Fish Box #4: Fried garlic petrale sole

This was our last fish box we got before the end of the fishing season. It was fillets of Petrale Sole. Jerome had just gotten a new cookbook - The Family Meal: Home Cooking with Ferran Adria. He's the chef for El Bulli, the craziest restaurant in the world! Anyways it has all these recipes in photo form that are pretty straight forward and that give you time lines etc for a 3 course meal. So we attempted Fried Fish with Garlic

The Sole after being rinsed and patted dry. 

Step by step photos in a step by step description!! 

Start by frying some sliced garlic in a small amount of oil. 

Drain the garlic from the oil and get it all of so it doesn't get soggy. 

Jerome Concentrating very hard on pan frying the fish. 

We decided to leave the skin on. It got fairly crispy, and was pretty tasty and is supposed to be pretty good for you. You top the fish with the garlic and a dressing of sherry vinegar and some olive oil. It was okay, not spectacular though. We were a bit sad. I think part of it is that the fish wasn't as flavourful as some of the other fish and we didn't quite master the pan frying. The texture of the garlic was interesting, but not very deep in flavour. Overall not our best/tastiest fish box. Now that the seasons over and there won't be any fish boxes for a while we're going to try and keep buying fish every few weeks and keep trying new things as the fish boxes helped us get more confident in cooking and knowing what types of fish we enjoy. 

Baguette #1, Beef Box #2, Fish Box #3 - Triple Threat!

Last Sunday we had a very busy day of cooking. It all started with our third fish box. Fillets of Chilipepper Rock cod - which after much searching turns out is also know as Red Snapper. Much easier to find recipes for this! Jerome found a recipe for Veracruz style. We wanted to have bread to go with it, so I volunteered to make baguettes. Since we were already cooking up a storm and had our latest beef box on hand, we decided to make a big pot of chili to eat during the week. Get ready for a busy blog post!

  

To begin with I measured out the baguette ingredients - Flour, Salt and Yeast - on our handy dandy scale - accurate to 3 decimal places! You can find the recipe here, it's nice and easy! 

Made a well, added the water and mixed it all up. Leave it to rise for an hour or so. 

Meanwhile Jerome assembled all his ingredients for his fish sauce. The recipe calls for onion, garlic, bay leaves, parsley, oregano, olives, capers and finally raisins. 

We weren't convinced, but all the reviews said to be sure not to skip the raisins, so we went along with it.

 

Everything gets simmered up ahead of time and set aside so that the raisins will have time to absorb all the flavours. Don't forget to add the capers!

 

Here's the bread before and after the rising.

I kneaded it a bit more and then formed it into two loaves. Turns out I didn't make them long and skinny enough so next time I think I'll make 4 smaller ones. 

 

Our veggies were bathed in sunlight drying while all the rest of this was going on! 

Here they are after being chopped up and turned into the base for our chili!

Jerome put both the ground meat and the steak from our meat box into it, as well as some of the chorizo he made in his sausage class. In addition there were a variety of beans and chili powders of all sorts that we found at the mexican grocery store next door. 

Here you can see my not very baguettishly shaped baguettes. 

They got popped into the oven regardles!!

You can see a pan of water underneath the baking sheet. 

Apparently this helps your crust get nice and brown and crunchy. 

While the bread was baking we prepared the fish. The red snapper was quite read and very different than our sablefish. This time there was no skin, but still some bones. We received this shipment while I was away and so had frozen it. As a result it was one big frozen lump so we decided to cook it all and have guests!

You put a bit of the Veracruz mixture below so the fish won't stick to the pan and then lay the fish on top and then cover with the remaining sauce. Then you throw it in the oven from which you've just removed your bread and cook it about 15 minutes - or until it flakes (we cooked it just slightly too long I think).

The bread turned out very nicely despite it's odd shape. 

We pan fried some squash with olive oil and chili flakes as another vegetable. 

The final product doesn't look alot different than when it went into the oven, 

but was definetly hotter I promise. 

The bread was a really nice mix between crunchy crust and soft inside, perfect to sop up the sauce!

Jerome serving the fish to our happy guests Mike and Gloria - who were a bit confused when we didn't serve them the giant pot of chili on the stove! But in the end seemed quite content with the fish and bread.

You're supposed to garnish your fish with pickled jalepenos. They added a nice touch to it. So don't skip them. And as for those mysterious raisins, they did end up being pretty good, they got all full of the sauce and nice and juicy and plump. Overall very good, but the downside was that with the tasty but strong sauce, you didn't get as much of the flavour of the fish. But definetly a great recipe to try. 

And we didn't forget about the chili, it happily simmered away all afternoon and turned out deliciously! I had a wonderfully tasty, hearty lunch every day this week!

Fish Box 2b: Sablefish Pan Fried with a Basil Cream Sauce

With the second half of our Sablefish Box we wanted to try a pan fried version. We found a recipe that was for a basil cream sauce and as we'd gotten great fresh basil at the farmers market it seemed ideal for tweaking to our purpose. 

Isn't this an impressive piece of fish!!

All our prepped ingredients.

Jerome was in charge of the pan frying. 

He got the skin nice and crispy!

I made the sauce. It was a bit of a disappointment, there was way more of it than we needed, and although it had cream in it, it didn't make it that tasty or rich, so it seemed a bit of a waste. 

Overall it was our least favourite version of the fish so far. Don't get me wrong, the fish itself was great and Jerome cooked it very nicely, but as a whole, the simpler dishes seemed much better. 

Did I mention how awesomely Jerome cooked the fish?!

