Cod Fillets in a Red Curry Sauce

The last of the garden tomatoes are sitting on counters all over the Northeast. Looking for something tasty to do with them ? I'm suggesting a spin on a Madhur Jaffrey recipe that takes tomatoes, onion, garlic, curry spices and transforms all into a soft, chunky, and spicy hot curry sauce. Jaffrey takes that sauce and uses it to form a base for spice-rubbed cod fillets. Her recipe calls for the dry rub marinade that sits on the fillets for half an hour. Then, the fish is quick fried on both sides to crisp the outer surface. The fish is then laid atop the red curry sauce to finish in a hot oven.

Pan Seared Halibut and Cannellini Beans with Anchovy Herbed Vinaigrette

 

That recipe name ! What a mouthful ! This dish has a bunch of flavours that make for a real mouthful. The vinaigrette looks sparse, but it has so many powerful ingredients! In small amounts, they pack intense power. In addition, the beans have stealth to them. They have the garlic and shallot flavours that have gently infused their way into them. And the fish ... it was heavenly. With its crispy top and perfectly salty flesh, it is a real treat! SB and I have not been eating a lot of fish lately. For whatever reason, I have been craving it. I'm so glad I splurged and bought this halibut.

This was SUCH a nice dinner ! We had it with a side of steamed broccoli florets. 

NYT's Blonde Puttanesca

Thanksgiving week calls for easy meals that allow time for the baking and shopping and food storage that is required to put on a huge feast. That being said, we are traveling for the Thanksgiving weekend and are loath to have much in the fridge when we take off for a few days. Soooo ...

Mediterranean Baked Cod with Olives and Tomatoes

One pan meals have caught my attention of late. Coming across this simple pan of vegetables, lemon tang, salty olive bite, and mellow baked cod seemed a winner to me. I leave it to you to judge. Make this meal on an evening when you don't particularly want to cook, but know you should eat something healthy.

Staten Island Style Cod

This is a beautiful and spicy platter of cod fillet ! Years ago, I picked up the South Beach Diet Cookbook and went through most of the recipes. This recipe, while written for Chilean Sea Bass, adapts really well to Atlantic Cod.  Silent Bob and I have been going meatless increasingly, as we age and as we read more and more how the agriculture of the meat industry is wrecking the environment and the quality of lives of  'the crop'. To boot, sea stocks are increasingly overfished and harmed by the increase in fish farming ... aargh! It seems we humans need to sit back on our heels and really think about what we eat, how we produce it, and how much we consume. That's a whole book of ranting, though.

I haven't bought fish in weeks and it is my birthday week. This platter of fish was my gift to myself. Easy, very spicy, but freshened up by the addition of chopped fresh herbs and lemon. This is how I did it.

Seared Tuna with Anise Scented Tomatoes and Spinach

Sometimes I come upon a recipe that just feels right ... and this is one of them. How does one describe this dish? Subtle and lovely. This is a meal to make when you really don't want to fuss around too long, but really want to have something good on the plate in timely fashion.

Ahi Tuna and Caramelized Onions / Roasted Kabocha Squash

Sushi grade ahi tuna for a reasonable price! I happened into the fish market yesterday and got that pleasant surprise! It didn't take long for me to have two fat steaks cut, wrapped, and paid for.  Then it was home to decide just how I wanted to prepare them.

Summertime Fare ... Swordfish with Mango Salsa

I'd dearly love to pass the recipe on for this Branzino we had on vacation ... but I was the lazy slug sipping wine and paying no attention to the preparation of the fish other than watching Seth slash the sides and slice lemons prior to the grilling process.

Don't know how long they were grilled, but they were really good, other than the bones that made you pay attention while forking the pure white flesh off the carcass ! AND ... they're such pretty fish!

But wait !

I'm posting my annual swordfish meal - something equally easy and so full of spicy color ! Look !!!

Random Recipes - Zuppe di Pesce with Brandy and Cream

The soup bowls have been empty for the past few weeks, as SB and I have enjoyed traditional summertime fare! Our grill has been going far more often than the stove top! That all changed, though, when Dom handed off this month's Random Recipe challenge and I counted out the cookbooks and then counted out the pages.

Pan-Seared Lemon Pepper Swordfish With Orecchiette and Peas

The dog days of summer are here and it seems they're here to stay for a good while.  All the cool smoothies, iced tea, cold salads, popsicles, chilled pies, and cold cocktails certainly help keep us comfortable, but one still needs a hot meal now and then. Standing over a hot stove, though, holds little appeal!  I have fallen to the strategy of doing some prep work on dinner early in the morning while the house is cool and then lounging through the heat of the day. Once the sun goes down and the house cools off a bit, I am ready to tackle dinners. They still need to be fast and easy, though.

