Category: Fish

Fish Recipes

Seared Salmon with Endive and Broccolini

The original recipe came from Bon Appétit and the dressing required a couple of jalapeños. I bought some, but the clerk didn’t ring them up so they weren’t in my grocery bag when I got home. I had to improvise and I used chili oil instead.

Ingredients:
2 garlic cloves, chopped
chili oil
zest from 1/4 grapefruit
1 tsp honey
1/2 bunch broccolini, tough stems removed
2 skin-on, boneless salmon fillets, patted dry with paper towel, salted
2 Belgian endives, outer leaves separated and hearts chopped
juice from the same 1/4 grapefruit
4 tsps unseasoned rice vinegar
toasted sesame seeds
olive oil, salt

1. Make the dressing. Using a mortar and pestle, crush the garlic into the chili oil and salt, and then mix in the grapefruit zest and honey. Stir grapefruit juice and vinegar into dressing. Set aside.
2. In a heated skillet, heat some olive oil over medium-high heat. Add broccolini and cook, tossing occasionally, until charred in spots and tender, about 7 minutes. Transfer to a plate. Scatter endive with it.
3. Lower the heat to medium and add some more oil in the skillet until hot. Add the salmon skin side down, and cook until skin is browned and crisp, 7 minutes. Gently turn and cook the flesh side just until cooked through, about 1 minute. Place on top of the broccolini and endive. Drizzle grapefruit dressing over salmon, then top with sesame seeds.

Halibut with Ground Veal and Cilantro Sauce

I was watching a Top Chefs Duel episode with Stephanie Izard and was intrigued by the halibut dish that she prepared the judges all fawned over. I’m always looking for seafood recipes outside of roasting them whole so I was glad to buy a nice halibut piece from Chelsea Market’s Lobster Place to try it.

I found the recipe on Food & Wine but made changes when, surprisingly, my neighborhood grocery store did not have ground pork the day I stopped by. I also didn’t want to walk an avenue away to pick up tamarind from the Mexican store (I’ve seen them there before outside of Chinatown), so I ended up buying the smallest bottle of pomegranate juice I can find to substitute. I would have cooked the Pom juice down for a thicker consistency, but the recipe needed a scant amount so I just threw it in for its tartiness.

Ingredients:
1 bunch of cilantro, roughly chopped
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 tbsps white balsamic vinegar
2 tsps Dijon mustard
a dollop of honey
salt, pepper
peanut oil
1 medium shallot, minced
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 pound ground veal
1 1/2 tbsps sugar
1 tbsp white miso paste
1 tsp pomegranate juice
1/4 cup salted roasted peanuts, grounded
fresh lime juice
a nice piece of halibut fillet

1. Make the cilantro sauce. In a food processor, purée the cilantro, olive oil, vinegar, mustard and honey. Season with salt and pepper. Set aside.
2. Cook the veal. Heat some peanut oil in a saucepan. Add the shallot and garlic and cook until softened. Add the veal and cook over moderately high heat, breaking up the meat, until browned. Add the sugar, miso, pomegranate, peanuts and 1/2 cup of water to the pork. Simmer over moderately low heat until thickened, 2 minutes. Season with salt and pepper; stir in the lime juice and keep warm.
3. Cook the fish. In a nonstick skillet, heat the remaining 2 tablespoons of peanut oil. Season the halibut with salt and pepper. Cook over moderately high heat until browned and just cooked through, about 4 minutes per side. Set the fish on a plate and top with the veal and cilantro sauce.

Hwe Dup Bap, Korean Rice Bowl with Sashimi

This is more of a how-to assemble this rice bowl than a recipe, but Korean hwe dup bap is one of my comfort foods so I decided to put it up. Just like the Japanese chirashi, all you need is sashimi-grade fish on top of rice, and typical me, I put both versions together. I don’t have exact measurements either because I make the faux sushi rice per serving and I just estimate the right ratio of rice to the mirin-sugar-salt mixture.

Ingredients:
rice vinegar
white sugar
salt
white rice, freshly cooked
kochujang
soy sauce
sesame oil
nori, torn in smaller sheets
sashimi-grade tuna, sliced in manageable pieces
togarashi

1. Make the sushi rice. Combine the rice vinegar, sugar, and salt in a small bowl. In a separate large bowl, combine your freshly cooked rice with the vinegar mixture and mix well.
2. Make the sauce. In another small bowl, combine the kochujang paste with soy sauce and sesame oil. Whisk to dilute the paste as much as possible.
3. Assemble your rice bowl. In a bowl with a serving of the rice, drizzle in the kochujang sauce and top with the tuna. Drizzle a little bit more sesame oil and sprinkle with togarashi. Serve with nori on the side.