Fish Box 2a: Sablefish - Baked with Lemon, Basil & Tomatoes

Well despite or perhaps because of the disappointment of our last fish box being cancelled, we were very excited to get this weeks box. Our email said that it was the same fisherman as last time. They also said that some of the orders would be Black Gill Rock Cod and that others would be Sablefish again. It was fun not knowing which one we'd get. Jerome picked it up and it was Sablefish again! While it is a bit sad that we didn't get to try our hand at a new type of fish, we both really liked the sablefish and had noted several other recipes to try, so overall things worked out. We based our process on this recipe we found online. 

 Once again, it was really nice fish, filleted, but with skin on and bones in. We rinsed and patted it dry. It seemed like we got more this time. In addition to these pieces, there was a full length fillet which we're saving for another recipe. 

We were thinking ahead and went to the Los Altos Farmer's Market on Thursday to stock up on fresh vegetables that would go with any kind of fish. We got a giant bag of green beans, a bag of awesome and giant heirloom tomatoes and some really nice basil. 

Heirloom tomatoes are so tasty and awesome looking! If you haven't tried them, go out and find some. They are often interesting colours, and not always firm like generic tomatoes. 

To start this recipe we put olive oil and lemon juice in a baking dish. We then put the fillets in and turned them so they were coated. We put them skin side down then sprinkled them with salt and pepper. 

Next we covered it with a layer of our fresh basil. 

Followed by a layer of heirloom tomatoes. 

Then seasoned the top with lemon salt, pepper, and Parmesan cheese. 

We then covered it with tin foil and put them in a 400 degree oven for about 20-25 minutes, checking every 8-10 minutes - until the fish was flaky. 

Jerome took charge of the green beans and pan fried them. He raided our spice drawer and seasoned them with garlic powder, salt, sage, chili powder, harissa oil, and olive oil.

When we took it out of the oven the cheese had melted and the fish was flaky and nicely cooked. 

Overall this dinner was really awesome. The tomatoes were very flavourful and juicy, the fish was really rich and buttery despite just being baked - I guess that's why they also call it Butterfish sometimes! Jerome's spiced green beans were great with a bit of a kick to them. It was also nice that it was so easy to prepare, and all done in one dish - well and the skillet for the beans. All in all we were both very happy once again with the end result and would make it this way again for sure!

Fish Box #1B: Sablefish

When we were looking up recipes for Sablefish, there were two main preperations: Asian Style and Lemon Butter Sauce. Since Jerome did a great job on the first, I decided to try my hand at the second. 

You start with melting a bit of butter in a saucepan with lemon juice, lemon pepper, a pinch of salt and some green onions and bring it to a boil. 

You then take your rinsed and dried fish - bones and skin still on. And pour the sauce over top of it in an oven proof dish. We then baked it for 8ish minutes until it was flaky and fell apart. 

We then served it simply with nice fresh green beans and grape tomatoes. A nice refreshing summer's dinner. The lemon gave a nice tartness to the fish, and it was a success! Despite never having cooked Sablefish, both of our cooking methods turned out very well which was a relief! I think we'll be more confident with the next round of fish. Sadly though we heard yesterday that we will not be getting a fish box this week, due to bad weather having stopped the fishermen from going out all week. 

Fish Box #1A: Sablefish

The fish of the fortnight was Sablefish! It came with this note about where the fish came from which was interesting: "Sablefish is also known as Black Cod and is brought to us by local fisherman, Don Pemberton, of the F/V Stacy Joanne. To learn more about Don, you can read his bio on the Faces of California Fishing site here." They also recommended a Miso recipe in case you were stuck and not sure what to do with it, but Jerome and I had other ideas. There was enough fish for two meals, so we decided to try two totally different methods and flavours. Jerome took the lead on the first recipe going for an asian style preparation. 

This is how we received the fish, nicely packaged and labelled and brought home in our little cooler. 

It was really beautiful fish. The bones were still in and the skin on, but we left them to remove when we were eating them. The fillets were cut really nicely, and in pretty even portions so we didn't have to worry about them cooking unevenly. We rinsed and patted the fish dry. 

 

Being the sous-chef, I was instructed to julien the green onions and a whole bunch of ginger. As well as being in charge of cooking the green beans. 

Meanwhile, Jerome was making a marinade from soy sauce, hoisin, black bean paste, sesame oil and green chilies. As well as a homemade 5 spice powder (cinnamon, cloves, star anise, sichuan pepper and fennel).

We poured the marinade over the fish, topping it with the ginger. Just before this we had to plan ahead an figure out how to build our own steamer since we don't have one. We marinated the fish on the plate that would be used for steaming for about 15 minutes. 

Here is our custom steamer. We took our large saucepan, and placed two chopsticks in it. Then we filled it with enough water to not quite cover the chopsticks and brought it to a boil. Once it was ready we placed the  conveniently sized plate on the chopsticks and voila!

We steamed it for about 5-8 minutes until it flaked beautifully when we poked it. 

The final step which Jerome had seen in a youtube video which I can't find was to top it off with green onions then heat up some oil until very hot, and drizzle a tiny bit of the oil on top of everything. It makes this crazy sizzling noise which apparently is the key and it sort of flash cooks the onions where it hits and finishes everything off. 

We were both really impressed and happy with how it turned out. We were apprehensive at first never having cooked this type of fish, and not wanting to ruin it, but  not to worry, it was stellar! The flavours, though strong, didn't overpower the fish, and it was so flaky and moist. 

Stay tuned for part B where I try my hand at baked lemon butter sablefish!