Swordfish for 40

Catering is not something I enjoy doing for strangers, but when it comes to family and friends, I simply love it. The event I am currently developing the menu for is particularly special -- it's the rehearsal dinner for my brother's wedding in the end of May. As it turns out, there'll be 35-40 people at this dinner, which is bigger than any event I've ever done in the past. The wedding is in Baltimore, so I won't have the luxury of my own kitchen or all my favorite stores. I am also part of the wedding party, so everything has to be prepared way in advance. And did I mention that I'll be 8 months pregnant? Ok, so maybe there are a few challenges here, but it wouldn't be fun otherwise, would it?

A braise is my usual fall back for large parties. Braised meat can sit in the oven for hours waiting for guests to arrive. It stays warm nicely once on serving platters and tends to be a huge crowd pleaser. The trouble is that a braise is not very spring like, which put me back to the drawing board. A roast? Maybe a leg of lamb? That sounded tempting, but I ruled that one out pretty quickly. Roasts are too time sensitive. I have a hard time producing a perfect roast for 10, let alone 40. I think caterers do them so often because big hunks of meat look very impressive. But since my goal is to make it actually taste good, I ended up getting back to what I do best -- fish. But for 40 people? All my favorite high heat cooking methods (grilling, searing, broiling) won't scale. And baked fish is just not that exciting.

That's when I remembered a trick I learned in Casablanca, the restaurant where I interned. We were catering an 80 people event and one of the courses was grilled halibut with oregano vinaigrette. I was curious how the chef will grill 80 portions of fish all at once. Of course, she was much more clever than to attempt something like that. We marked the fish on the grill in advance leaving it still raw inside. Then put all the fillets on baking sheets and popped them back in the fridge. At the time of service, the baking sheets went in the oven for about 8 minutes and we were done.

I did a dry run of this method the other day and it worked like a charm. I marinated swordfish in the morning for about an hour. Then marked it on the grill (about 2 minutes). You have to make sure the grill is extremely hot as you need the fish to brown fast. Since the swordfish I got that day was cut a little thin, I only grilled the presentation side worrying that I'd overcook it. If yours is cut at least 1 inch think, you can mark both sides on the grill. I let it cool, then covered and put in the fridge until dinner time. I removed the baking dish from the fridge for 30 minutes to let it come to room temperature. Then topped it with Bagna Caoda (Anchovy Garlic Butter Sauce) and baked at 450F for 9 minutes (that's about 10-12 minutes per inch of thickness as my piece was 3/4 inch thick). It turned out to cook longer than I expected (my usual estimate is 8 minutes per inch). I guess I rarely bake fish. Even when I finish in the oven, it's because I am pan searing or broiling and the fish is already in a hot pan. I topped the sword with gremolata (mix of chopped parsley, lemon zest, mashed garlic and salt) and served it to my quality assurance department -- Jason.

The sword was as juicy and flavorful as always and Jason heartily approved.

Now the question is where do I get 20 Lb of high quality sword in the Baltimore area?

p.s. no recipe today because all the components of this dish have already been posted on Beyond Salmon earlier. The recipe for Bagna Caoda sauce is part of the Halibut Basted with Bagna Caoda recipe. And here is a basic recipe for grilled swordfish. You can vary the flavoring in the marinade to suit your taste. Just make sure the marinade has plenty of oil to keep swordfish moist.

The frustrating life of a food blogger

Oh, the trials and tribulations of the food blogger's life. You make a great dish, but you didn't take a picture. Or you have a fabulous picture, but it didn't taste as good as you expected. The second one rarely happens. The first one happens so often, I got used to the never-ending frustration.

The current dish giving me trouble is pan-fried whiting that I made for dinner last week. I made it on Carl's (my fishmonger's) recommendation, and it was fabulous. The problem was that I had to serve it immediately (per his instruction) and didn't have a chance to take a picture. What? Don't all food bloggers get an extra serving just for the picture? Sorry to disappoint you guys -- nope :) This turned out to be such a yummy dish that I went right back to Carl in a few days to ask for more whiting. I thought I can take a picture if I make it again for lunch. During the day, the pictures go much faster and easier since I have good light. But he didn't have any whiting that day :( I am yet to hear from a reader that made a dish posted without a picture on my blog. If only food pictures weren't so much fun to look at, my life would be so much easier. So I guess I have to wait for whiting, and you guys have to wait for a picture and a recipe.

