Pistachio Cedar Planked Salmon, and Salmon Leek Chowder

Here are two easy and salmon recipes I made yesterday and today, all from one four-pound $20 whole salmon. If you can learn to fillet and debone your own fish, you can save so much money on seafood dishes. So here is Pistachio Crusted Cedar-Plank Salmon, and Salmon Leek Chowder.

Red Curry Barramundi

Barramundi! Barramundi!! That's fun to say. (I feel like Will Ferrell in "Elf" when he keeps repeating "Frrrrancisssco!! That's fun to say!" Speaking of which, Christmas is less than 5 months away. Wow. And I have not posted a recipe since March. My sincere apologies, but I doubt if any of you feel bereft.)

Anyway. Barramundi! I had never heard of this relative of the Sea Bass (which reminds me of the "Kick his @, SeaBass" line from "Dumb and Dumber" ... okay, I'll stop with the movie quotes.)

So sea bass... Barramundi. I do have a point. I had never heard of this fish before, but saw frozen fillets at CostCo recently and thought I'd take a crack at incorporating it into my seafood rotations.  It's a mild, flaky, white fish, and it's considered a sustainable seafood variety. The fillets defrost quite fast in a bowl of cold water, and cook easily since they're evenly thick.

I've tried a few different twists on using it in Fish Tacos (I'll blog that some other night) and then last night I was jonesing for Red Curry, so I thought rather than chicken or pork, I'd put fish in it.  I had a few garden-fresh veggies from my yard, and incorporated some green onions, yellow zucchini, sugar snap peas, and then a few other things from my refrigerator. 

This is the link to the company that markets Barramundi: The Better Fish

Orange Ginger Ahi steaks with Bok Choy

A few weeks ago I tried a recipe for a similar chicken dish with orange, ginger & bok choy, but I wanted to try Ahi steaks, because I just had some delicious seared ahi last night at a restaurant, which usually means I crave it for another 24 hours afterwards.  So I merged the two together here. (This recipe is a little bit of a hybrid between a couple of other recipes on my blog: Mandarin Ginger Glazed Mahi Mahi and Grilled Teriyaki Ahi Tuna –  I just love citrus-savory recipes!)

Mandarin Ginger Glazed Mahi Mahi

I almost always keep a bag of mahi mahi filets in the freezer, because, well, you can't get fresh Mahi Mahi unless you live in Hawaii, I'm pretty sure.  And I do really like it.  Since I didn't feel like going out to grill this, I made a pan-fried dish, with an Asian-inspired truly off-the-cuff marinade.

Cedar-planked salmon

Our friend caught fresh King Salmon in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday and brought us one.  So on Monday  I filleted it, (not very well, lacking the proper type of knife) and seasoned it with sea salt, fresh ground pepper, ground coriander and grilled it on a soaked cedar plank.  That’s pretty much the entirety of the recipe, and the directions… And it was so simple, and so delicious. I served it up with some brown rice, and  sautéed spinach, onions and bell peppers (I told you I have bell peppers with almost every meal, didn’t I?) which I grated fresh Peccorino cheese on top of.  Oh, and squirt some fresh lime or lemon juice on the fish, once it's off the grill.  Be careful about pre-seasoning with acidic things on fish, because the acid will start to 'cook' the fish prematurely.

The only tips I have for you, especially if you're a grilling beginner, are as follows: soak the grilling plank about 4 hours before dinner time to make sure it doesn’t fully catch fire on the grill; take your fish out of the fridge a half hour before grilling so that it’s temperature warms up a bit, which allows it to grill faster, and not dry out too much; last, but not least, preheat the grill ten minutes (if your grill has a thermostat on the lid, you’ll want it to be around 400 degrees in there) so the fillet will grill on the plank in about ten minutes.  The internal temp of the fish should hit 145, if you use a meat thermometer.

