Last night’s St. Valentine Day dinner, rather late and rushed...but delicious!
I tried this stuffed fish recipe (shared by Stephan at Whole Health Source blog) for last night’s St. Valentine’s Day dinner and was very, very pleased with it. It's such a simple preparation that only takes a few minutes of pre-baking prep with parchment paper or aluminum foil, a sharp knife, and a cutting board. Once in the oven, it bakes just the right amount of time to get the table ready, make a side vegetable, prepare a simple salad, and open the wine (not necessarily in that order).
I was rather late returning from my fish shopping, because I was busy with chocolate truffles experiments earlier in the day and delayed going out to shop for dinner. I couldn’t find the recommended mackerel at any of the local fish sources, so I ended up settling for three smaller trout instead. As soon as I returned home, I pre-heated the oven, minced the shallots, stripped the thyme leaves from the stems, stuffed the fish, wrapped them up in individual parchment packages, and put them into the oven on a sheet pan to bake 30 minutes, while my husband was pressed into labor cutting up the acorn winter squash, steaming it, scraping the flesh out of the skin, and mashing with plenty of pastured butter, sea salt, and ground pepper.
Then I set to work on clearing and setting the dining table (it always seems to collect stuff throughout the day (and my husband and son were busy quizzing on multiplication tables), before I quickly arranged a cold plate of starters: herb-rolled chevre, duck liver mousse, smoked salmon mousse, and a small jar of salmon roe (I will confess, these were all purchased ready to eat, not prepared by me). After all, it was St. Valentine’s Day, which calls for special foods, and dinner was going to be late; we all needed something quick, not too filling, and easy to nibble on until dinner was ready. My husband opened a bottle of Willamette Valley Pinot Gris I chose while standing in the wine aisle at the back of the lengthy cashier line. Even though we are more into red wines, it was rather nice.
I tossed together a simple salad of fresh watercress leaves, with sliced kumquats from a local friend's tree, with some freshly squeezed orange juice (from a CSA orange), EVOO, ground pepper & sea salt flakes. Cress is one of the those families of edible and nutritious greens that commonly grows wild along streams, so that really appealed to my “primal” side.
For dessert, we had the dark chocolate truffles I had made earlier in the day. I made these without dairy ingredients, using coconut milk and coconut oil instead of heavy cream and butter.
It was a great dinner, in my never-to-be-humble opinion. We all liked this fish preparation very much, but our 10 yo son really went wild for it. The shallots, thyme leaves, and sea salt really infused the fish with great flavor. I wasn't sure what our son’s reaction would be to a whole fish on his plate, complete with head and tail (I placed an orange salmon egg on each eye, which had turned white from cooking), so I presented the platter of fish at the table in a very neutral way (I find the less said the better with dishes that are new to him). He really enjoyed folding the top half back and eating the fish (a separate plate might have been a good idea, though). He scraped the shallots off and didn't eat those (that, I expected), but he did a pretty good job on his fish. Now he's asking for crab for dinner tonight. Will wonders never cease?!
Going Against the Grain
Sunday, February 15, 2009
