fancy fish bags

Hehehehe. Fish bags. It's fun to say, try it! Fish bags, fish bags, fish bags. I'm not high, I swear to you.

ANYWAY.

Whilst grocery shopping yesterday, I spied with my little green eye some parchment bags made for steaming shit in the oven. Well, not shit, but you know. I was immediately entranced with the pretty picture of perfectly cooked fish and veg on the box, and I had to have them. HAD TO. I am weak. It is known, khaleesi.

I've done "en papillote" fish preparations before and enjoyed them - all except the part where you have to fight with the parchment paper to stay crimped, while evil Alton Brown's voice keeps ringing in the back of your head, maniacally laughing and saying, "IT'S SOOOO SIMMMPLE!"  Maybe he's right - maybe it IS really simple and I just fucking fail at parchment origami, I don't know. What I DO know is that what's even easier than farting around with parchment for 20 fucking minutes while your stomach rumbles and you see stars from hunger? PRE-MADE PARCHMENT BAGS, bitches.

Mystery baaaag...are you ready for your mystery baaaag? It's not full of dog poop. OR IS IT? (it's probably not)

Told you.

You guys. I can't even. These bags? Are my new favorite thing. All I did was lay a couple pieces of cod over some asparagus, green beans and sliced red pepper, add a little poorly-cut basil on top, seal the bag with a couple folds over, and it was ready to roll. I did two bags (because the Ginger Beast needs to eat, too) on a cookie sheet, stashed them in a 350 degree oven for about 15 minutes, and lo, the fish, eet was done!

The asparagus is being a tease in this one.

Now...I will be completely honest with you here. First of all, I really like the taste of cod, so I don't usually fuck around with it much. You could easily gussy this up with all kinds of fancy herbs and citrus and whatever, but...I really like cod. Second of all, the next time I do this, I will NOT lay the fish directly on the veg unless I have significantly thinner pieces of fish. These were some big, manly cod pieces (see what I did there? Manly? Cod pieces? OMG, somebody stop me. No, really...), and the veg underneath didn't cook as much as it could have. We like our veg pretty al dente here at Chez OGC and that asparagus was borderline even for us. So, yes - next time, I'll spread the veg out around the fish for more even cook-en-ings...or maybe even just steam it separately...although honestly, that would take like half the fun out of the whole dinner-from-a-bag thing.

If you care, or even if you don't, this meal is Paleo and Whole-30 compliant, and as gluten-free as the day is long. Tra-la-la, healthy food.

roasted cod with olive tomato tapenade

I've made this Eating Well recipe a few times, and it's fantastic. Fish and tapenade might sound like sort of an odd combination at first, but cod can certainly stand up to the strong flavors of olive and capers. The original recipe suggested orzo and sauteed spinach to serve with it. As orzo is just pasta, I skip that part. I serve the fish and tapenade on a bed of steamed spinach and it works very well.

Definitely give this recipe a try!

kale and seafood soup

The funny thing about this is that I did everything completely wrong and backwards, but in the end it tasted pretty good. I actually started by steaming some mussels in white wine and butter with onion and garlic. When they were done, I removed them from the liquid and then used the cooking liquid as the base for the soup. I chopped up some linguica sausage and added it, along with some chicken stock. I chopped up some kale pretty finely and added that, then let it cook for 5-7 minutes. In went some shrimp and some chopped-up cod, a splash of sherry and a little salt and pepper. I let it cook for about 5 more minutes, until the fish was cooked through.

Wait, you're saying...what happened to the mussels? Funny thing about that, actually. I kept picking at them as I was cooking everything else, because they were sitting right there in front of me and I was hungry. By the time I got to the end of the soup-making, they were gone. It's ok, though...they gave the stock plenty of their tasty goodness, and they made an excellent snack!

thai red curry fish stew

I was thinking about dinner on the way home tonight (as usual), and trying to think up a way to use leftover chicken thighs. Somehow, stir-fried chicken thighs morphed into chicken curry, which morphed further into thai red curry with shrimp.

