halibut

I know that in these last weeks before our move I really have no business adding more items to our pantry, but I couldn’t help myself. I kept hearing and reading about harissa, and when I spotted this little jar at Formaggio Essex recently I had to pick it up. This North African chile paste is most commonly described as “fiery” and I’m telling you, that’s no joke. But the burn is the best kind of burn, sharp and complex, a welcome bit of kick when added to a dish or served alongside.

I had a beautiful piece of halibut that I wanted to cook for dinner last night, but none of my usual preparations were really sending me. I remembered that little jar of harissa and decided this would be a great time to put it to use. I put together a quick marinade for the fish, a combination of harissa, ground coriander, cumin and fenugreek, a bit of salt, fresh lemon juice and olive oil, which I poured over the halibut about half an hour before cooking it (I removed most of it before adding the fish to the pan so it wouldn’t burn). We had one Meyer lemon lingering in the citrus basket, so I chopped it up and combined it with some chopped sundried tomatoes and oil-cured olives, picked flat-leaf parsley (mint would have been great, too), salt and olive oil to make a quick relish to serve on top of the fish. I served it all on a bed of couscous and pine nuts, a nice neutral counterpoint to the zippy flavors of the fish and lemon-olive relish. Mike passed but I couldn’t resist adding a little more harissa to my plate, dabbing a bit of it on random forkfuls of my fish and couscous. It was lovely, and a welcome bit of heat on a blustery night.

My first date with harissa was such a roaring success that I couldn’t wait for our next encounter. My office is closed today and though I have plans to meet Mike in the city for lunch, a girl’s gotta have breakfast, right? Rye toast, a couple of fried eggs, and harissa, oh yes - my lips are still tingling. I think I’m in love.

(Happy Purim, Happy Easter, Happy weekend, everyone!)

We’ve been trying to get back into the habit of having seafood dinners a few times a week, both as a way to reduce our meat consumption and to increase our intake of the beneficial oils and fatty acids fish contain. Much as with our other sources of protein, I try to make the best choices possible when buying seafood, choosing types which are local when possible, which are sustainable, and which are low in toxins.

I love adding anchovies to sauces and I have come to love them on their own as well. This is a good thing since they’re not only tasty, but they fit my criteria for the type of fish we want to eat often. Halibut is another favorite, and the wild Alaskan halibut we buy via FreshDirect is Certified Sustainable - it’s far from local, but I can feel okay about buying it when we don’t have much available that is.

In looking for inspiration when planning our meals for the week, I turned again to Sunday Suppers at Lucques, and when I saw the recipe for winter vegetables with bagna cauda I immediately noted it in my little cooking planner. This meal was actually meant to be our Sunday supper this week, but as you know I neglected to thaw the halibut in time. We bumped it to Monday night, and let me tell you it was totally worth the wait. Since I had cut and blanched all of the vegetables Sunday night, this was ready in just minutes - perfect for a quick and satisfying weeknight meal.

There are probably hundreds of recipes out there for bagna cauda; I used Suzanne Goin’s recipe for inspiration but tinkered around with my own proportions. While I think it could have used a bit more anchovy and garlic, it was so good Mike and I both finished our heaping helping of “bathed” veggies before either of us finished our halibut.

Bagna Cauda

1/3 cup good olive oil
5-6 tablespoons unsalted butter
1-2 tablespoons finely chopped anchovy filets
red chile flakes to taste
2 tablespoons finely chopped garlic
2 tablespoons lemon zest
2 tablespoons fresh thyme
kosher salt to taste

Melt the butter in the olive oil in a saucepan, stirring well. Add the anchovies and stir until they dissolve. Add the chile flakes, garlic, lemon zest and thyme and cook just a minute, until the garlic is fragrant and golden. Taste and add a pinch of salt if necessary.

This is traditionally served as a dip with blanched vegetables, but I tossed a mixture of raw endive and radicchio and blanched cauliflower, broccoli florets, radishes, carrots and fennel with small amount of the bagna cauda and spooned a bit more onto my sautéed halibut filets, finishing both with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice.

I subscribe to Food and Wine magazine, and when the October issue arrived last month, I was delighted to see an article entitled “Spanish Food & Wine (A Crash Course).” I’ve been playing more and more with Spanish flavors, and I guess you could say I’ve developed a bit of a crush. A recipe for Galician Fish Stew sounded particularly appealing, so I decided to work it into our dinner rotation soon.

The unseasonably warm weather we’ve had these last couple of weeks has not been particularly stew-friendly, so I was hoping I would have to put the dish off for too long, but as it turned out, yesterday was the perfect day for it – cool and rainy, just the kind of night when you want to curl up with something warm and hearty.

I fiddled around with the proportions of the original recipe just a bit – since I had only purchased enough halibut for the two of us rather than the four fillets called for in the recipe, I decided to reduce the number of potatoes as well. I haven’t gotten around to making a fresh batch of fish stock yet so I substituted plain water, but I kept everything else pretty much the same, and in the end, we had a richly flavored, light yet filling dish. The aroma of the paprika-garlic oil alone makes this recipe a winner.

Galician Fish Stew
(Adapted from a recipe by Janet Mendel in the October 2007 issue of Food and Wine)

For the stew:
Two 4-6 ounce skinless halibut fillets
Kosher salt
1 pound Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and sliced 1/2 inch thick
1 cup water (you can substitute fish stock or clam juice)
1/2 cup white vermouth (or dry white wine)
2 bay leaves
1 medium red onion, peeled and quartered
3-4 cups coarsely chopped Swiss chard leaves

For the ajada:
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
3-4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon smoked Spanish paprika
Pinch of crushed red pepper flakes

Season the halibut with salt and refrigerate for 30 minutes. In a large, heavy bottomed pot, combine the potatoes, water or stock, vermouth or wine, bay leaves, onion, chard and 1 tablespoon of salt. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer over low heat for 15 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender.

