Halibut with Ginger-Raisin Crust

 

We rarely use our For Cod and Country cookbook but it looks like we are starting to turn that around. This is the second post this week from this big book, which has a lot more to it than recipes. The introduction to the recipe in the book starts with "I love raisins with fish-they have the perfect balance of sweet and acid...". It reminded me of a conversation I had with my mother in March just after we all went on lockdown. She was going through her pantry and refrigerator and discovered some raisin English muffins and some salmon cakes and decided to make a sandwich. She was surprised how good they tasted together. We discovered the same thing when I prepared this recipe. 

I chopped 1/4 c. raisins and mixed with 3 T panko bread crumbs, 2 T melted butter, some freshly grated ginger, 2 t mace, and the zest of one orange to form a paste.

The paste was pressed into the halibut which was cooked (breading side down) in our indispensable cast-iron skillet for four minutes. The skillet was then placed into the preheated 300 degree oven and baked for 20 minutes. Once it was cooked through we flipped the fish over and served. It came out light and flaky. We served this with the leftover tarragon rice from James' offering the night before.

Tarragon, Seafood Paragon

 

Photo from Tarragon, King of Herbs
(by someone even more impressed by this herb than I am)

When thinking of seafood options for the weekend (and into Monday, it turns out), I decided to go to Kyler's Catch with some specific recipes in mind. The fish there is always so good that it is easy to do what is easiest -- very simple preparations that foreground the fish (or shellfish) itself.

But in the spirit of Nueva Receta, I sat down with For Cod and Country, which we have cited just a couple times since purchasing it for our seaside weekend house a few years ago. I remember learning of the book on public radio, but I do not think it was as long ago as author Barton Seaver's 2011 interview with Leann Hanson. The book is a paradox: a chef who is deeply concerned about the overharvesting of fish endeavors to teach us to enjoy fish sparingly -- avoiding some imperiled species altogether, and getting the most out of the fish we do use by maximizing both flavor and land-based ingredients.

Many of the recipes appear more ambitious than I was feeling this weekend, but I did find two that seemed to meet the effort-outcome balance I was hoping for. One is a grilled salmon with tarragon butter; the other is a crusty halibut preparation that Pam will be making tomorrow.

The salmon recipe is unusually simple for this book -- it is one of those recipes whose title conveys almost the entire story. I softened butter, and mashed it together with finely chopped tarragon and orange zest, along with black pepper and a small amount of salt. Seaver suggests grilling the salmon (skin on) over high heat to get good grill marks, and then to transfer it to a cooler area of the fire. All I could picture was losing half the salmon through the grill grates, and the Big Green Egg provides only very uniform heat. So I opted to heat the grill to 400 and simply bake the salmon -- I actually used milder Arctic char -- on the griddle inset. Once this was cooked through -- about 12 minutes -- I transferred it to a plate and dabbed the butter mix on it. The result was simply scrumptious.

Meanwhile, I had cooked some brown rice, mixing a bit of the tarragon butter into it partway through the cooking process. This was a delicious accompaniment. Author Seaver suggests that tarragon is a perfect pairing for many fish; I expect to be testing that theory!

Orange Chicken with Vegetables

We can get a lot of things besides milk in our weekly delivery from Crescent Ridge Dairy, including meat. Since the pandemic started, however, we've found that it is harder to get some things than it used to be, especially poultry products, so we were glad to see that there was pound of organic chicken breasts available this week. James seemed a little skeptical that we could do much with a pound, but I knew better. I went right to the New York Times Cooking Page and found this recipe that calls for "1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast, preferably from a small producer of free range chickens..."

This recipe is labeled "One Pot" on the NYTimes page, which is true as far as the cooking goes - everything was cooked together in my indispensable cast-iron skillet. However, I needed two separate bowls to mix different sets of ingredients in before adding them to the skillet. The recipe also says it takes 10 minutes. Again, that is only true for the cooking part. As long as you have sous-chef to do all the chopping and dicing for you it is indeed a quick and easy dish. To be fair this wasn't difficult, and I was ready to serve within 30 minutes of starting. And it was delicious.

Buckeyes

 

Last year when I cleaned out my refrigerators (one at my primary residence, and the other at our beach house) I found one partially-used, expired jar of peanut butter in each. We'd already been empty nesters for a few years and this one-time staple in our household had apparently become superfluous. Our only child came to visit for a few weeks over the summer and requested that we purchase a jar. Unlike some of his other food requests he actually ate some of the peanut butter, but there was still quite a bit remaining after he left. I decided not to wait until this jar expired and instead went looking for a recipe to use it up. I found this recipe for Peanut Butter Balls on the New York Times Cooking page.

These were easy to make. The only "cooking" involved was melting the semi-sweet chocolate chips in the microwave.  A super-sweet, fun treat.