appear, I really needed something reminiscent of the warm temperatures and the good times to come.  Did I mention that it is currently snowing outside?  It's late March.  I mean honestly.  I settled on sole almondine because it is easy and quick and I think delicate fish like sole benefit from very simple preparations.  Dredging sole filets in flour and then sauteing in butter and topping with a squeeze of lemon is a very classic preparation for a reason - it just tastes good.  We have been eating a ton of kale lately (and I was already planning on serving a kale salad with the cod) so I wanted to use another vegetable that would still be seasonally appropriate, but would allow me to mix things up a little.  Brussels sprouts seemed like a good fit.  Rather than roasting the sprouts I decided to shred and saute them because pairing such a delicate fish with hunks of roasted brussels sounded weird.  I don't have a ton to say about this dish, except that it was nice, easy and tasty.  It was also perfectly springy.  I liked the combination of the browned butter and almonds with the delicate fish and the sauteed Brussels sprouts.  I also liked the brightness and flavor from the white wine and lemon juice.  It is a very simple dish, but sometimes I like simple.

Recipe after the jump!

Hake with Hazelnuts and Capers

 
It's not often that I get to experiment with new varieties of fish.  But when I picked up the trout fillets the other day I asked the fishmonger for suggestions on what was particularly fresh and he suggested either the lemon sole or the hake.  I decided that we had never made hake (and we have made sole before), so why not go with the hake.  I was originally planning on using the hake instead of cod in this Roasted Cod on Large Garlic Croutons recipe, but decided to stick with this recipe instead because we had everything we needed at the apartment.  Plus we had a ton of hazelnuts that I picked up for another recipe and never used, so it just made sense.  So it seemed like the perfect fit.  But the recipe was just kinda... ok.  The fish was beautifully cooked and I liked the texture of the toasted hazelnuts, but I thought the red wine vinegar and the capers would give it more pizzazz.  And they just kind of got lost.  After the brightness of the trout, it couldn't quite compare.  Overall I thought it was a nicely-cooked piece of fish that needed some acidity and also needed something else to really make it shine.  I'm not sure what I would add to the recipe to make it stand out more (maybe some lemon zest in the hazelnut mixture?) but I would definitely need to make some serious changes before making it again. 

Recipe after the jump!

Pan-fried Trout with Lemon and Herb Stuffing

Few things strike me as being as light as trout.  For some reason, a nice trout fillet is the epitome of light to me.  And once you add in lemons and herbs it just... gets lighter.  I'm not saying it makes any sense, but that's how I think.  So when I was trying to think of a light, fresh dish to kick off a few nights of home-cooked meals, this recipe seemed perfect.  It looked easy, it didn't require a lot of ingredients and it sounded tasty.  I was so set on this particular recipe that I didn't come up with a contingency plan; luckily the grocery store had some nice rainbow trout fillets so I didn't have to figure one out.  

Some recipes are exactly what they sound like and no more - this was one of them.  The "lemon and herb stuffing" provided the fish with a nice, bright flavor that is nicely offset by the flavor of rich browned butter.  I wish we had toasted the bread a little more, but if we had it would have been hard to cut the bread into a fine enough dice.  In the future I would probably toast the bread lightly, cube it, and then toast the cubes again to get them nice and crunchy.  In order for it to retain some texture you should get it pretty crunchy before tossing with the lemon segments and the herbs.  Otherwise it all gets a little mushy.  Even though our bread wasn't toasted enough and the skin didn't get as crispy as I would have liked, I would still call this dish one of the most successful trout recipes we have prepared.  It was also exactly what we needed tonight after a week of dining out at restaurants.

Recipe after the jump!