Shut up, I'm complicated.

By the time I got to the grocery store, I had a plan. I was going for shrimp, and mussels if I could find them. If not, I was going to try fish. The idea of fish curry scared the crap out of me. I've had it before and I knew I liked it, but I'm not generally super good at cooking fish and the idea of it just makes me nervous.

Lo and behold, there were no mussels at the store, so I grabbed a bag of shrimp and lovely big cod fillet, along with some zucchini and cauliflower, coconut milk and red curry paste. When I got home, I thawed the shrimp under cold running water while I sauteed some chopped onion in coconut oil and red curry paste. I added the coconut milk, some fish sauce, chopped zucchini and cauliflower, unsweetened shredded coconut, and some water and let it all simmer for about 10 minutes. When the veggies were basically tender, I added the shrimp and chopped-up cod and let the whole thing fester for about 5 more minutes, then shut the heat off. I scooped some into a bowl and added a bit of fresh basil.

Here are the fruits of frankly not a whole lot of labor on my part:

It was everything I was hoping for. The only criticism I have is that I should have had two cans of coconut milk rather than just one, because more sauce is better!

tilapia meunière

Meunière refers to both a lemon brown butter sauce and a method of preparation: to prepare something a la meunière is to dredge it in flour before cooking. Trout and sole are both common fish to cook a la meunière, at least in France. I had a bag of frozen tilapia fillets hanging around in my freezer that I decided would work well for this preparation (basically any flat white fish that holds together well), and I was right!

This came out so well, and was incredibly easy to do. Granted, you throw enough butter at anything and it will probably taste good...but still! ;)

Anyway, here's the recipe I used:

Fish:

4 tilapia fillets, about 4-5oz each
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter cut into 2 pieces

Browned butter:

4 tablespoons unsalted butter cut into 4 pieces
1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley

For the fish:

Heat oven to 200 degrees. Set 2 dinner plates on oven rack to keep warm while you make the fish.

Pat fish dry with paper towels and season lightly with salt and pepper. Let stand until fillets are glistening with moisture, about 5 minutes (this is to draw excess moisture out of fish so that it doesn't get soggy and greasy when it cooks).

Spread flour in a wide shallow dish. Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a 12-inch nonstick skillet over high heat until shimmering. Add 1 tablespoon of the butter and swirl to melt. Coat both sides of the fillets with flour, shake off excess. Carefully place two fillets in the skillet, "bone" side down (there's no bone in the fillet but you can see the line along the flat side of the fillet where the bones were). Immediately reduce heat to medium-high and cook without moving the fish until edges of the fillets are opaque, about 3 minutes.

CAREFULLY flip the fillets (and I do mean carefully...I have a lovely burn to show for the first one I flipped!), then continue to cook on the second side until the thickest part of the fillet easily separates into flakes when a toothpick or fork is inserted, about 2 minutes longer. Transfer each of the fillets to a heated plate in the oven. Wipe out the skillet and repeat with the remaining tablespoons of oil and butter and the remaining fillets. Transfer cooked fillets to plates in the oven.

For the browned butter:

While the fillets rest in the oven, melt the butter in a skillet over medium-high heat and cook, swirling the skillet constantly, until the butter is golden brown and has a nutty aroma, 2 to 3 minutes. Off the heat, CAREFULLY stir in the lemon juice and season with salt and pepper to taste. Remove the fillets from the oven, spoon the sauce over each fillet, and sprinkle with minced parsley.

I did steamed green beans for the side-dish, as I love the taste of lemony green beans anyway and so I figured they'd go nicely with the meunière sauce. I just spooned the sauce over the beans and the fish both.

Tilapia is, in my opinion, an entirely tasteless fish and I generally dislike it, but I will definitely make this again. I'd like to try it with trout this summer if I could catch some! :)