Yesterday, we shucked peas and marinated swordfish early in the day. Then, in the time it took to boil pasta water and cook orecchiette, we seared the fish, sauteed onions and mushrooms, steamed green beans for a side and put together a nice platter of warm sustenance ... all the while sipping on chilled Sauvignon blanc. My kitchen timer allows me to put things in the pan, crank up the heat and walk away from the hot stove ...when the little dinger dings,  I dash in and away after tossing things, flipping fish, and only stand in the steam for the final plating ... one gets cagey when it's this hot!

Virtual Supper Club Cooks Fresh and Local ...

This month's Cooking Light Virtual Supper Club theme is 'Fresh and Local' and aren't we all loving that? Our gardens are just starting to come on with greens and we picked the first strawberry of the season yesterday morning! It's all about the greens though ... new lettuce greens and the first kale, rows of spinach for salads - all brand new and minutes from the garden when it hits the salad bowl!

My favorite green is spinach and I pester my husband to plant it very early in the Spring so that we can have fresh baby leaves in salads. We never get enough to cook in the mounds that we like to gobble, so I do buy fresh from the farmers market and the super.  Today's recipe is a wilted spinach with a garlic vinaigrette sauce that when plated serves as a wonderful side dish or in this evening's case a bed for salmon fillets.

Provencal Fish ... Good Basic Fare

This is no delicate seafood dish. No, this is a plate of food for a night when you're craving a hearty glass of wine, a substantial meat and vegetable plate with juices worthy of a thick crust of bread. This French recipe requires a thick meaty fillet of fish - no sole or perch, but a fat slab of cod or hake or pollock. I used cod and pollock.

The rest of the dish consists of good chunky oven roasted tomatoes (canned or fresh during the summertime!), some onions, garlic, black olives, white wine, and herbs. Start the tomatoes as a sauce and dredge the fish fillets in flour and salt and black pepper. Fry the fish briefly in very hot oil, then pat the fillets with paper towels to soak up some of the oil. Lay the fish in a shallow roasting dish, drizzle the hot tomato sauce over top and bake in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes to finish the fish. Scatter on some pretty green thyme sprigs and capers.  Have a good crusty artisan bread and a cold green salad waiting and pour the wine. This is good basic food that reminds me of seaside inn fare on Cape Ann; Provence may be in the title of the recipe, but this dish screams the coast of New England to me.

Provençal Bourride and Making Aïoli ...

There are certain foods into which patience is mixed and mixed and mixed ... the results are spectacular when you get it right or crushing when you don't. Perhaps that's because of the specificity of traditional technique, the thought put into the making of the dish, the multiple steps that are best timed carefully, the little trick techniques that ensure success, the nuance of textures that must be achieved, and ultimately ... the gut feelings that a sure cook understands they must listen to and act on. I had plenty of time to come up with this idea last evening. I thought of mastering soufflés, rolling and cutting pasta, constructing a finely decorated cake, perfecting a classic paella, making an exquisite buttercream, tempering chocolate, designing beautiful petit-fours, hand-dipping bon-bons, rolling the perfect pie crust, and in my case, making a perfect aïoli. All require patience and attention to little details.

Roasted Swordfish with Ina's Caesar Dressing Sauce

I have been really enjoying Ina Garten's cookbook, how easy is that?, since I checked it out of our little public library here in the backwater. Last evening, I made her recipe for Caesar Roasted Swordfish. Other than going a little heavy on the sauce, this dish was a real hit! The dressing is delicious and would be worthy drizzled on traditional Caesar salad makings. In fact, that would be my recommendation. Make the full amount of sauce, cut the amounts for marinating the swordfish and drizzling over the finished fillets in half, and save it for a 'next day salad' lunch. The recipe calls for frizzled capers as a tangy garnish, but we passed, as we're not fans of capers, but they sure would pack an extra flavour punch!

Basque Cod ... and Elena Arzak

Basques had been crossing the ocean since the Middle Ages, voyaging to the rich cod fisheries of the Grand Banks and pursuing whales into the treacherous sub-Arctic waters off Greenland. Indeed, John Cabot's celebrated discovery of Newfoundland in 1497 was greeted by the Basques with something approaching wry bemusement, for it was hardly a new-found-land, two of their own captains having dropped their anchors off the very same coast over a hundred years before.  - Mark Mills in Amagansett

This week, I have had my nose in a couple books. In one particularly good mystery novel, I came across this quote. It reminded me of reading Mark Kurlansky's book, Cod - A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World. Kurlansky writes extensively about the importance of the Basque fishermen's discovery of the Grand Banks. The codfish became such an important sea harvest that it played a dominant role in the development of the European rush to colonize the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Salted cod became a staple of naval stores and fed many a sailor, as countries like Spain, France, and Great Britain made their marks on the world beyond their countries' immediate political borders. To this day, salted cod is an important ingredient in Basque and Catalonian cuisine.