Grilled Swordfish with Lemon and Oregano

 

This swordfish was the last of the fish I picked up at Citarella last Saturday and it is probably the last seafood dish we will make this year.   It isn't the most successful seafood recipe we have tried this year, nor is it the most successful swordfish we have ever made.  But it was light, fresh and very easy to put together.  Speaking of the other fish recipes we made this year, my favorites were probably the Swordfish with Chile Pesto, the Pistachio-Crusted Halibut with Spicy Yogurt (this halibut was my favorite new fish recipe of the year) and Mark Bittman's Roasted Salmon with Butter.  If we broaden the category to include seafood other than fish, one of my favorite recipes from this year I have to mention these Moroccan Baked Scallops.  But this was a nice seafood recipe to close out the year with and it was an excellent counterpoint to the duck breasts we are going to have tonight and the pork belly we had last night for dinner.  I bet if we had a grill and had been able to grill the fish to give it that extra smoky flavor, it would have made a big difference.  It is the type of fish dish that it is reminiscent of lazy evenings at the beach in summertime - I think it's the bright/summery combination of the lemon, herbs and evoo.  I have never been to Greece but the swordfish feels like it should be eaten on a white sand beach in Greece. 

Recipe after the jump!

Steamed Snapper with Ginger, Lime and Cilantro

All of the late nights eating dinner at my desk mean that I end up eating a lot of pan-Asian (the easiest thing to share with a bunch of coworkers, including one that has a gluten allergy, is Thai or pan-Asian).  And there is the occasional pizza or burger thrown in at 11 pm for good measure.  After I finish one of those work benders all I want is vegetables and simple home-cooked meals, including lots and lots of seafood.  It's hard to order decent seafood for delivery (except sushi, which I order if I am eating by myself).  Since I have a few days off for Christmas I dragged Alex to Citarella on Saturday afternoon for some nice fish.  That night we made some nice rainbow trout (seasoned lightly with cayenne pepper and s&p, before being lightly dredged in flour and pan-fried in butter with a squirt of fresh lemon juice for serving) and yesterday afternoon we made red snapper.  Red snapper isn't one of my favorite fish, but I do enjoy it from time to time (plus it looked really good so I couldn't resist).  Since I was looking for something really light and simple we decided to make this steamed snapper recipe I found on Epicurious except that instead of steaming it we made little foil packets and baked the fish in the oven (which basically braised/steamed it).  The fish was easy and fresh - which was exactly what I needed.  And served with some coconut rice it made a simple, but flavorful meal.  The sauce that you steam/bake the fish in is really nice (the combination of lime, herbs, soy, fish sauce, sesame and soy is right up my alley) and it really helped take the very mild flavor of the snapper and amp it up without totally overpowering the fish.  

Now I just have to figure out what I want to do with the swordfish we picked up at Citarella.  I'm thinking we will stick with simple - lemon juice, some herbs, and evoo are at the top of my list right now.  We need something light to balance out the pork belly we are eating for dinner.  But it's going to have to be a game time decision...

Recipe after the jump!

Mustard-Crusted Salmon

 

Every time we drive down to Maryland to visit my parents we come back with a cooler full of random food and a trunk full of clean laundry.  We also tend to come home with Cost Co-sized bags of toilet paper and paper towels, but that is entirely beside the point.  This past visit I appropriated a few things from the freezer for the trip home - including a salmon filet and some pre-marinated Korean spicy pork.  I couldn't tell what kind of salmon it was, but it looked really red like Coho or sockeye salmon.  Rather than stick with our tried and true salmon recipes I decided to do something new.  This recipe was vaguely inspired by a Rachel Ray recipe I found awhile ago for salmon with a matzo and herb crust.  I started trying to think of creative ways to use up the herbs we bought for Thanksgiving with the salmon and that made me think of the herb and matzo-crust.  I didn't bother to look back at the original recipe but the idea of an herb-y crumb topping stuck with me.  We don't tend to keep matzo around the apartment so I didn't have any matzo to use, but we did have some leftover baguette from the night before.  So we whipped up some fresh bread crumbs and crusted our salmon with a mixture of bread crumbs, mustard and fresh thyme.  Oh and we threw in some butter for good measure.  And since we both love crispy salmon skin Alex and I decided to crisp up the salmon skin in a pan on the stove-top and then broil the salmon quickly to brown the bread crumbs and to cook the top side.  I think in the future I would use finer bread crumbs.  Our crumbs were more like small bread chunks.  I also might trip throwing in some fresh parsley or other herbs.  Otherwise I think it was a really nice and fairly easy recipe.  And our salmon was very nicely cooked.  The next time I pick up some matzo I might try the Rachel Ray recipe, but seeing as that almost never happens, maybe we will just stick with our own mustard-crusted salmon.

