Sauteed Red Snapper with Blood Orange and Fennel Salad

Not every recipe comes with a good story.

This is one of them, because the story is this…I saw this recipe in the most recent issue of Cooking Light and though to myself, I think I will try this. And I did.

A simple recipe that highlights the fresh flavors of each ingredient.

The snapper is wild caught and the fennel and blood oranges are in season. The fish is lightly salted and peppered, and a splash of lemon and white wine finish it off.  It took less than 30 minutes to prepare and they boyfriend and I were able to sit down in our messy apartment to enjoy a lunch that looks and tastes a lot fancier than it really is.

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Restaurant Review: Bastille

I chose Bastille in Alexandria for DC’s restaurant week purely because it was walkable from Braddock Rd Metro and it had 4 “$” signs. If only all shots in the dark were this much of a success! I would go back any day of the year, Restaurant Week or no. If that’s not high praise, I don’t know what is.

Appetizers

These beignets make for an upscale snack!

Restaurant Review: 1789

I first went to 1789 when my now husband proposed. It was a magical evening. The fireplace was roaring in the main room. Love was in the air. The food was *amazing*. You can imagine why we decided to come back.

It’s a cozy restaurant that’s good for birthdays and other celebrations.  As adventurous as we are most of the time, we’ve been three times and gotten the same entree three times. Both of us. Normally, I’d say, “BOOOORRRRING.” But their lamb is that good.

We went to 1789 for their “sizzling summer special,” a $40, 3-course dinner (lamb and steak are an extra $8). We invited another couple to join us, and of course they were sharers. Nothing is worse than going to a good restaurant and people won’t share. We even got a small taste of another dinner! One of them ordered something different.

After we ordered, we got an amuse bouche. Delicious! The bite had a sort of a ceviche of rockfish with herbs on a mini tomato on a slice of French bread.

The right amount of citrus and oil in the amuse bouche make a tasty snack.

Salmon Chowder

I try my best not to waste food. However, one cannot make everything into a quiche, which is generally my favorite “clean out the fridge” meal. This is because I try to avoid casseroles. Maybe it has something to do with growing up in Wisconsin and spying those trays of blankity-blank casserole with fried onion and cornflake topping that has made me wary, but I’m not a casserole kind of girl, at least not yet.

Save your wild salmon for regular eatin', but instead use farm raised, sustainable salmon for this chowder.

This last weekend I had an abundance of dairy-fresh 2% milk. My boyfriend and I go to the farmer’s market each week and get ourselves a half gallon, but somehow this week we hadn’t managed to finish a good deal of it. I had even baked a tray of blondies with the intention of downing them with some milk, but there was still a couple of cups left, and so, thinking of the frozen farm-raised salmon I had in the fridge, I thought: CHOWDA. I’ve never made a salmon chowder before, but I’ve done many with cod, so I figured I could apply the same methods and come out with something edible.

And if I may pat myself on the back, it turned out pretty good.

Tomato Caper Tilapia

Lately, I’ve been up to my elbows in tomatoes. This? is a good thing. The boyfriend and I have been hitting the farmers’ market week after week since our return from Rome, and tomatoes are tops on our list. Our tomato purchases seem to increase from week to week because they’re just that good and there’s so much you can do with them. This week, he was in New York for a bachelor party and I went to the market alone. We’re heading to the beach next weekend, which means no market for us (we’ll hit some of the produce stands on the way up). So what did I stock up on? Tomatoes? The bag was so heavy I had to lift it with both arms, tilt backward to counter the weight so I wouldn’t fall forward and land on my face. But I had to have them.

A light, fresh tasting meal with a complement of asparagus and artisan bread.

Because what is summer without tomatoes, after all? The ones you find at most grocery stores are flavorless and hard. Their flesh is orangey instead of a marvelous red. You can’t smell them and you can hardly taste them. Even in summer when tomatoes are in season, there’s really no comparison between store and soil. And the heirloom tomatoes! If you only went to the store, you’d never know about Mr. Stripey or the Cherokee Purple?

I’ve making lots of salads and salsa and slicing them up for caprese salad and for burgers. I’ve been throwing them into sauce pans and cooking up spaghetti puttanesca. I’ve been dicing them up and cooking it with fish, and in this recipe in particular, which is so good that I want to tip the tomatoes directly into my mouth and skip the fish altogether. But trust me, the fish and the sauce together? As my friend Rob would say, it’s ACES.

