90 posts tagged “seafood”

Okay, I finally managed to figure this one out properly, so here's my recipe for pasta with breadcrumbs and anchovies. A very simple and tasty dish.

Ingredients, for two
Pasta, salt
1/2 cup chopped parsley
3 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced/crushed
2 tsp chili pepper flakes
1 can of anchovies, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup grated Parmesan
1/2 cup toasted breadcrumbs

Method

1. Start the pasta water.
2. Toast the crumbs in the oven. I use the broiler, but be careful, because they turn dark very suddenly. It should only take a few minutes.
3. Start with the chopping and grating.
4. When the water is at a rolling boil, add salt and pasta. Let it go for about 12 min.
5. Drain the pasta, reserving 1/4 cup of the water.
6. Add everything to the pasta except the Parmesan and breadcrumbs and stir it together.
7. Add the Parmesan, and stir again (It is important that this happens quickly, so the pasta is still hot enough to melt the Parmesan. The reason why I add the Parmesan at the end is that if I do it first, it tends to clump up with the other ingredients).
8. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs, and if desired, extra parsley. Serve.

If you absolutely hate anchovies, I think this would be just as good with prosciutto.

While I had fairly high hopes for this recipe, it far exceeded them. These cakes were truly excellent.

For the cakes:
1 lb boneless catfish cut into 1" pieces
1 tbsp fish sauce
5 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp finely chopped fresh ginger
2 tbsp fresh cilantro (coriander leaves), chopped
2 tsp grated lemon zest
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

(Optional: fine, hard breadcrumbs for breading)

Peanut oil for deep frying

For the dipping sauce:

1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
2 tbsp water
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp fish sauce

Lettuce, apple slices, cilantro and mint leaves

1. Use a food processor to coarsely chop the fish.
2. Add everything else, and run the food processor again. Don't make it into forcemeat though; it should still be a little chunky.
3. Shape into 2" patties. They will swell up quite about during cooking, so if you want them flat, you'll have to make them very flat. (Optional: bread them in fine, hard breadcrumbs).
4. Deep fry at 375°F for about 3-5 minutes.

The food is assembled at the table: The cakes are placed in a lettuce leaf along with mint, sliced apples, cilantro and a dipping sauce, wrapped up and eaten. You get plenty of veggies, and even some fruit with your meal. Gotta love that.

I was a bit skeptical about exactly how crispy these cakes would (but they turned out just fine), so I decided to bread a couple of them with some fine, hard breadcrumbs, and that turned out to be a good idea. This made them even crispier, and also gave them a more pleasing color, in my opinion. I'll definitely do that next time around.

I expected the cakes to be quite potent in flavor and spiciness, but they were surprisingly subtle. In fact the accoutrements sort of overwhelmed the flavor of the cakes themselves. Especially the lettuce, which was fairly bitter. It was very good, but I enjoyed eating the cakes on their own even more. I could increase the flavor components of the cakes — maybe even double them — but I might also find an entirely different method of serving them.

The first thing that came to mind would be to use a yogurt or sour cream dipping sauce with lime juice (maybe zest also), chopped mint and perhaps some honey (and possibly, also some finely chopped apple) — and double the amount of cayenne pepper in the cakes. Hot cakes and a cooling sauce. It'd make for a great hors d'oeuvre.

The blackening is from America's Test Kitchen, and I did it once before, for a blackened tilapia. It was good, but I didn't get the grill as hot as it should have been, so the blackening was very subdued. This time around, I blackened the shrimp by cooking them on the chimney for just a minute per side, and then I spread the coals out and finished the shrimp over that lower heat.

I got great blackening, so this is definitely the way to go. But I put more of the blackening on these shrimp, than I did on the fish, and that, combined with a proper, dark blackening from the extreme heat created a sensation of extreme saltiness. So I've gotta remember to go lighter on the blackening.

Sides were saffron rice with scallions, and a salad of very thinly sliced (go gadget mandolin!) apple and English cucumber tossed in aged balsamic vinegar and lemon juice, and some black pepper. Very nice now that the weather is getting warmer.

I normally do these with shrimp, but this time I tried salmon. As much as I love salmon, I'd say I definitely prefer shrimp, though. The Béchamel-style sauce gets its flavors from butter, onions, scallions, celery, cream, lemon (or in this case, lime) juice and cayenne pepper, so the flavors of salmon (or shrimp) aren't very noticeable -- but shrimp at least has an interesting texture.

Still, I had originally intended to blacken the salmon before adding it to the sauce -- I just ran out of time -- so I might yet have another attempt at this.

This is my take on America's Test Kitchen's take on Paul Prudhomme's blackened fish, Rémoulade, with America's Test Kitchen's Spicy Asian Cucumber Salad and some Channa Dal. In case you can't tell -- this was extremely improvised.

The Test Kitchen's advice is to not to attempt this dish inside, since the required heat tends to set off smoke alarms and generally make things unpleasant.

So it's a good excuse to grill...

The peculiar thing though, is that I basically screwed it up -- yet it turned out great. I didn't get quite enough heat, and/or I didn't use enough spices to properly blacken the fish.

I just need to think this thing through a little more, and come up with some suitable sides, that can be done on the grill... It's not that I'm stingy, but I think it's a sad waste to just do one item on the grill, and then let the charcoal burn out with no purpose (in this case, I smoked, or slow-cooked some salmon after I did the tilapia). Next time around, I might actually cook this on the chimney, which I'm pretty sure would get that whole blackened business sorted.