Recipe after the jump!

Swordfish with Chile Pesto and Avocado Salad

We really need to make more swordfish in our apartment.  Every time we make swordfish at home (and don't screw it up because we have done that before) I am reminded that I really do like swordfish.  We probably make it about twice a year, but I really think we should bump it up to every few months.  If all of our swordfish recipes turned out this well I think we would definitely make it more.  The swordfish itself was juicy and perfectly cooked.  And the chile pesto was very interesting - it had a ton of chile flavor.  I would use it again with pork and maybe beef.  I would also consider using it with duck.  My one complaint with the pesto was that the texture was a little gritty and in some bites you ended up with a big chunk of dried chili.  But it had a lot of good flavor.  We added a little honey to the pesto because it was initially a little bitter for us, but a tsp or two of honey nicely counteracted the bitterness of the dried chilis.  I would definitely recommend serving with some avocado salad because the creaminess of the avocado works really nicely with the meatiness of the swordfish and the spice of the pesto.  If you were to make the recipe as written and serve the swordish as a topping for tacos, don't forgo the avocado slices.  I wished we had topped the swordfish with a few pepitas for crunch and texture (or perhaps thinly sliced some corn tortillas and fried them until crispy), but even without that additional textural element it was pretty tasty.

Recipes after the jump!

Baked Bass with Spicy Rub

I woke up from a nap last weekend and decided that I was in the mood for seafood.  We have been really vegetable and meat-oriented in our kitchen recently and there hasn't been much seafood in the apartment.  Actually, even our dinners out at restaurants have been very meat and vegetable-oriented.  I am going to try to remedy that for the rest of the year, but I'm not going to make any promises because we all know how well I live up to my blog promises...  I have a shrimp recipe that I want to try (maybe we will get around to that one tonight) and I really want to cook some more fish.  We also cooked some swordfish earlier this week that I have yet to post so stay tuned for that recipe.  Actually, if we make the shrimp this weekend I will consider my blog promise to have been fulfilled - three seafood recipes in one blog week is pretty huge around here.  And given that next week is Thanksgiving I'm not sure how much seafood I am going to be able to squeeze into my diet amidst all of that turkey and stuffing.  I do want to go out and have some nice sushi, but that is going to have to wait until after Thanksgiving.

This fish was really easy to make and pretty interesting.  It wasn't my favorite whole fish recipe ever because I didn't think that it had as much flavor as I had hoped for.  The spicy rub was surprisingly spicy from the black pepper, but I wish it had more lemongrass and cilantro flavor.  If I were to make it again I would cut back on the amount of black pepper and up the amount of the other aromatics.  I might also stuff some lime slices in the belly of the fish with the lemongrass.  Another problem with the dish was how many little bones the fish had - which isn't really a problem with the recipe but is a problem inherent with eating whole fish.

P.S.  I couldn't decide which picture was the least creepy of the bunch (and they were all pretty creepy) so I posted what I considered to be the two un-creepiest and most appetizing looking.  Because really, who doesn't love having fish eyeballs staring you in the eye while you eat?

Recipe after the jump!

Mark Bittman's Roasted Salmon with Butter

I am always looking for easy recipes that you can make with one arm tied behind your back and that don't require a ton of ingredients.  Oh and it helps if those dishes are at least relatively healthy.  This recipe has exactly those qualities.  It really doesn't get any simpler than this - both in terms of the effort required and the number of ingredients.  Including the salmon, the dish only required 5 ingredients.  And since the dish was basically just salmon (with a little butter coating the pan), s&p and parsley, the dish is also relatively healthy.  Hurry omega-3 acids!  Considering how tasty the dish was, it is rather unbelievable that the dish was so easy to throw together.  The salmon was really nicely cooked and seasoned.  We cooked our salmon for 8 minutes and it was perfect - with a pink, slightly translucent center.  And it was so easy!  We served it with a simple arugula salad and watermelon and it was a perfect mid-summer mid-week meal.  This is the second post in a row where I have to thank Serious Eats for a lovely meal!  And Serious Eats also includes various riffs on this recipe using different herbs, or evoo in lieu of some of the butter that provide a few interesting modifications on this recipe, which makes it even more fun and attractive.  So I will have to try some of those out (or come up with my own interpretations) and figure out which is my favorite!