This is one part of food blogging that I absolutely hate. As Mark Twain said, "A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read." So are food pictures for me. It's something that I want to have taken, but don't want to take. Just imaging a crispy sizzling little fishy right there in front of you, tempting you with its tender juicy flesh. But instead of digging right in before it gets cold, you have to full around with aperture and shutter speed. Take 1. Zoom in. That's fuzzy. Maybe I should get my tripod. Take 2. That's better, but I need to approach it from a different angle. What's that weird shadow doing here? Man, now I need to adjust this stupid tripod. Take 3. No more weird shadow. But it looks dull. I need more glistening. Maybe if I move this lamp here... Yeah. Take 4. Ok, I think I am getting somewhere. Now how much fuzziness do I want? Should I make the tail fade away? How does that aperture thing work again? And so on.... As you can imagine, by the end of this torture the whiting is cold.

Well, enough ranting. If you want to read some of my normal writing, rather than my complaining, here are some stories I have recently done for culinate:

On Board -- a closer look at knife's best friend


Hands-on salad. I wanted to subtitle this one Il faut mettre la main a la salade, but culinate folks thought that I should stick to English. Now, I am just curious -- any ideas what this is a pun on?

In the Ice Box

Dear HBO executives,

I’d like to pitch an idea for a drama that takes place in a butcher shop. I am writing to you as my last hope for reviving interest in the quickly disappearing art of butchering fish and meat. Surely, In the Ice Box can do for butchers and fishmongers what Six Feet Under has done for funeral home directors.

According to my estimates, at least 10% of the office trapped work force is dreaming of opening a restaurant, a wine shop, or a cheese shop. But I am yet to meet a man or a woman whose ambition it is to open a meat or fish market. Every time yet another Mom and Pop shop shuts down, my heart sinks in despair.

Why are we more concerned with the disappearance of penguins in Antarctica due to our fishing practices than with the disappearance of fishmongers? Trust me, there are fewer real fishmongers left than penguins and no one seems to notice. If we don’t act quickly, the only option left to us will be Whole Foods. Do you want to eat flavorless New Zealand lamb and buy fish fillets with scales for the rest of your days?

Our drama, In the Ice Box, starts with Jeremy Albert dropping out of Harvard medical school. He is a smart kid, but after a few years of dealing with medical establishment, he becomes disillusioned. As he is walking home with his cup of triple latte, he passes a butcher shop and is smitten with the butcher’s daughter, Amanda, arranging Colorado lamb chops and grass-fed rib-eye at the meat counter. Jeremy is desperate to talk to Amanda, but the $25/Lb price tag on those chops seems a bit prohibitive to a medical school drop out without a job. That’s when he notices the “Help wanted” sign. He bravely walks in, asks for an interview, impresses Amanda’s father, George, with his knife skills – that surgery rotation sure came in handy – and gets the job.

The next day, George sends Jeremy to Dan, the fishmonger next door, for some butcher paper (the business is going so well that they ran out). Poor Jeremy finds Amanda and Dan making out in the back room. Their passion is as red and raw as the bluefin tuna they are feeding each other.

Jeremy is crushed, but in a few weeks he learns that sex is the only thing that keeps Dan and Amanda together (that, and Amanda’s addiction to fatty tuna). From here, the possibilities are endless. I am sure your writers will make this drama into an Emmy award winner complete with a threatening acquisition by Whole Foods, an E. Coli scare, and sex on the butcher block.

Feel free to contact me any time to discuss the plot line and cast. I’d be happy to put you in touch with some of the few remaining fishmongers and butchers who can act as consultants for the show.

Sincerely yours,
-Helen Rennie

Trout fried in almonds

Do you sometimes get fascinated with a dish and make it constantly, only to forget all about it in a year? It happens to me a lot. With all the new dishes to discover, I find it hard not to let old favorites slip into a temporary oblivion. That's why I love it when Jason cooks dinner for me. He manages to make every old dish new again by digging up recipes I haven't made in years and making them taste even better than my memories. This Valentine's Day, he made me trout fried in almonds and as Julia Child would say, it was "perfectly delicious." In fact it was so good, that he inspired me to make it twice since Valentine's Day -- once for us and once for a One Fish, Two Fish class.

Serves 4

Fish substitutions: arctic char, tilapia, baramundi

4 white trout fillets with skin
1 cup sliced almonds
2 eggs
4 Tbsp olive oil
Salt and Pepper
2 Tbsp herb butter, melted (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 250F.
2. Chop sliced almonds in a food processor into small pieces. Pour into a plate.
3. Beat eggs together until well blended in a pyrex dish large enough to hold a trout fillet.
4. Season trout fillets with salt and pepper on both sides.
5. Put 2 Tbsp oil in a frying pan and set on medium high heat.
6. When the pan is hot, quickly dip both sides of 2 fillets into eggs, then into almonds, and place in the skillet skin side down. Cook until nuts are browned, about 2 minutes. Flip and cook until nuts are browned on the flesh side, about 2 minutes. There is no need to test for doneness. If the nuts are browned, the trout is cooked (since it's so thin). If substituting thicker fish, you might have to finish cooking in 400F oven, so that nuts don't burn and test for doneness the usual way.
   
