Tag Archives: fish

Tandoori Cod

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We love getting fresh cod from Shore Catch at the Rittenhouse Farmers’ Market, but sometimes I need a new recipe in order to mix things up. This time I turned to the New Scandinavian Cooking website and found a nice recipe for Tandoori Cod. If you haven’t seen New Scandinavian Cooking, it’s well worth a watch; the recipes are usually interesting, the show features beautiful Scandinavian landscapes, and the hosts are often unintentionally quite funny.

I made my own Tandoori spice mix, based on researching a variety of different versions and combining what they all had in common (and what I had in my pantry): 1 teaspoon each of turmeric, cayenne pepper, smoked paprika, cumin, coriander, garam masala, ginger, and garlic, with a few grinds each of salt and pepper. This made more than enough, so I ended up using about half and saving the other half for another time. This particular version is quite spicy, but you could cut down on or eliminate the cayenne if you want a milder version.

I coated the fish with olive oil, rubbed it with the spice mix, and baked at 400 F for 20 minutes. Very simple, and it gave us a different way to enjoy our lovely, flaky Shore Catch cod.

Purveyor Highlight: Shore Catch

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Since we’ve been enjoying so much fresh seafood lately, we thought we’d take a post to highlight one of our favorite purveyors. Shore Catch, from Barnegat, NJ, is a regular at the Rittenhouse Farmers’ Market, and brings us a variety of fresh seafood from the Jersey Shore.

One of our favorite things to get from Shore Catch is their clams. Tom has a basic recipe for clams, which we vary a little bit each time depending on what we have available.

We also enjoy their scallops, which Tom has been known to sear up either for brunch or for dinner.

Shore Catch often has really nice cod, which we’ve used to make prosciutto-wrapped cod, or just simply baked with lemon and garlic.

When available, the mahi mahi we’ve gotten from Shore Catch has been incredible. Lately we’ve been making this with a piccata preparation and serving it over pasta.

We’ve also tried their flounder, which has been lovely, also prepared piccata-style and topped with fresh tomatoes and basil.

Shore Catch has plenty of other seafood choices, depending on the season, including oysters, squid, tuna, swordfish, and monkfish, but these have been our favorites so far. We’re thankful to have fresh, local fish so readily available!

Mahi Mahi Piccata

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I owe a lot to the recipe blog, Wandering Chopsticks. Some of my favorite recipes come from there, and one of them is chicken piccata.

For the past few years, I’ve been using this recipe with fish rather than chicken more often than not. We have an excellent source of fresh fish, thanks to Shore Catch at the Rittenhouse Farmers’ Market. I’ve used this recipe with tilapia (when I was on the west coast) and more recently with flounder, but so far my favorite is with mahi mahi.

I basically prepare the fish the same way one would prepare the chicken per the original recipe; flour, brown on both sides until the fish is cooked through, then add lemon juice and white wine at the end to create the sauce. Neither Tom nor I are a fan of capers; I know it’s probably not a true piccata without them, and I do appreciate what capers contribute to the sauce, but we’ve been leaving them out and still enjoying the result.

While I’m on fish duty, Tom prepares a lovely mix of fettuccine, garlic, and kale, to be the bed for our fish. The lemon from the piccata sauce goes especially well with the kale, and it’s a lovely way to add some greens to the meal.

We were especially lucky when we bought this fish, as the gentleman from Shore Catch informed us that this mahi mahi was the best of the previous day’s catch, and in fact that the whole catch had been the best of this winter. It’s wonderful to have a close enough connection to where your food comes from that you get to hear stories like this! And we must concur, the fish was amazing; I think it’s the best fish I’d had in recent memory, whether at home or at a restaurant.

 

 

 

Prosciutto-wrapped Cod

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Last weekend we were inspired to try this recipe for Cod Wrapped in Prosciutto from Philly Food Lovers. Aren’t most things better when wrapped in prosciutto? It was worth a try. We got some fresh cod from Shore Catch at the Rittenhouse Farmers’ Market and some prosciutto classico from Di Bruno Bros, and we were good to go.

