Thursday, February 9, 2012

Fish Adventure

I can't remember the last time I cooked fish, or if I ever cooked fish at all. Making Chinese fish dish is out of the question because it's always so complicated. And because seafood is rather expensive here, I haven't cooked fish at all since I've been back in the States again.
So, after a long dry spell of cooking, that is, not totally deprived of cooking, but not cooking anything new for a long time, I decided to pick up Julia's book from the fish section.
Since the last part of 2011, I have grown rather creative in my kitchen, such as substituting honey oats cereal for anything that asks for nuts or oats. I also made up a few recipes that didn't even have a name. I didn't write them down, because they were the spur of the moment, and because they came from my own head I knew I could always make them again, since they weren't exactly outstandingly fabulous if I do anything different in the future, it may actually improve the flavor.
Anyway, let me stop rambling and get back to the topic. I bought the cheapest kind of fish fillet from the supermarket and vermouth cooking wine (I don't know why I didn't buy the wine until today because it's so ubiquitous in Julia's book.)
After going through the recipes last night, I had decided to bring forward my creative gene. I prepared the fish as requested in the braising recipe, covered in flour, then egg and coated with bread crumbs, but instead of cooking in a pan of butter I baked it in the oven, with a base of vermouth and browned onion and mushroom spread on top. Then continuing the braised recipe, I made the butter provencal sauce, with much less of butter, ending up the sauce much less thicker.
The fish fresh out of oven

the fish drenched in the sauce and cut up into small pieces (not in the recipes either)

Then I poured everything on top of pasta, because pasta is good with almost anything.
So there you go!



No comments:

Post a Comment