Sausage and Cod Stew with Garbanzos

People who love to drink while cooking will tell you to cook with the wine you’re drinking. I don’t have a problem with that idea except that I’m usually drinking a really good and expensive bottle to be cooking it. There isn’t a dish good enough that deserves cooked Barolo wine, or in this case, I was drinking a Vouvray. Save the nice wine for you and your loved one and pick up a less expensive white for this.

This sausage and cod stew, I think, is Spanish-inspired even though I still ended up using a different white wine from the Loire Valley. I wanted something hearty but not as thick as a winter dish. I initially planned to do some kind of meatball stew, but the fresh sausages in the supermarket were hard to resist. And when I saw how good the cod steak looked too… well, then.

The chiles here are optional. I used two of the dried Sichuan peppers I brought back from Bhutan, but I gather you can use almost any red chile. It’s really just for a quick kick. It won’t ruin the dish if you decide to skip it. I also used a steak of cod rather than a fillet; that way, it will hold up during cooking and for storing after.

Ingredients:
oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 dried red chiles
a handful of fresh basil
3 fresh sausages, sliced in 1-inch pieces
1/2 bottle white wine
4 red potatoes, quartered
1 can of plum tomatoes
1 can of chickpeas, washed, drained
salt and pepper
a handful of green beans, stringed, halved
1 steak of cod, sliced
a handful of parsley, roughly chopped

1. Heat some oil in a large Dutch oven over medium heat and sauté the garlic, chiles and basil. Add the sausages and cook until browned.
2. Pour in the white wine and add the potatoes, tomatoes and chickpeas. Season well with salt and pepper and simmer for 20 minutes, until the potatoes are tender and while stirring every couple of minutes.
3. After the soup has simmered, it should have thickened a little, so stir in about 1/2 cup of hot water. Add the green beans and bring everything to a boil to cook the beans. Add the fish and parsley and cook for another 5 minutes. Turn off the heat and let sit, uncovered.

Pan-Fried Arctic Char with Butternut Squash Couscous

Arctic char looks and tastes similar to salmon but I prefer its natural sweetness that lends itself to frying. Cooking either fish filleted is easy as long as you dry them with paper towels and heat your skillet with oil until it’s sizzling–this will keep the fish from sticking to the pan and falling apart when you have to turn them over. Israeli couscous, or ptitim, are shaped like little balls made out of wheat flour rather than the finer North African version made out of semolina. I just added butternut squash here to make the dish more filling. The preserved lemon isn’t necessary here, but I think it makes a nice surprising bite if you have them handy (and, boy, do I have them handy).

This is probably not the dish you’d think of cooking and packing for lunch when you go on a hike, but it’s what I did one Friday night for lunch the next day when I hiked Breakneck Ridge in Cold Spring, New York. We’ve had a dry spell here in the city and I just wanted to be away from concrete for a few hours and be surrounded by some trees and the Hudson River. My hiking companion seemed game for the outdoors even though we just started hanging out, so we met in the train to Poughkeepsie on Saturday morning; him getting on Grand Central, me in Harlem. He earned pogi points for being a good sport and making it to the top of the trail with me, and I think I earned mine for not packing granola bars for lunch.

Wouldn’t you want something extra special to eat with this summer view as well?

Ingredients:
1 small butternut squash, peeled, seeded, cubed
olive oil
salt
1 large onion, peeled and minced
1 preserved lemon, seeded, sliced
a handful of arugula, thoroughly washed, torn
1 3/4 cup Israeli couscous
1 small cinnamon stick
2 fillets of arctic char, rinsed, dried with paper towels
a handful of golden raisins
a handful of parsley, roughly chopped
a handful of pine nuts, toasted

1. Preheat the oven to 475º. Toss the butternut squash pieces in a jigger of olive oil and a pinch of salt in a large baking dish. Place in the oven until squash is tender, about 15 minutes.
2. While the squash is cooking, heat some olive oil in a skillet and cook the onions over medium-high heat with a bit of salt until translucent. Combine the squash and onions into a large bowl with the preserved lemon. Toss in the greens to wilt.
3. Cook the Israeli couscous. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and cook with the cinnamon stick until tender, about 10 minutes. Drain, but do not rinse, and get rid of the cinnamon. Gently fluff with a fork so that they do not form into one big blob.
4. Cook the fish. Season the fillets with salt and pepper. Heat some more olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. When the oil sizzles, add the fish in a single layer with the skin side down. Cook them for 3 minutes, and then using a flat spatula, turn the fillets and cook for another 2 minutes.
5. Add the cooked couscous to the bowl of squash, onions, and lemon and toss with raisins, parsley, and toasted pine nuts. Top with the fish to serve.