Recipe after the jump!

Salmon Bulgogi with Bok Choy and Mushrooms

Now that work has calmed down a bit, we have time to cook again.  I'm hoping that this entire month is on the slower side so Alex and I can cook and eat a bunch of meals at home, but we will have to wait and see what happens.  It has been so long since I had the time to really sit down and plan my meals that I find that I am a little rusty.  When I was trying to figure out what to make for dinner this week I literally had no inspiration whatsoever.  I couldn't think of a single thing I wanted to make, so I just dug through the freezer until I found a few proteins, picked up a few veggies at the farmers' market and then searched Epicurious to come up with some recipes.  This salmon dish was what resulted.  I do have an idea for some Chinese-inspired lamb burgers for this weekend, but we haven't made them yet so I can't take any credit.

When Alex took his first bite of the salmon he predicted I would have two thoughts - that the marinade was kind of salty and kind of harsh.  My first thought was actually that the marinade was almost ridiculously gingery.  We kind of eyeballed the proportions here so the abundance of ginger could be Alex's fault (he did the solids) and the saltiness could be my fault (I "measured" the liquids).  My second thought was that the bok choy and shiitake mushrooms were underseasoned.  But I found that when you tossed the veggies in the reduced marinade that the dish worked out pretty well.  The veggies on their own were kind of bland and the salmon with the reduced marinade/glaze on top was too highly seasoned.  When you put them together (and scraped some marinade off the salmon) it balanced out.  I was a little worried about cooking the salmon at such high temperatures, but that worked out pretty well too.  The salmon turned out to be very nicely cooked - still a touch pink in the center (which I like) and not dry like I had feared.  This will never be my favorite way to cook salmon, but with a few tweaks I think it could be a very pleasant weeknight meal since it is very simple to put together and doesn't require a ton of time, effort and/or ingredients.

Recipe after the jump!

Vietnamese Peach Relish and Fresh Green Peas and Sugar Snap Peas in Sesame Dressing

What do you do when you end up with tons of random farmers' market produce?  We had peaches, shelling peas, sugar snap peas, green beans, wax beans, cherry tomatoes and a bunch of other goodies in the fridge, so it struck me that tonight's meal had to involve at least a few of those ingredients.  I thought a bit and came up with this Vietnamese Peach Relish (served with seared halibut) and a green pea and sugar snap pea salad.  And then you make a salad the next night and another salad the night after that...  Anyway, this dish was one that I thought would be interesting, fresh and vibrant.  And it was all of those things.  Plus it looked pretty on the white plate we served it on.  But Alex and I came to the conclusion that this peach relish (for better or worse) could have been served with anything - grilled chicken breasts, shrimp, pork chops...  You didn't need to spend $20 a pound for halibut because it doesn't really do anything spectacular for the halibut that it couldn't do just as well for another protein.  If I had to pick a halibut recipe to make again, I would go with the Pistachio-Crusted Halibut with Spicy Yogurt that we made last week because that dish was phenomenal and really showed the halibut off nicely.  If I make the relish again (and I think that I will because I liked it and found it interesting) I might try it with a meat to see how it works out.  As for the peas, they were nice but I almost preferred them in their raw state to cooked because the soy sauce and the sesame oil obscured some of the natural sweetness and flavor of the peas.  I also think we needed to dry the peas off a little better so that the dressing would adhere a little better and not be diluted with the cold water that we rinsed the peas with.  My bad.

Recipes after the jump!

Pistachio-Crusted Halibut with Spicy Yogurt and Green Beans with Lemon and Parsley

For the first time in a LONG time, I left work at 5:00 pm, which meant I had time to hit the grocery store on the way home, buy nice seafood, take the dog to the park, and then cook a nice meal.  In case you haven't noticed, we have been making mostly vegetarian meals lately, which is partially due to the fact that we have all of this wonderful produce from the farmers' market, but is mostly due to the fact that I can't commit to buying nice seafood or any other proteins when I don't have any idea if I will ever make it home for dinner.  I refuse to buy seafood or meat (both of which are expensive in NYC) and end up throwing it out because of work.  I hate throwing produce out, but that I can stomach because it's generally much cheaper.  Every time I go through weeks/months like this with work we eat a lot more tofu and pasta than usual because they require less planning and far less commitment on our part.  But because of the Fourth of July, this week was blessedly quiet and we actually had the opportunity to make a really nice meal for dinner!

