This fish dish is more technique than recipe. Mastering a few cooking techniques can really broaden your kitchen repertoire, perhaps more so than solely focusing on trying new recipes. Although I unfortunately couldn’t find the exact quote, Dan recalls hearing or reading an assertion from Chef Michael Symon concerning the importance of technique: Learn a recipe and you can cook 1 dish. Learn a technique and you can cook 100 dishes. Chef Symon’s premise rings true with this method of cooking fish. The first time we made it, we used this recipe from Ina Garten. We’ve made it about 4 different times now, varying the flavors and ingredients each time, but always achieving perfectly-cooked and delicious fish. The key is wrapping the fish (and whatever herbs or seasonings you want and/or thinly sliced veggies) drizzled with a little olive oil into a parchment-paper-package and baking it in the oven until the fish is cooked through — about 12-15 minutes (the perfect cooking time for this dish in our oven appears to be exactly 13 minutes.) And aside from being a foolproof method for properly cooking fish, the parchment package is an interesting way to serve the fish — almost like a present on a plate.
Category: Seafood
Manhattan Clam Chowder
The Steelers played the New York Jets this week. Continuing with our Steeler Opponent-City Challenge (“S.O.C.C.” for short), it was a little daunting to try to pick a dish indigenous to New York, a city known for its food and diversity of cuisine. When we think New York, no singular food automatically comes to mind. The city has entire neighborhoods centered around different types of cuisine, from all over the world. Ultimately, we decided to go with a dish that purportedly originated in New York, and is named after its oldest, and perhaps most well-known borough. Not to be confused with its creamy cousin from New England (hmmmm, do the Steelers play the Patriots this season??), this version of clam chowder has a clear broth base, with tomatoes to provide its signature red color. Famed chef and food writer James Beard supposedly once characterized this version as “that rather horrendous soup called Manhattan clam chowder . . . resembles a vegetable soup that accidentally had some clams dumped into it.” We respectfully disagree. Although we were initially a lot more familiar with the New England style of chowder (and like it very much), we found the Manhattan chowder to be equally good in its own way, with sweetly rich tomato flavor balanced out by the salty clams. Just as there are die-hard fans of particular football teams, there are people who likely side with Chef Beard in their unwavering preference for New England clam chowder versus the Manhattan version. But we feel there is room for both in our little food world. (Unlike our feelings for other teams in our little football world — suck it Jets, Steelers win!)
Olive-Oil Baked Shrimp
To keep our weekly menus from becoming boring or routine, we’re always keeping an eye out for good, new-to-us recipes, from a variety of sources. One surprising (to me anyway) place where we’ve found several great dishes is People Magazine. I’m sure someone out there will poke fun (you know who you are), but I’m not afraid to admit that I am a subscriber to People and have been for years. I’m not trying to say I subscribe to People just for the recipes (the magazine also features reliable reviews of books, music and shows, human interest stories, and of course, celebrity photos and gossip), but every couple of months I find a recipe there that looks interesting enough to tear out and save in our “to try” recipe folder. Given how much we love shrimp and how often we eat it, the magazine page with this recipe (by former Top Chef winner Hung Huynh) didn’t sit in the folder long before we tried it and loved it. We adapted it a bit by adjusting the seasonings and cooking time, but were quite pleased with the buttery (without actually using butter), fresh and slightly spicy end result that was super easy and quick to prepare. And speaking of easy, I’ll save you the trouble of composing your own joke by freely admitting that yes, I do happen to glean much of my knowledge of current events via E! News. You’re welcome.
Seafood Paella (on the grill)
We’ve previously made a couple of different kinds of paella (a version with chicken, sausage and seafood, as well as one made with leftover turkey), using the stove-top method of cooking. After a lovely dinner party at a friend’s house several weeks ago (thanks Sally!), we were inspired to try an all-seafood paella cooked on the grill instead of the stove. One of the reasons for cooking this dish on the grill is that the heat will be more evenly distributed across the entire pan and its contents. Generally, paella pans are wider than the size of the typical stove burner, so the ingredients in the center will cook a little faster than the outer edges. No big deal, since the proteins cook in the center and the outer edges are mostly rice, but authentic paella should ideally have a crispy layer of caramelized rice along the bottom and sides called “socarrat.” (We have yet to perfect the socarrat, but cooking the paella on the grill gives us a better shot at doing so. And the paella is still delicious even without that crispy layer.) Grilling the paella or using a paella pan is by no means required — in our humble opinion, the only true requirements for paella are rice and saffron — so feel free to make do with whatever other ingredients you prefer and means you have available. This version is simply our take on the recipe from this article, using the seafood we like and a few techniques borrowed from other recipes. No matter the protein (although beef might be a bit strange) or cooking method used, it doesn’t get much better than a big pan of flavorful, saffron-infused rice cooked in a rich broth along with sweet and savory protein, red peppers and other veggies that add a bit of bite.
Shrimp Burgers
Sounds weird, tastes delicious. Really! If you like shrimp and want the texture of a hamburger without the red meat, these burgers are a tasty and more healthy alternative. And they are a vast improvement over our attempt to make veggie burgers, which was a one-bite-so-bad-throw-away-and-order-pizza moment. This burger recipe from Cook’s Illustrated’s “Light & Healthy 2012” magazine is also easy to make with simple ingredients: 1-2 slices white bread, 1 pound shrimp, 3 tablespoons light mayonnaise, 2 green onions, 2 tablespoons fresh minced parsley, 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest, 1/8 teaspoon salt, 1/8 teaspoon pepper, a pinch of cayenne pepper and 2 teaspoons canola or vegetable oil. Topped with creamy chipotle chile sauce and served on a toasted English muffin with lettuce and tomato, these shrimp burgers taste almost like a lighter version of a po’ boy, without the breading and frying, and satisfy a craving for protein in patty form.
