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Because it’s Lent we’re thinking about
fish, which has traditionally been an underutilized ingredient
in the Midwest. Now it’s possible to get good fish here.
FANTASTIC FISH PIE - Source: Jamie Oliver,
The Naked Chef
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6 large potatoes, peeled and diced into
1-inch squares
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2 free-range eggs
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2 large handfuls of fresh spinach,
trimmed and washed
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onion, finely chopped
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1 carrot, halved and finely chopped
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extra-virgin olive oil
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1 cup heavy cream
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2 good handfuls of grated mature
Cheddar or Parmesan
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1 lemon, juiced
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1 heaped teaspoon English mustard
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1 large handful of flat-leaf parsley
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1 pound haddock or fresh cod fillet,
skin removed, pin-boned and sliced into strips
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salt and freshly ground black pepper
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nutmeg (optional)
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
Put the potatoes into salted boiling water
and bring back to the boil for 2 minutes.
Carefully add the eggs to the pan and cook
for a further 8 minutes until hard boiled, by which time the
potatoes should also be cooked. At the same time, steam the
spinach in a colander above the pan. This will only take a
minute. When the spinach is done, removed from the colander and
gently squeeze any excess moisture away. Then drain the
potatoes in the colander.
Remove the eggs, cool under cold
water, then peel and quarter them. Set aside.
In a separate pan slowly fry the onion and
carrot in a little olive oil for about five minutes, then add
the heavy cream and bring just to the boil. Remove from the
heat and add the cheese, lemon juice, mustard and parsley. Put
the spinach, fish, and eggs into an appropriately sized
earthenware dish and mix together, pouring over the creamy
vegetable sauce. The cooked potatoes should be drained and
mashed – add a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper, and a touch of
nutmeg if you like. Spread on top of the fish. Don’t bother
piping it to make it look pretty – it’s a homely hearty thing.
Place in the oven for about 25 to 30
minutes until the potatoes are golden. Serve with some nice
peas or greens, not forgetting your baked beans and tomato
ketchup. Tacky but tasty and that’s what I like.
Yield: 6 servings
Prep Time: 30 minutes
Cooking Time: 50 minutes
SAUTÉED FISH
A caller from Mattoon
offered these tips on sautéing fish:
Take your fish,
put it on a rack, and pat dry with a paper towel. Salt the
fish. After about 5 minutes, the fish get a sticky slimy coat,
because the salt brings the fluid out. This sticky coating
makes it easy for seasonings to adhere to the fish. So then
dredge the fish in flour with whatever seasonings you like, you
can get just a very thin coating. Fry in hot olive oil. The
flour gets crusty adding a wonderful texture.
(Source: America’s
Test Kitchen on WILL-TV! )
Another method, for potato-crusted fish:
While the fish are sitting with the salt, peel a potato and
shred it. Pack one side of the fish firmly with the potato.
Saute with the potato side down first until the potato is
golden, then turn to finish for only a minute or so on the other
side.
SALMON IN THE PAN
A caller from Champaign offered this quick
recipe for salmon in the pan:
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Melted
butter
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Dark
brown sugar
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Vanilla
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Touch of
lemon juice
Combine these ingredients and mix until
liquefied. Sauté the salmon in the liquid. It produces a
caramel sweet sauce on the salmon. You could even add a little
barbecue sauce.
POACHED SALMON
Use a frying pan with high sides. Fill it
with water and add lemon juice, green onions and green pepper,
thyme. Let this liquid simmer for half an hour, and then put in
salmon (thawed) and poach.
The poaching liquid is wonderful, is there
a use for it afterwards? It could be cooked down (reduced)
after adding some white wine, which would give a thinner sauce
for garnish. Or it could be used as the base of a soup if you
add some body with vegetable or chicken broth.
FINNISH-STYLE FISH
A recipe from Doyle’s Finnish relatives
that is quick and so easy
- Good
package of frozen vegetables you like (not diced)
- Strips
of tilapia
- 1 cup
heavy cream
- ¼ cup
ketchup
- Salt and
pepper to taste
Put the vegetables on the bottom of a 9 x
13 baking dish. Lay the strips of tilapia on top of the
vegetables. Mix together the cream and ketchup and pour the
mixture over the fish. Bake. The fish gets flaky, and the
sauce is a beautiful pink color. There is a certain sweetness
in the sauce, no herbs or spices are needed. Doyle’s relative
used squares of frozen fish, but Doyle prefers the tilapia.
A caller from Gibson City offered an account of a simple fish stew
that was devised when a catch of only 3 small fish was not
enough to feed five people. The cook devised a fish stew using
the fish and corn chowder with onions and garlic and salt and
pepper to stretch out the fish. It was a very basic stew that
really turned out well.
There was discussion about the sustainability of fishing and the
lack of regulations. Chilean sea bass has now been fished to
the point of extinction. A caller from Urbana reported the
website
www.seafoodwatch.org which lists which fish to avoid and
which to look for, when considering the environment
sustainability. It recommends avoiding Chilean sea bass,
bluefin tuna, and red snapper among others, for being overfished.
Farmed salmon including Atlantic salmon is also to be avoided
because of farming practices which feed the salmon with
ground-up fishmeal that comes from organisms scooped out of the
ocean. Good salmon is wild-caught salmon from Alaska.
Tilapia is a “new” fish that is suddenly
everywhere. It’s very mild tasting and versatile. You can
purchase a goodly amount, frozen, at Aldi’s. It is farmed in
Kansas, and also in Decatur. Tilapia farms are very efficient,
using the waste products of other agricultural products to feed
the fish and warm the water.
A caller was seeking plantains, a type of
banana. Many callers reported that most of the local
supermarkets carry them from time to time, but they are seasonal
(usually available around Cinco de Mayo). Some sources that may
have them more regularly are El Charro (on Green St.), Euromart,
Mas Amigos, and World Gourmet Foods in Bloomington (which also
carries plantain chips). Any place with Latin cooking
ingredients would be a good place to try.
One method of cooking plantains: slice
them in chips, spray with Pam, sauté and sprinkle with salt and
lime juice. Doyle adds a step: cut them ½-inch thick, fry once,
then smash them down with a pancake turner and cook again. By
this method they become about 2-3 inches across. This is a
Caribbean style of cooking them.
A
caller from Champaign suggested another method of cooking
plantains: wait until they are extremely ripe or overripe and
then fry them. They come out crispy on the outside, but soft
and sweet on the inside. That may be the purpose of the two
steps in Doyle’s method. If you fry them when they are still
hard, you use thinner slices and they are crispier.
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