And not only did we have the time to make a really nice midweek dinner, this recipe goes down as my favorite recipe we have made thus far in the month of July.  Actually, why don't we go ahead and include June too (seeing as we barely cooked in the month of June it's not much of an addition, but whatever).  Dinner was delicious.  The halibut was perfectly cooked and the pistachio-crust kept it moist, while adding some lightly crunchy texture.  The spicy yogurt sauce had a great blend of flavors.  It was tart, spicy, fresh and vibrant.  I loved it.  When you ate a bite of halibut dipped in the yogurt sauce it worked together brilliantly.  The green beans were a simple side dish that worked really nicely with the halibut.  They were fresh and green and lemony, and the simple flavors complimented/mirrored the spicy yogurt.  Actually, at the end of the meal Alex was dipping his green beans into the leftover spicy yogurt.  I guess they went with the yogurt even better than I thought...

Recipes after the jump!

Spice-Crusted Salmon with Ginger-Cilantro Yogurt Sauce

The smell of this salmon is going to stick with me for days to come (in more ways than one because the smell of cooked fish is still lingering in our apartment).  When I was crushing up the fennel and coriander seeds they were both releasing a wonderful scent. They were so aromatic that I could smell them through the ziploc bag.  The crushed coriander seeds smelled nicely floral (and just slightly peppery), whereas the crushed fennel seeds smelled like licorice or anise.  And then when we cooked the salmon you still got those aromatic scents, combined with the smell of the salmon itself.  I thought that overall the salmon was nice.  The floral warmth of the coriander and fennel rub paired nicely with the richness of the salmon and the lime juice (and the yogurt sauce) really cut through the richness and gave the dish some acidity.  I thought the flavor of the yogurt sauce was a little overpowering at times - particularly when you happened to bite into a piece of minced ginger.  In the future I would probably grate the ginger instead of mincing it to avoid any such mouthfuls of ginger.  I would also probably cut back on the amount of yogurt sauce that I serve with each piece of salmon.  I don't think you can get rid of the yogurt sauce entirely because the spices might otherwise prove a little too powerful - I think you need the creamy coolness and acidity of the yogurt sauce to act as a counterpoint to the spices.  All in all, I would say that this was a nice salmon dish and a nice alternative to our usual salmon recipes, but it was just "nice" and nothing spectacular.

Recipe after the jump!

Halibut with Chimichurri and Roast Broccolini

You learn something new everyday.  Yesterday I learned a new word from someone at work - "preantepenultimate."  It means fourth from last.  Today I learned that kabocha squash doesn't roast very well.  Unlike acorn squash or delicata squash, kabocha is really fibrous and starchy.  It reminds me more of a sweet potato than a squash.  I think it would work really well in a braise or a stew.  Once upon a time in China I had a stewed pumpkin dish at a banquet that was delicious.  I think the kabocha squash would work really well in that dish.  But it didn't roast so well.  No matter, I had this post on deck anyway from the meal we made last night, which I guess I should talk about rather than just babbling about my kabocha squash debacle.  Let's see...  What should I say about the fish?  I thought it was really light and tasty - the perfect dish for the warm spring weather that we have been having recently.  Of course now that I said that I just know the temperatures are going to drop and we'll get snow next week.  I thought the chimichurri worked really well with the meaty halibut, although I'm not sure how well it would work with a more delicate fish.  I wish that I could have grilled or broiled the fish for some extra smokey flavor and char, but we don't have a grill and our broiler is beyond super powered so it wouldn't so much have cooked the fish as incinerated it.  So I decided to go the safe route and bake/roast our halibut filets instead.  As for the broccolini, we got the idea to roast it from Ina Garten's Parmsesan-Roasted Broccoli, but I think that roasting broccoli works a little better than roasting broccolini.  The broccolini is already so tender to begin with that it gets a little extra crispy, but that's ok.