The recipe calls for a simple paste made from sun-dried tomatoes, fresh basil, and olive oil. I used 1/2 cup chopped sun-dried tomatoes from Highland Orchards (from the Fitler Square Farmers’ Market), 1 chopped garlic clove (recipe didn’t call for it, but come on, it’s garlic), 1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley (I forgot to get basil but had parsley on hand), and about 1 tablespoon of olive oil. A small food processor would come in handy for blending this, but I made due with a mortar & pestle to make a more chunky paste.

I lined a baking sheet with foil and greased it with olive oil, then laid out enough slices of prosciutto for the length of the filet (this turned out to be 5 slices). I placed the fish on top of the prosciutto, then covered it with the sun-dried potato paste, sprinkled with salt and pepper, and drizzled with more olive oil. Then I wrapped the prosciutto up around the fish on both sides, and used 1 extra slice of prosciutto to cover the thickest part of the fish.

 

After that, we baked the prosciutto-wrapped cod for 20 minutes at 400° F.

It came out really well; we enjoyed the delicious and flaky fish, as complemented by the tomato and prosciutto. Much like our prosciutto-wrapped chicken legs, this is definitely something we’ll try again. Thanks to Philly Food Lovers for the idea!

Herb Crusted Arctic Char with Parsley Citrus Pistou and Cherry Tomatoes

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The other day, Tom sent me a link to a recipe for Herb Crusted Salmon with Arugula Citrus Pistou and Grape Tomatoes. We’ve been following the REMCooks blog, since its author was one of the first to discover and comment on our blog (thanks!). Anyway, it looked so tasty, we decided to try it sometime this weekend.

We made a few variations to the original recipe, based on what we had on hand and what we could find locally.

First, we went to the market to get some salmon, but ended up leaving with arctic char. Being from the west coast and having a preference for Pacific Northwest salmon, I’m not a huge fan of the salmon we get here on the east coast. Plus, I could never get arctic char on the west coast, so, why not take advantage of its availability here? Not to mention I just love the flavor of arctic char, but I had never cooked it myself, only had it in restaurants. Challenge accepted.

The other major changes we made to the recipe were a few ingredients in the pistou. Most significantly, we used parsley instead of arugula. I love arugula, and it’s not a problem to get it, but I had a giant bunch of parsley from the CSA that I really wanted to do something with. Similarly, it’s not that we couldn’t get pine nuts, but I happened to have walnuts around, since I had made a pesto earlier in the week that called for walnuts. Finally, though I had parmesan cheese, I also had some aged asiago that I wanted to use up, so I ended up using the asiago instead.

Other than that, we were pretty faithful to the recipe. Oh, except that for the herb crust, we had dried oregano and thyme instead of their fresh counterparts, but we did have fresh rosemary, and we just mashed all that together with a mortar and pestle.

And now, the moment you’ve been waiting for:

What an absolutely lovely recipe! The lime and lemon in the pistou really gave this a unique flavor. I can see how it would be even better with arugula, but it still went very nicely with the parsley, creating an overall fresh and tangy flavor that went fantastically with the fish. It was also interesting to me that the pistou recipe didn’t contain any garlic, which made it taste rather different from the usual pesto and contributed to the overall refreshing effect. I think the sharp asiago gave the pistou a little extra kick as well. The arctic char was incredible; it seems a bit milder (less fishy), moister, and creamier (fattier?) than salmon. I’m not sure if I got really lucky or if it’s hard to screw up, but either way the fish was cooked perfectly. The herb crust was just the right touch to give it some additional flavor and texture but still allowing the fish to shine through. It’s not tomato season, but the cherry tomatoes we found turned out to be pretty good (I can’t wait for tomato season!), and were a great pairing with the dish as a whole.

We’ll definitely do this again sometime. We’d love to try it with arugula as the original recipe calls for. I can also see it working really well with cilantro, but since Tom’s not a big cilantro fan I probably won’t be trying that anytime soon. I can also see this working well with other types of fish, and even steak. Thanks to Richard at REMCooks for the idea!