Monkfish Vietnamese style

Monkfish was under $8 per pound today at Conneley's. I bought about a pound and three quarters to feed me, Eric, Don, and Duncan -- and then realized that Lee might be arriving as well. I added shrimp (I try to keep a few pounds in my freezer), and they were a good addition.
When I think of monkfish I think of that wonderful picture of Julia Child holding what looks something like a huge oil spill. She is holding the fish above her head with one hand; its head is resting on the floor. It is surely ugly!
Monkfish have the consistency of lobsters and very little flavor. I looked up how Julia cooks them, but decided to use Vietnamese flavors and preparation. Here goes (it was good, of course, otherwise I wouldn't bother you with it):
Use a large, flat pan (I used a wok, but think my paella pan would have worked better). Warm up olive oil (1/3 cup?) and saute one chopped onion, 2 or 3 minced cloves of garlic, and a good bit of chopped ginger. Add about one half small head of white cabbage, shredded, and mix around with the other stuff. I also added chopped brocolli stems and some shrimp.
Cut the monkfish into serving size pieces and place them in a mixing bowl. Add fish sauce, lemon and lime juice, soy sauce, and a bit of hot sesame oil. I would have added plain sesame oil as well, but I've run out. Mix this and let the monkfish marinate briefly. Then add the fish to the cabbage mixture, burying each piece of fish in the cabbage. Turn the ingredients over several times as you cook them on medium to high heat. Child says to make sure they cook through but not so long as to begin to fall apart. I think it took about 10 minutes.
I served it with brocolli and pasta.

Winter Salads

Last spring and summer my garden produced the most wonderful lettuce and other greens. We had salad after salad, with rich, complex tastes and "toothiness". Evening is time to go out and pick whatever is ready to go into the salad -- kale, lettuce, herbs, and at this remove I can't even remember what else. I just know that yesterday, which by my reckoning was the first day of spring (count them from the first nice one in March or you may not get any), I began to think about starting lettuce in a cold frame. I've never done that before.
Between last summer's salads and now there's a long time. You have to have salad in the winter, but I just can't any more serve those pallid bowls full of "annie's organic greens" from Chile or California, packed in plastic and containing at least a couple of black and wilted leaves. So I've invented winter salads.
1. I use a lot of Romaine lettuce. No one thinks that Romaine is gourmet -- it's the new iceberg. You buy a bag of three heads in a sealed plastic bag. Sometimes I wash it, sometimes I don't. I usually cut it with a sharp knife, starting with the leafy end and slicing in 1/2" (or so) pieces. It keeps for a long time in the fridge and can be added to my "winter salad" no matter what other ingredients I use.
2. I usually make the dressing with cider vinegar. I have a quart bottle of Bragg Raw Unfiltered Organic Apple Cider Vinegar. According to Cooks Illustrated, vinegar lasts just about forever, and that's been my experience. I find the raw, acidic taste of cider vinegar perfect for winter salads. (Sometimes I use rice wine vinegar.) I use the exellent oilve oil that my brother in law Evan keeps be supplied in.
3. The other ingredients of a "winter salad" might be -- thinly sliced -- cabbage (white or red, or savoy), bok choy, endive, radicchio, spinach. I sometimes add grated carrot, fresh parsley, fennel -- kind of whatever is in the fridge. The fennel adds a really nice texture and flavor.
4. My brother Eric is staying with us and he doesn't do well with raw onions. So I often slice a red onion and marinte it in baslamic vinegar and serve so that people can add it as they want.

Your commets please, and more to come...

Fish en Papillote

I picked up a copy of Cook's Illustrated when I was in DC. I'd never really looked at it before. I am intrigued. The tone is forthright, conversational; the approach is empirical. They try things; they tell you what worked and what didn't.
Tonight I tried two of their recipes. Or, I followed some hints and remade a couple of their recipes.
One is Fish en Papillote. Here's what I did:
I bought 1/2 pound of fresh pollock and 1/2 pound of Maine shrimp (qv). Each was $3.99 per pound. I mixed the shrimp with cubed pollack, cut about the size of the shrimp, added chopped baby bok choy (two small heads) and 1/4 of a white onion, also chopped and mixed with a bit of sesame oil and a few drops of hot sesame oil and sweated in the microwave for a couple of minutes. I added the juice from 1/2 a lime and divided the mixture onto three sheets of aluminum foil, covered each sheet with another sheet, and crimped the edges to make three packages. (Eric reminded me that aluminum was a suspected contributor to Alzheimers -- I'll try parchment the next time.)
Since I was going to put them into a hot oven to cook I decided to try Cooks Illustrated's method for rice, slightly altered. I started long grain brown rice in a heavy metal pot on the top of the stove, added a couple of tablespoons of chopped ginger (it gives the rice a great flavor), and when the rice was simmering, the laundry was folded, and the oven was hot, transferred the rice to the oven.
When the rice was cooked (a bit over cooked, in fact), I turned the oven to 450, waited a minute or so, and put the papillotes in the oven on a rimmed baking tray (they can get pretty full of liquid). I left them in for about 15 minutes and served one per person. They were excellent -- full of juices that flavored the rice, tasty, not overcooked. I was quite delighted and ready to learn how to fold parchment, even though Cook's compares it to having to do origami.
I served it with asparagus, two pounds of it to make up for the skimpiness of the dinner, which I cooked in the microwave in two minute intervals -- three in all, I think. The microwave cooks from the inside out -- the asparagus was warm and tender and crisp.
Check out Cook's. The idea for the fish and the rice came from the April 2009 issue.