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Ginger Catfish (Trey Cha K'nyei)

Somehow we are on a Cambodian kick, which is a little strange considering I don't think we have ever cooked Cambodian before and I went on this whole tangent in my last post about how Cambodian food didn't make an impression on me while I was there.  And here we are, making two Cambodian dishes in a row.  Random, huh?  Anyway, I know I have said this before but catfish and/or basa are not among my favorite fish options.  I tend to find catfish/basa to be bordering on fishy with a strange mushy texture and a muddy flavor.  But every once in awhile I have a catfish dish that surprises me by how tasty it is.  This was one of them.  Another is the Crispy Basa (Catfish) with Onions and Coriander.  I guess I only like Asian catfish dishes?  Anyway, I was surprised by how tasty this dish was.  I actually liked it better than the Quick Khmer Pork with Green Beans, which also surprised me.  The onions were delicious and the fish was really tasty.  The crispy ginger is really nice too, but I could see how some people would be turned off by that amount of ginger.  This quantity of ginger is powerfully warm and spicy.  If you want to cut it back a little so that the ginger perfumes the dish, rather than permeating the dish, go right ahead.  We used slightly less than the recipe called for (mostly because we got lazy with the julienning).  For what it was, I can't think of anything I would change in this dish.  And Alex agrees.  This isn't one of those dishes that you will dream about for years to come because it was so amazing, but it is exactly what it is meant to be - a simple, flavorful stir-fry.  And I really appreciate that from time to time.

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Sicilian-Style Swordfish

Swordfish is not typically one of my favorite fish(es).  And yes, I know that fishes isn't a word, but I like it so I am going to use it.  Back to swordfish.  Generally it's too meaty and overcooked and dry.  When fully cooked it reminds me of a well-done steak (aka shoe leather).  Gross.  There is nothing good about that.  The key is to cook swordfish like a medium to medium-rare steak.  You want the outside to be nicely (and evenly) seared, but you want the middle to stay a little rare.  Otherwise you end up with a swordfish steak that is roughly the texture of an overcooked pork chop.  But I have wanted to make this dish ever since I saw a variation on it at Eataly.  I couldn't convince anyone to order it with me, but I had such order envy every time I saw someone else order it.  It was just so wonderfully golden-brown and it smelled so wonderful as they cooked it in the kitchen.  Granted, everything smelled wonderful while they cooked it.  We had the luck to sit at the counter so we could watch everything being cooked.  Man that made me hungry.  Since I couldn't get anyone to order the dish at Eataly with me, I decided to make it at home.  Luckily, Dave Pasternack had a similar recipe (or maybe the exact same recipe, but who really knows) in The Young Man & the Sea: Recipes & Crispy Fish Tales from Esca.  And yes, I checked to see if the recipe was in the cookbook the second I got home that day.

While most swordfish is kind of blah, this swordfish was very moist and tasty.  With just a squeeze of fresh lemon juice on the swordfish, I loved it.  It was fantastic - bright and fresh, with the proper balance of meaty fish to acid to buttery breadcrumbs.  Don't forgo the fresh lemon juice or you will wonder what all the fuss is about.  And you should definitely take the time to make the Italian-Style Bread Crumbs.  They are worth the trouble because they give the swordfish great texture and flavor.  Plus when you make a batch of breadcrumbs you have enough to last you for a little while.  We can usually get at least two dishes out of each batch of bread crumbs and we only make half the recipe.  They are excellent with pasta or as a substitute for regular breadcrumbs in just about any Italian-ish recipe.  The breadcrumbs here helped to preserve the moisture of the swordfish while it cooked, as well as lending it more flavor and texture.  Be careful while cooking the fish because the breadcrumbs burn rather easily if the heat is up too high or if you're just not paying enough attention.  For the record, one side of our fish got a little toasty, but we saved it before it could actually char.  So just keep an eye out.  If you do manage to cook the swordfish without burning the breadcrumbs you will realize something I have known for awhile - Dave Pasternack is a brilliant man.

Recipes after the jump!