Technorati Tags: salmon,fish,main dishes,grilled dishes,cedar plank

Grilled Teriyaki Ahi Tuna with Pepper & Kale stir fry

One of the things I’m fairly skilled at is shopping in bulk for a variety of basic ingredients and reusing them in various combinations. So last week, I made a grilled pork tenderloin, with sautéed kale, bell peppers and tomatoes. Tonight I used the remaining kale & peppers, and a few tweaks, plus the Ahi for my protein, and now I suddenly had a delicious, Asian-fusion teriyaki seafood dinner, and it was fast and easy, and entirely cooked outside on the grill.

Ingredients:

2 ahi tuna steaks, (I started with frozen, which I defrosted in their vacuum sealed bags, in a sink full of cold water for about an hour)

Place tuna in a shallow dish with the below marinade, for at least half an hour before grilling. Drizzle plenty of the marinade on top.

Marinade:

2 tbsp Mirin
2 tbsp Sake
1/2 tsp ginger
1 clove garlic
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper

Stir Fry:

4 stalks of kale, washed, stemmed and chopped
1 red or yellow bell pepper, julienned
6-8 stems of green onions, chopped (either length-wise or across)
1 cup of sliced shiitake mushrooms (I used dried mushrooms, which I reconstituted in hot water for ten minutes, before adding to my stir fry)
2 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp soy sauce
1/4 tsp crushed red peppers

Directions:
Start the side burner on your grill (if you have one) and continuously stir fry the veggies, until the peppers are tender, & kale is wilted. Simultaneously, pre-heat the grill, and when it’s hot, grill the tuna on each side for 2 minutes for rare, or 3-4 minutes for well done, spooning the left-over marinade continously over the top side while it’s grilling. I say this with a chuckle, because I never quite manage to keep the middle “raw” even though I would love to eat it that way. So alas, it was fully grilled, but still very good. Serve the tuna on top of the stir-fry veggies. Delish.

Lemon-Dill Beurre Blanc over pan-fried mahi-mahi and brown rice

I have never made a Beurre Blanc before. I’ve eaten it, admired it, and always thought to myself that it can’t be as easy as a gravy (and I make many other kinds of gravy and sauce, among them my favorite chantarelle mushroom gravy which is WAY GOOD) but alas, I found that a beurre blanc is quite a cinch.


And since I still had mahi mahi in the freezer which I used in last week’s Thai-dish, I wanted to do something a little more traditional. Plus I had organic snap peas, and dill in the fridge, which just calls for traditional seasonings.

So online I went to find a recipe, and this Beurre Blanc video tutorial by Billy Parisi was most helpful. I would suggest you watch it, even if only for the cute Italian chef making it!  (Now, now, I’m happily married so it wasn’t like that.)

I’m no authority on sauce so he is definitely a guy to take a cue from. Now then, here is my variation on his sauce (since I didn’t have shallots, and added the dill.)

LEMON DILL BEURRE BLANC INGREDIENTS AND DIRECTIONS:

Approximately 2 tbsp finely chopped white onion
2 tbsp olive oil

Sauté the onion until caramelized, and then add in:

1/4 cup white dry wine
3 tbsp or so of lemon juice

Keep simmering that until it’s “a glace” or the liquid is almost gone. At that point, add a pinch of salt and WHITE pepper (so as not to discolor the sauce) and take it off the heat, and stir in 4 tbsp of COLD butter and 2 tbsp fresh dill. Serve immediately.

Since the timing is so critical on a beurre blanc (maybe I just like to TYPE beurre blanc, because I can pronounce it all French-y in my head at the same time, and feel cultured) I want to emphasize that I started my brown rice about forty minutes earlier so that it would finish cooking, and while I was caramelizing my onions and deglacing the pan of sauce, I was pan-frying my mahi-mahi. You could use just about any mild, non-oily fish. I suspect it would be great with Sole, or trout, too. The sauce is so buttery, you just would be better off with a non-rich fish.

FRYING THE FISH—I just heated my trusty cast-iron skillet to quite hot, and seared each side until browned, and then turned the heat down a little to finish cooking the fish throughout.  If you like your Mahi Mahi rare in the middle, don't exceed 2 minutes per side.

I also served it with steamed snap-peas, which was a good match, although now in hindsight, I think asparagus would have been a better pairing.