Tapas - Sunday Lunch

A Sunday luncheon party with friends makes for fun nibbling. Making a few tapas platters is the perfect way to let those who are hungry knosh and those who are dieting nibble. Enough said. There's a bit of the decadent and a bit of the conservative here - roasted potatoes with shallots, garlic, rosemary and alioli for dipping, salmon in a roasted red pepper sauce, a cool chicken salad with raisins and pignoli, a platter of black olives and Manchego served with a flatbread bedecked with artichokes, onions, pimientos, and bits of black olive, Spanish Rioja and beers ... and that Coconut Lane Cake for dessert with tea or coffee.

My Seven Links ...

... from a small idea, much has come 

Being recognized by a fellow blogger is a big thing, but whoever thought to start this 'Seven Links' thing was really pushing the envelope. I am honored that my friend Devaki  from over at Weave a Thousand Flavors thinks enough of me that she would like to see what I think of my work.  I am, however, intimidated by the task! It's difficult being impartial. It's difficult to judge your own work, to sift through the portfolio of all you've done and evaluate ... and sometimes, it's embarrassing.

I've found myself re-reading back posts and sometimes thinking, Who wrote that drivel? Who photographed that? What was that blogger thinking rambling on about that ? Oh, gosh .... never mind! I guess the exercise here is to NOT be so hard on oneself, but instead, look at the project as a chance to slow down and really celebrate the work ... so my links ... after much kerfluffle... and some added storyline because the concept of food memory is one of the things that first inspired me to start this blog in the first place

Most Beautiful -

... a simple and elegant cake with the softest of frostings and the freshest embellishment

Making cakes with floral and herbal decorations has been 'my thing' for a long time. I have a picture of my daughter, Sara holding her birthday cake up for the camera. It's a large heart shaped single layer cake with icing this exact shade. It has a wreath of beautiful fresh gladiola flowers placed around it - flowers in shades of deep pinks and whites. Sometimes, I think, the food memory dictates the creative response to a new project. So this is my 'most beautiful' inspired by that other 'most beautiful grinning child' ...

Blackberry and Sour Apple Cake With Raspberry Cream Cheese Frosting

Mangoes, Salmon, and Madhur ...

                                                                                                                         Photo credit: Clara Molden

Madhur Jaffrey has made a name for herself as a distinguished actress and as an enthusiastic advocate for Indian cuisine. Her favorite dishes use simple ingredients, but have interesting spice combinations that add tang, heat, zest, and color! Her interview on NPR back in 2006 was such a delight that I'm including a link here. Just listen to this delightful lady tell of her early life in colonial India and her wonderful memories of growing up and into the spiciness of her beloved Indian cuisine! Her memoir, Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India is on my bedside table and is enthralling. In her 80's, Ms. Jaffrey has lived the change from colonial India to independent India and has negotiated the paths between traditional Indian culture and Western culture. She has become an established film actress and has lived in New York for many years, but her love of her Indian roots is evident in her discussion of her favorite recipes. She is number seven on our list of 50 Women Game-Changers and well deserves the spot ... join the other bloggers that are paying her tribute this week by linking to Mary's post at One Perfect Bite ... then choose a recipe and make your own Indian feast! I chose to work with fresh salmon that is given a lovely spice rub and is then finished in a hot spicy smooth tomato curry.

Back in Boston, It's Called Chowdah!

Home again! And Red Sox baseball season has started off with a whimper and then a bang ... we're watching the games on the tube and making all the traditional foods to celebrate them ... and that means we start off with fish chowder! For me, a fish chowder has one fish only ... the mighty cod. Okay, I'll let you sneak by with a big honkin' filet of monkfish, but that's it! Every time I make fish chowder, I think of that old chestnut about Boston ... heard it?

Raise your soup spoon and toast ...

"And here's to good old Boston, the land of the bean and the cod, where the Lowells talk only to Cabots, and the Cabots talk only to God."

Maple Teriyaki Salmon and Saffron Risotto

Bright colors are important at this time of year ... for the stomach and the soul.

Say what you will about the politics of Patrick Leahy, Vermont's controversial Senator, he certainly coughed up a sweet little way of dealing with salmon fillets, by sharing his wife's way of preparing salmon steaks in the above cookbook. Sweet Maple is a cookbook of all things maple syrup-flavored. It gives the reader an excellent overview of the botany, history, and anecdotes of the maple sugaring industry. It's a book that comes off my bookshelf at this time of year and gets heavy use through March and into April. When the maple sugar is being made, the recipes for everything from soups to desserts are pulled out for a yearly run through.