7. Remove to an oven proof dish and keep warm in the oven while frying the second 2 fillets. If nuts burnt, remove them from the pan before cooking the second batch. Pour more oil into the pan if needed and repeat with the other 2 fillets.
8. Optionally, pour 1-2 tsp of melted herb butter over each fillet before serving.
   

Yogurt Marinated Chicken

I dread the situations when students ask me chicken questions. I can tell you about sushi, making your own pasta, obscure cuts of meat, duck fat, breads of pork, weird vegetables, caviar, and truffles. I am not the right person to ask about chicken. There is really nothing wrong with chicken, I just don't crave it, and thus don't cook it more often than twice a year.

You might think I am exaggerating. Doesn't everyone buy chicken breasts at least sometimes? To tell you the truth, I can't remember last time I bought them. I think it must have been at least 2 years ago. If I ever cook chicken, I roast it whole. But last summer, I've discovered grilled chicken legs. They are so good, that even I get a craving for them at times.

Since I am not a chicken guru, I really don't know if this recipe is more complicated than it needs to be. Is marinating chicken in yogurt really necessary? Would just brining it in salt water work? I have no idea, and since I cook chicken twice a year, I don't want to mess with it. All I know is that this recipe produces the juiciest, crispiest, and yummiest chicken ever.

Since the recipe used to live only in my head, I could never remember how long to cook this chicken. I usually marinate enough for 3 days and the first day I always screw it up. The second and third days are perfect. Well, I got tired of eating overcooked chicken, so I finally decided to write it down.

Serves 4-6

8 chicken thighs or 4 chicken legs (skin on, bone in)
(I tried it with both and I prefer just thighs)

Marinade:
2 cups plain yogurt
3 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
2 inches ginger, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 cup cilantro or mint
2 1/2 tsp kosher salt or to taste (Please note that the original version of this post incorrectly called for 2 Tbsp of kosher salt. Thanks to Grace for testing this recipe and finding my mistake.)

Spice rub:
1 Tbsp coriander
1 Tbsp cumin,
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cardamom
2 tsp kosher salt (whether you need to add this depends on how salty your marinade was -- use your best judgment and skip if you are sensitive to salt)
1/2 tsp black pepper

Olive oil for grilling or broiling.

1. Combine all the marinade ingredients in a blender and process until smooth.
2. Put chicken in a large zip-lock bag, pour in the marinade. Close the bag and refrigerate for 1-3 days.
3. Remove the chicken from the marinade and dry well on paper towels before cooking.
4. Combine all the spice rub ingredients together and rub all over chicken.
5. Coat the chicken with a thin layer of oil.
   

grilling method:

1. Preheat the grill to medium. Brush with a wad of paper towel dunked in oil.
2. Place the chicken on the grill skin side down, cover, and cook until browned, 5-6 minutes.
   
3. Flip, and cook covered another 4-8 minutes or until done. See the note about doneness below.*
   

broiling method:

1. Set the oven to broil and place the rack 4 inches from the broiler.
2. Wrap a broiler pan in foil and place the chicken in the pan skin side up.
3. Broil until nicely browned, about 5 minutes.
4. Flip, and broil until browned on the other side, about 5 minutes.
5. Flip the chicken again, so that it's skin side is up. Turn down the oven to 425F, remove the chicken from the broiler and finish cooking in the oven for 2-6 minutes or until done. See the note about doneness below.*
   

*How to test for doneness: Start testing for doneness after 10 minutes of cooking for thighs and 12 minutes of cooking for whole legs. To test, cut into the thickest part of thigh avoiding the bones, and peek inside. The flesh should be opaque, but very juicy (the juices might have a trace of pink in them). You can also use an instant read thermometer, but make sure you are testing the temperature in the center of the thigh. With all the bones, it's kind of hard to know where the probe ends up, so it's a good idea to test in a few thick spots. For juicy, but cooked through chicken, you want to serve it at 170F. This means removing it from the heat at 165F. Let your chicken rest for 5 minutes after removing it from the heat. The temperature will go up another 5 degrees and the juices will be reabsorbed into the tissue.

Is this more than you ever wanted to know about testing the chicken for doneness? What can I say, I am a bit obsessed with doneness (no, I guess I am VERY obsessed with doneness). Interesting ingredient combinations are nice and all, but to me, the whole art of cooking lies in using the right amount of salt, and removing things off the heat at just the right moment. I believe that every food is perfectly cooked for only about 30 seconds (unless it's a braise). If you missed those 30 seconds, you missed perfection.