When Ye Olde Wine Shoppe closed down two years ago, I decided I had better begin photographing and making notes of the dinners I cooked, so that I would still have things to blog about even while my wine knowledge might atrophy just a bit. Access to the industry does help. Then for a short time I wrote as "Chicago Baking Examiner" for Examiner.com, supplying four short articles a week on cookies, cakes, ingredients and so on. When I quit that little job, I transferred most of those pieces here, and here they lurk behind the scenes under the tab "edit posts."
Then I was lucky enough to be able to re-enter the wine business, with the result that (I flatter myself) my wine knowledge has atrophied less than I feared. But I've still kept on photographing and making notes of my dinners and my baking, because that turned out to be fun. So the upshot of it all is that I now have 125 drafts, mostly on food and not necessarily on wine, waiting to be finished and "served forth" as ancient cookbooks say.
Something's got to be done with them. It seems wrong to delete them. Will anyone object, therefore, if I dose you all with more of the "soops and messes" I've fed the family for two years? Think of it as a sort of time machine: you'll get to see last November's stews or breads, or the "extremely easy fish" from the May before that. If the angle of the light in certain photographs looks awfully bright for winter, or rather dolorous and gray for summer -- not that I require anyone to notice -- well -- well, now you know.
We may as well begin with Extremely Easy Fish. I like fish, but rarely cook it because it seems ridiculous to expect to get good fish so far from any ocean. And it seems one always hears stories about how no fish these days is what it is claimed to be. Even in a restaurant, I'm told, if you think you are really being served "red snapper" or "orange roughy," don't be so trusting. Years of commercial overfishing has insured that some other finned creature is very likely being quick-thawed for you. Indeed, my last experience of fish in a good restaurant was unpleasant. Do you suppose "cod" even exists anymore?
However, occasionally you do get lucky when you venture to the frozen fish section of the grocery store. (It's odd. Fish is a little like vodka. The whole point is that it should not smell or taste like itself.) If you do have such luck in your next voyage, try this.
Melt 4 Tbsp butter or olive oil, or a combination, in a heavy saucepan. Saute in it some aromatics -- a chopped onion, a diced stick of celery, a diced carrot, a chopped leek, or any mixture of those you like. When they are softened, after five minutes or so, stack in one and a half or two pounds of frozen fillets of white fish. Pour on about 1/4 cup of wine or broth, and cover the pan with a lid. The fish will steam, thaw out, and cook in about half an hour or less. The general rule of thumb, which professionals may dismiss but which I still use, is that fresh fish needs 10 minutes of cooking time per inch of thickness, with half again that time added on if you begin with the frozen product. If the result can be overcooking and dryness, in this case I don't worry too much about it. The recipe produces so much liquid that you will have plenty of sauce for your platter anyway.
Strew on some parsley at the end, and serve it forth, with the buttery sauce set aside in a gravy boat. Rice, a vegetable, and any white wine are the perfect accompaniments.
There. Nothing fancy. And only 124 more drafts to go.
0 comments:
Post a Comment