Oh now I've got it! I'll do this with shrimp -- on the chimney. That'll surely blacken things properly. Shrimps cook very quickly so it'll be a perfect match. Oh hell yeah, that should work quite nicely. Blackened shrimp -- with uh, something else, done on the grill. The cucumber salad was actually a very good match for this, so I might do that again.

Every now and then, I cook something really good. Every now and then, I cook something that's pretty awful. The more I cook, the more frequently my grub ends up being good. And when that happens, I try to expand my horizons. I try to cook unusual things.

The last three meals I made were great. So I got a little ambitious and went for something unusual. I tried to create a galette -- well, hell, to cut to the chase: a tandoori spiced salmon pizza with pâte brisée in lieu of the pizza dough. It didn't turn out too good, though. The pastry wasn't cooked through -- only the edges had that lovely crispy crust... The tandoori paste was overwhelming. It looked good, but the taste -- not so good.

Considering the rather obvious (in retrospect) fact that short crust pastry is very rich, maybe I should have done something to the tandoori paste, to lighten it. I don't know.

This is a tricky one. But I still think the overall idea is sound, though.

And yeah, the rice is the same as the last dish I made. I guess I can be a bit predictable.

This was a real treat -- very improvised. Been saving shrimp peelings for a while, and made some fish (well, shrimp) stock, and wanted to make good use of it, so I decided on a fish pie.

Only problem is, when I looked around for a recipe, I couldn't find one. I found plenty of recipes that were called fish pies, and they had fish -- but they had no pie. These things were basically just casseroles, maybe with some breadcrumbs and cheese up top, au gratin -- but none with an actual pie crust; a proper pâte brisée crust. And I know how to make that, having made quite a few quiches.

Sadly, since this thing was completely improvised, I didn't actually look at my quiche recipe, and ended up with a pretty fragile crust (and oversalted, to boot) -- as you can see. But everything else was just right. Basically, I did a finely chopped mirepoix with some flour for thickening, and some shrimp stock -- I think it'd be called a velouté sauce. Then I added some coarsely chopped onion, celery and carrots (I would have added potatoes, but there was no room -- besides, the pastry provided the starch), a little cream, some salt and white pepper (just using white for aesthetic reasons).

Wanted to keep the flavors as simple as possible, so the shrimp stock would shine through -- which it very much did. Oh hang on -- heheh, there's the fish, of course. Some really nice steelhead trout fillets, which was almost a shame, since this kind of a dish works just fine, with any kinda junk fish, really. Dang, now I just realize -- the one thing I did want to add into it all (apart from the parsley) was dill. Forgot the dill. Oh hell, I was thinking of adding some cheese, too. Oh, and an egg -- except, I DID actually remember the egg (since I had one out already, with which to brush the top of the pie with). Oh well, this was far better than I'd normally expect, from such an improvised, experimental thing. Next time, it'll be perfect, of course.

Augh -- katastrof! This, my second attempt at this recipe, was a complete and utter disaster. First time around, everything went really well, but I had a simple idea for an improvement: Don't braise the fish in the sauce, because it ruins the lovely, crisp texture of the skin. This time around -- well, I used the sauce to cover up the fish... Because the skin ended up on the bottom of the wok.

I don't know exactly what went wrong, but I think it was that I didn't allow the oil in the wok to get hot enough. I don't like deep frying things -- it's smelly, it's messy, and potentially kinda dangerous. Also, I don't like having to dispose of the oil -- hence, I try to not use a lot of oil, so my deep frying attempts sometimes end up as a sad compromise between sautéeing and deep frying. And in this case, the fish stuck to the bottom of the wok. Badly.

My oven-baked fries weren't crispy (because I had to turn them off at one point, since I had timing problems). And I used far too much flour. The one aspect of the meal that I improvised -- the carrots -- ended up completely overcooked. Basically, every single element of this meal was a complete failure. The only thing that could have gone worse, would be if I'd set the house on fire.

And the worst bit about it is, this was some of the best fish I've laid my hands on in ages. It smelled perfect: it smelled of nothing. Truly fresh fish doesn't smell "fishy." A lot of supermarket fish either smells of fish, or it smells of ammonia (which is either used to preserve the fish, or to hide the fact that it isn't fresh, and smells fishy -- I'm not sure which). The only time I've ever had fresher trout than this, is when I pulled it out of a stream in the Norwegian highlands. And that distresses me the most -- I ruined some of the best ingredients I've had in ages.

This should have been cooked with a simplistic approach -- not some overwhelming chili sauce. Àla meunière: a gentle dusting of flour, salt and pepper, some lemon juice, and parsley. It would have been the cat's meow; the bee's knees; the dog's bollocks -- instead, it was just bollocks.

Oh well, they cain't all be Cadillacs.

This is one of the simplest and fastest recipes I've ever made.

1. Re-hydrate some shiitake mushrooms (or just use any mushroom you can find -- those dehydrated mushrooms are a tad over hyped I think).
2. Heat the water for the noodles.
3. Peel the shrimp and set aside (freeze the peel for stock!).
4. Chop up a red onion and half a cucumber.
5. Mix together 3 tbsp of rice wine vinegar, 2 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp brown sugar and 2 tsp corn starch (I use a small "tupperware" type container, so I can just shake it, to mix it -- easy).
6. Chop up 4-6 cloves of garlic, place in a small mis en place bowl with as much hot chili pepper flakes as you like -- 1-3 tsp.
7. Throw shrimp into a medium hot pan/wok, stir fry for 1 minute, add mushroom, bell peppers, garlic and chili pepper.
8. Add vinegar-soy mixture.
9. Add cucumber and cook until heated through.
10. Serve over noodles.

It wasn't very sour, though. Maybe I should have upped the vinegar, or used a more potent vinegar -- the rice wine one is very mild.