Fish & Seafood

My wife and I travelled to Nashville about a month ago and had a terrific time.  Neither of us are huge country music fans, but we’d heard so much about the city’s burgeoning food scene and it’s deep recording industry heritage, that we decided to give it a whirl.  We spent most of our first day at the quite excellent Country Music Museum and Hall of Fame and  were having such a great visit that we totally lost track if time.  Before we knew it, it was mid-afternoon, we were weak with hunger, and needed to nosh.  Looking for something quick and cheap we popped down to the lobby level and grabbed a few fish tacos at Bajo Sexto.  To be honest, we weren’t exactly expecting stellar fish in land-locked Nashville, but the tacos we had there were among the best we’d ever eaten!  Light, fresh, crisp, boldly flavored, and washed down with a well chilled, locally brewed IPA, we were both in heaven.  While that lunch wasn’t the best meal we had in Nashville (more on our amazing meal at The Catbird Seat in a later post), it absolutely inspired me to put fish tacos on my to-make list when we got home.  This recipe is the result of that inspiration.

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Flaky, Tender Cod in a Rich, Fragrant Broth

I fell in love with this dish when I first saw it published in Bon Appetit a couple years ago.  In fact, I found the photo of the dish so striking that I cut it from the magazine and pinned it to the bulletin board in my kitchen, along with a handful of other drool-worthy food shots to act as a small art installation decorating the space while my home was staged for sale.  For the LONG 2 + years it took me to sell the house I looked longingly at the shot of this dish everyday, but for some damned reason never got around to cooking it until a few weeks ago.  Such a shame, because this dish is so flavorful, and SO easy that I’m sure it’ll become a regular in my dinner rotation.

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Fresh off the success of our parchment baked fish with fennel, I thought I'd toss a similar recipe your way so that you could totally master your parchment baking technique.  Inspired by my friend Amelia's  comment on our fish post, I thought an Asian spin on this shrimp would be fun.  Given that most of us here at Oui, Chef  like foods that bite back, I decided to spice this dish up by adding some sliced jalapeños and a touch of sambal oelek (Asian chili paste).

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 It's not often that we find halibut here on the east coast, so when I do come across a beautiful piece it's cause for celebration and a little star treatment.  Like cod, which we've got coming out our ears around here, halibut is a mild fish but a bit denser and meatier.  The flavor is so delicate that I hesitate to coat it with anything but a little salt and pepper, preferring instead to cook it atop some aromatics that will perfume rather than overwhelm the fish.

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Baking fish in parchment is a fabulous technique that I'd read about for years but didn't try myself until just the other day, inspired by having seen my chef-friend Jody Adams cook some this way in a recent cooking class I attended.  Jody, who along with her husband Ken write and shoot the fabulous home-cooking blog, The Garum Factory, prepared a similar dish in her class, and from the first bite I was hooked.

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I love curries, and I mean all curries.  Thai, Indian, Pakistani, Cambodian, you name an ethnic cuisine that boasts a curry and I'm all over it like…..well….

Like curry on rice!

It doesn't matter to me whether the curry is a long braised Indian lamb curry, or a quick to the table Thai version like this one here, there is just something special about the spice blends that define curries that I find very appealing.  Some are scorching hot, others not so much, but one thing all curries share is a complexity and depth of flavor that I find absolutely addiciting.

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