Avocado Fish

Looking for something interesting to prepare for dinner recently, Pam turned to Intercourses: An Aphrodisiac Cookbook -- a slender volume that rarely disappoints and that is mentioned about a dozen times throughout this blog. She found Grilled Red Snapper with Avocado Sauce, which reminded us of several other avocado-related successes we have had with the book.

Knowing that our local fishmonger would be unlikely to have red snapper, I checked for substitutions ahead of time, and settled on monkfish as my fill-in fillet. I was encouraged when a fellow customer at the fish counter spontaneously offered his praise of this particular fish.

The recipe calls for cold-marinating the fish in white wine for at least an hour, then brushing it with butter and grilling for 4-5 minutes per side. I was preparing this meal at Cloverfield (Bridgewater), where I do not usually prepare seafood since it is so far from the ocean and where more importantly, I no longer have a grill! The Big Green Egg I'm always going on about is at Whaling House (Fairhaven), almost within sight of the ocean.

All of which is to say that I did something that is often successful when a recipe calls for something to be grilled: I cooked it in butter over fairly high heat in our indispensable cast-iron skillet, seasoning it with paprika. I then removed the fish to a warm plate and followed the rest of the recipe, starting with the sauteeing of onions in the residual butter. I then whisked in flour and salt. Once the oniony roux was complete, I stirred in sour cream, horseradish, and diced avocado.

Before the sauce

I know ... this sounds weird. Avocado does not belong in gravy. But Hopkins and Lockridge have led us to the enjoyment of stranger-sounding concoctions than this, so we plated this with optimism, and paired it with the same white wine I had used for the marinade. (Sorry, Dear Readers, I forgot to take note of the variety.)

After the sauce. At least the lighting was nice.

The result: certainly better than it looks, but not as good as I had hoped. It seems there are a few reasons. I am terrible at buying avocados, and this one was a bit too firm. And it really seems likely that avocados do not belong in this sort of gravy. Grilling might really have brought out better flavor in the fish.

Lagniappe

Foolishly, I did not read the recipe introduction until after I had prepared the meal. Ironically, it makes the case for skipping the sauce entirely:

"This recipe can be prepared with other types of fish, but for my sake [not sure which author this is], please use red snapper. Red snapper takes me back to a beach in Puerto Escondido, an untouristy, beautiful stretch of sand, rocks, and waves on the Pacific side of southern Mexico. Sun-burned and tired, we stumbled onto this open-air restaurant on the quieter end of the beach. Each of us ordered the snapper -- it was prepared simply, just a whole fish grilled with lemon and cilantro. We were living a postcard that night with the palm trees and hammocks swaying around us, and the salty air brushing against our lips. All to say, you may borrow this memory as garnish for your grilled red snapper with avocado sauce."