Warm the olive oil in a small saucepan. Add the garlic and cook over low heat until golden. Add the paprika and red pepper off the heat, stirring well to incorporate, and set aside.

Lay the halibut on top of the potatoes and simmer, turning once, until the fish is just cooked through (6-8 minutes, depending on thickness). Remove the halibut to a plate, and spoon some of the stew into shallow bowls. Set the halibut on top. Ladle some of the broth into the garlic oil and bring the mixture to a boil. Stir well, pour it over the fish and serve.

I’m in the midst of another busy time at the office. I worked Saturday and Sunday, so our weekend meals were pretty pared down. Mike cooked up a nice steak on Friday, but Saturday was so muggy the thought of cooking anything indoors went right out the window. I wanted something quick and light, so I decided on grilled halibut.

One of my favorite tricks to get a meal out quickly, particularly in hot weather, is to whisk up a batch of vinaigrette or dressing and use it in multiple ways. In this instance, I made my chile-lime dressing and used it to marinate the fish, as part of a mango salsa to go on top of the fish, and to dress an updated version of my quinoa and black bean salad. In just minutes I had the base for three different parts of our meal - and the rest came together in a snap.

Chile-Lime Dressing

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground smoked chipotle
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon dried oregano
2 tablespoons chile powder (Mike makes his own, but you can buy very good quality chile powders from Penzey’s or other vendors)
Juice of 4 limes
1/3 extra virgin olive oil

Combine dry ingredients in a small bowl and stir together until combined. Add lime juice and whisk well, then slowly whisk in oil until combined. (You can also combine the ingredients in a clean lidded jar and shake well to combine.) Refrigerate any unused dressing for up to 3 days.

I love how well the flavors of fennel and tomato marry with seafood, so I do some variant of this dish pretty often. It’s another fast and fairly simple preparation. Heat two sauté pans and add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil to each. In the first pan, add a couple of smashed and chopped cloves of garlic, one thinly sliced fennel bulb, and about a cup of thinly sliced onion or leek. Season with salt and allow them to cook over medium heat until caramelized. We’ve usually got a bottle of pastis around, so I like to add an ounce or so of that when I’m cooking with fennel to deepen that yummy anise flavor; if you don’t have pastis, you can substitute white wine or white vermouth, or even use a bit of water. Add the pastis or other liquid to the pan and stir up the browned bits from the bottom, then immediately add 2 cups of chopped tomatoes with their liquid, the juice and zest of one lemon, and a handful of chopped fennel fronds. Adjust the seasoning again if needed, cover, and allow to simmer over low heat for 10 minutes.

Season your fish filets on both sides with salt and pepper (I used halibut here, but this also works well with sea bass, wild striped bass or swordfish). Rub a little bit of olive oil all over, and add the filets to the second pan, which should be really hot at this point. Allow them to cook undisturbed on the first side (if you have skin-on filets, start them skin side down) for 3-4 minutes so they develop a good crust, then carefully flip them and cook on the second side a minute or two more. Spoon the fennel and tomato mixture into shallow bowls, place a fish filet on top of each, and top with more chopped fennel fronds.

This is one of those dinners I’m going to have to do a bit more work on. Mike loved it, but I wasn’t entirely satisfied. I had two wild Alaskan halibut filets to prepare for dinner, as well as some green beans, and I wasn’t quite sure how to jazz them up, so I did a quick skim of recipes Food and Wine. Cal Elliot and Polo Dobkin’s recipe for Halibut with Mixed Beans and Lemon-Butter Sauce caught my eye (not surprising, as Dressler is one of our favorite places to eat out), so I thought I’d try a spin on it.

Since I only had the green beans to go with the halibut, I thought I’d prepare a sort of relish to go on top of the fish to provide a bit more color and texture. I whisked together about half a cup of fresh lemon juice, salt, pepper and olive oil in a bowl, then added a handful of chopped fresh dill, a tablespoon or so of lemon zest, one minced garlic clove and half a cup of Greek olives, pitted and sliced. I set that aside and got to work on the fish, seasoning it with salt and giving it a light coating of olive oil on all sides. I placed the fish into our cast iron skillet, which I had heated almost to smoking, and let it cook skin side down for several minutes, until the skin was crispy and the fish was cooked about halfway through.

While the fish cooked on the first side, I cooked the green beans - half a pound, trimmed - in just a bit of water until bright green and crisp-tender. When they were done I drained them and set them aside. I moved back to the fish, gently flipping the filets, turning off the heat and adding half a cup of white wine and the juice of a lemon. I turned the heat back up to medium and began scraping up the little browned bits from the bottom of the pan. I let the fish cook in the wine and lemon juice for 2-3 minutes, then removed the filets to a platter and covered them with foil. I reduced the heat to low and whisked in about 1/3 cup of cold butter a little at a time until the sauce was smooth and creamy.

I tossed the green beans with the butter sauce and added them to our plates, placed a halibut filet over, and spooned more lemon butter over the top of the fish. I then spooned a mound of the olive-dill relish on top, and served.

The meal was tasty, and Mike said the fish was perfectly cooked, but I think I would have liked a little more zing in this dish - I will probably try upping the amount of citrus in the butter sauce and/or adding some chile flakes to the relish next time around.

Wine Pairing: Neither of us are big fans of Chardonnay, but we love Wolffer Estate La Ferme Martin, and it worked really well with this meal. It had just the right amount of crispness to complement the rich and meaty halibut and butter sauce.