Lemon-Dill Wild Salmon

With spring (and now summer) in full bloom, it’s been a busy time. I’ve been cooking away and snapping photos in between a number of trips (weddings–Matzo’s, in fact!), holidays, and a vacation to Rome (more on that later, I hope, as I have been inspired to cook something like authentic Italian cuisine). One thing the trip to Rome wrought was the correction of my boyfriend’s circadian rhythms (he works until midnight during the week, which meant late bedtimes for a long while), which now allows him to wake up in time to accompany me to the Sunday farmer’s market. We live about a 10-15 walk from the market, so it’s been no excuse for our lack of attendance over the last three years, but then again, sleep is so wonderful, and after getting on average, 5-6 hours during the weekdays, having a full night on the weekend is a must. But going abroad has reset our clocks, and we’re both early(ish) to bed and early(ish) to rise.

Wild Alaska salmon in a light lemon-dill sauce that complements, not overwhelms, the flavorful fish.

Vegetables are in full bloom now, and for the past two weeks we’ve been feasting on farm fresh cucumbers, tomatoes, and beets. Also, free-range chicken and, delight of delights, wild Alaskan salmon. Farm raised salmon tastes like rice paper compared to wild salmon. With farm-raised salmon I would marinate in soy sauce, ginger, maple syrup, or coat it liberally with some pesto to get it to take on some flavor, but the real thing? Amazing. And so amazing is the taste that one must keep any other ingredients light, lest you quash the natural, delicious flavor of the fish.

I keep it simple with a mixture of butter, lemon, and dill, and bake it until it flakes easily with a fork. A little salt and pepper to that, and I’m in heaven.

Orange Roughy in Citrus Sauce

The first time I made this recipe it was a mistake. Not as in a mistake in how I prepared the recipe nor a whoops,-I-accidentally-bought-tickets-to-Scotland kind of way (true story), but a mistake in the grocer’s freezer at Trader Joe’s when I reached in thinking I was grabbing a package of frozen cod fish, which I intended on buying in order to make a nice fish stew.

Orange roughy in an easy citrus sauce

I guess it was kismet, though, because I stumbled upon this easy and delicious recipe at All Recipes when I did a quick search for orange roughy, which cooks up quick as a whip, is healthy and very delicious.

Fiery Fish Tacos

I used to have a roommate who was terrified by fish. She couldn’t stand their bulging eyeballs and the shimmer of scales along its wet, slimy body. I imagine that she had nightmares about fish in the way some of us are terrified in our sleep by zombies, wild dogs . . . or clowns. However, she was okay with fish in stick form, though I never saw her eat any.

Fish don’t terrify me, but for the longest time I was afraid…of preparing fish. I was forever overcooking it, poking and prodding at it well beyond the “done when flakey” stage. However, I plunge forward with intrepidity because fish is not only delicious, it is also healthy.

Fish tacos were not first and foremost in my thoughts when I went in search of a fish recipes. The first time I became aware of them was when I lived in Tucson, Arizona, but back then it always sounded repulsive to me. What the heck is a fish doing in a taco? Staging a coup? Asking for directions? It seemed to me, wrong. But I believe in second chances and fish taco, I am sorry. I was wrong, terribly so. You deserve so much better.

Homemade crunch salsa for the fiery fish tacos

This is yet another recipe I found at Allrecipes.com and adjusted for my own tastes and for the availability of items in my fridge.

Salmon Croquettes

I recently made fish stock from scratch and noticed that the heads and bones had a lot of meat still left on them. I pulled the meat from the cheeks, bones, and other random parts. There was quite a bit! My roommate in the Netherlands, Tatiana, would make fish croquettes from scraps of fish either left over from dinner or just from cheap fish pieces at the market. I don’t have her recipe, but this one from America Cooks: The General Federation of Women’s Clubs Cookbook is close to what I remember.

Fish stock

The new grocery store near me, La Grande, has an amazing fish selection. They even have salmon heads and bones for sale ($1.25 per pound). I picked up 4 pounds and decided to make fish stock!

Fish Stock
4 lbs chopped fish bones, heads, tails.
1 celery stalk, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 leek, sliced
1 boquet garni (few parsley sprigs, 1 thyme sprig, and a bay leaf nicely tied together for easy retrieval or not)
12 black peppercorns
2 cups white wine (optional, but mighty tasty. If you don’t use this, up the water accordingly)
6 cups water

Put everything but the boquet garni and peppercorns into a heavy bottomed pot. (Pictures of fish heads after the bump)