Asian-Glazed Halibut
Asian flavor makes just about anything taste better, even fish. Thanks to my aversion to any fish that tastes too fishy, we have experimented with all kinds of sauces to make fish more appetizing, including citrus, BBQ, Southwestern and Italian style sauces and toppings. While we usually cook with tilapia at home, halibut is another mild flavored fish that is easy to prepare in several different ways: baked, broiled, grilled, pan-sauteed, poached or fried. Because it is thicker than tilapia, halibut holds up nicely in a heavier sauce or glaze. Breaking out of our tilapia rut, we adapted this recipe into an Asian-inspired marinade and glaze for fresh halibut, pan-seared and finished in the oven. The marinade keeps the halibut from drying out and infuses the fish with spicy, tangy and fresh flavors.
Spicy Cajun Shrimp
Even though we’ve only been there once together, New Orleans is one of our favorite places (and if you’ve ever been, it’s probably one of yours as well), due in no small part to the amazing food there. Whenever we’re lucky enough to visit a place with uniquely exceptional food, we like to find cookbooks with recipes from the local area. During one of our many strolls through the French Quarter a few years ago, we stopped in a small used bookstore and picked up the book “Cooking Up a Storm: Recipes Lost and Found from the Times-Picaune of New Orleans.” This book is a special as New Orleans itself, and is filled with old recipes exchanged via a food column of the Times-Picaune, by locals struggling to rebuild their lives — and recipe collections — after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. This particular shrimp recipe was submitted by a reader who cut it out of the paper many years ago and adapted it by reducing the amount of cayenne pepper, even though her family enjoys spicy food. (Okay by me if it’s okay “bayou” — the dish is plenty spicy even with the reduced amount!) The recipe is quick and easy to make with simple ingredients: shrimp; cayenne pepper; black pepper & salt; red pepper flakes; dried thyme, basil and oregano; butter; garlic; Worcestershire sauce; tomatoes and beer. The plump shrimp cooked in a spicy, rich sauce evokes fond memories and takes us right back to the Big Easy.
Greek-Spiced Baked Shrimp
We recently discovered how simple it can be to cook Greek food at home, and we’re always looking for good new recipes using shrimp. Not only is this Greek recipe easy, but it’s also a delicious and healthy way to cook one of our favorite crustaceans. The ingredients are items we usually have on hand: shrimp, an onion, garlic, olive oil, red pepper flakes, ground cinnamon, ground allspice, a can of whole tomatoes and feta cheese. If you like Greek flavors with a hint of spice, and you like shrimp and tomatoes, you will enjoy this savory dish.
Baked Panko Fish Sticks
Anybody else remember eating fish sticks as a kid? The pre-breaded kind that you buy frozen and re-heat on a cookie sheet in the oven? I feel a strange fondness thinking back about those perfectly formed, mostly tasteless, little breaded logs of mystery fish meat — most likely because they remind me of Friday nights during Lent, which makes me happy for two reasons: Fridays signal the Weekend (favorite time of the week) and Lent signals Spring (favorite season.) Fondness aside, the fish sticks of our childhood didn’t have much going for them in the flavor department. And I’m pretty sure that their exact uniform shapes were not the result of a chef’s precise knife skills preparing the fish for breading, freezing, packaging and shipment. Makes me think of this great commercial, featuring a little girl’s indignation at being fed “minced” fish sticks: “What is this, ‘minced?’ You feed me ‘minced?’ You ever catch a minced fish?!?” We’re pretty sure that Martha Stewart never fed anyone minced fish, so we decided to try her recipe for fish sticks made from tilapia fillets as a modern version of this childhood classic. With just a few ingredients — tilapia, an egg, panko, olive oil and Old Bay seasoning — and an elegant dipping sauce made with mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, horseradish, lemon juice and parsley, the fish stick is all grown up.
Shrimp Salad Rolls (w/ leftover shrimp)
We cook with shrimp a lot, in many different ways — from pasta dishes to salads to gumbo. We also like to take leftover cooked shrimp (or store-bought cooked shrimp) and transform it into a new dish, like we did with these quesadillas. As often as we cook with shrimp, it can sometimes be a struggle to come up with new and different shrimp recipes. Recently when I was planning our weekly menu and trying to come up with a meal using leftover shrimp, something made me think of a wonderful week we spent on Cape Cod with Dan’s side of the family several summers ago. I remembered how Dan made it his mission that week to eat lobster every single day (he more than accomplished that goal, occasionally even eating lobster twice per day), and how much he loves lobster rolls. That’s when I had a light bulb moment — how about a roll/sandwich filled with shrimp salad instead of lobster? I researched several lobster roll recipes online and adapted this recipe to make it more compatible with the shrimp flavor. The result was a light and creamy shrimp salad in a buttery sandwich that evoked fond memories of sunny, salty, fun times at the beach with family. It’s a special thing when simple ingredients (shrimp, cucumber, celery, shallots, tarragon, lemon juice, mayo, cayenne pepper and Old Bay seasoning) combine to form a good meal that is also a reminder of good times.