The Secret Language of Fish, Part 6

Orange, vermilion, and salmon

We are so accustomed to seeing salmon flesh in just that precise persimmony shade of pink that we've even given it place in our lexicons. Truth be told, the flesh color of the salmon (and their closest cousins the trout and char) varies quite a bit and is dependent largely upon diet. A live-fish diet makes the flesh more pink. The slightly more orange color in most salmon is due to supplementing that mostly-fish-diet with squid and shrimp. Trout, char, and salmon in streams, living on a diet heavy with insects and larva have pale, nearly white flesh. A predominantly shellfish diet will turn the flesh bright yellow. Farmed fish are fed supplements to color their flesh because the market just won't bear off-white salmon.

As I've mentioned in earlier entries, I prefer sockeye salmon. Sockeye flesh is redder than that of any other salmon, trout, or char, and it retains a bit more color when it cooks. I believe sockeye has a richer flavor, and it seems to keep better than other members of family Salmonidae. Part of my preference might be simple superstition. I've had bad coho, bad Atlantic salmon, and bad king salmon. I've not yet had a sockeye purchase go wrong. Then again, mine might be a more complex superstition—sympathetic magic: more depth of color equals more depth of flavor.

Still, there's something about that color—that salmon color—that leaves me questioning a lot of choices we all tend to make regarding how we cook and dress salmon. Like many other cooks, I long ago decided that orange juice and orange zest are ideal accompanists for salmon. Is it just the color? Is it my inner interior decorator telling me to pair orange-pink flesh with blood oranges and tangerines?

Well, that might have had something to do with the original selection, but I certainly can't take credit or blame for the pairing. Salmon glazes have included orange-juice almost as long as ham glazes have included pineapple. In Texas restaurants where everything that isn't barbecue finds its way into the Tex-Mex canon, salmon is often served with an orange-chipotle sauce or glaze. (We're so in love with chipotle chiles that I'm surprised no one has yet started a string of Texas chipotle ice cream parlors or chipotle coffee shops.)

If you taste a bit of cooked salmon (yes, or trout or char) with no other seasoning than a bit of salt, you can readily taste the reason oranges work with salmon. Salmon has a light, buttery sweetness. A little fruity sugar enhances the natural sweetness of the fish. A little tartness gives sparkle to that buttery quality just as lemon does for the butter in sauce Hollandaise. I've used the salmon/orange pairing with some success in the recent past (for details, see Charred sockeye with tomato-orange escabeche in my entry Words, words, words).

Of course, if the orange and salmon color combination seems just a little too much like a fashion statement, you can substitute any of quite a few other fruits or berries. Some experimenters have had quite a bit of luck with kumquats, mango, pineapple, blackberry, and raspberry. According to Gordon Ramsay in an episode of his Kitchen Nightmares, strawberries don't pair well with salmon. I also wouldn't bet on cherries. The tartness in strawberries (I'm guessing) is a bit too astringent to work with salmon. Cherry, I think, would overpower the fish.

Recently, I paired a more-or-less traditional glaze with an apple-based salsa. The results were outstanding. I say "partly traditional" because I melded a couple of fairly traditional salmon glaze elements that are not usually used together (maple syrup, orange zest, wasabi, Dijon mustard, and lime juice). I added the salsa to provide texture and to give a little depth. From experience with a number of sushi rolls I've sampled, I knew that hot chiles mixed with wasabi give a different depth of burn than either hot element alone. The chiles burn the tip of the tongue; the wasabi burns the back of the throat.

Glazed sockeye with apple salsa

dramatis personae

glaze:

2 tbsp wasabi powder
2 tbsp lime juice
zest of one medium orange
2 tbsp dark amber maple syrup
1 tbsp Dijon mustard

four five-ounce pieces of salmon filet, scaled
sea salt
black pepper

salsa:

honey crisp apple (with peel), diced
celery rib
serrano chili, seeded and minced
1 tsp cider vinegar
1 tsp olive oil
salt

quality of ingredients

Wasabi powder is sold in most places that sell bulk spices, but it really isn't wasabi. The stuff we're given in most US restaurants is a mix of horseradish and spirulina. Wasabi is damned difficult to come by in the US. I've seen the roots for sale in two stores in Austin, and both places were asking $250 per pound. I have no idea whether real wasabi would work in this recipe. I believe I could substitute Chinese hot mustard for the combination of wasabi and Dijon mustard, but I haven't had a chance to try it.

When I buy oranges to use for zest, I nick the rind with a thumbnail to verify that it's sufficiently aromatic. Some large navel oranges with thick, brightly colored rinds can have surprisingly weak-smelling zest. If you can't smell it, you won't taste it.

I used dark amber maple syrup and strongly recommend avoiding any kind of imitation. I had originally planned to use honey, but I was out of honey. I will probably try honey next time.

For more on sockeye salmon, see Words, Words, Words.

I could only think of three apples that I might have used for the salsa: fujis, pacific roses, or honeycrisps. All three varieties are sweet, crisp, and fruity, and all three have their charms. For this particular recipe, honeycrisps offered the best balance of sweet and tart.

Serrano chilies are variable but tend to be hot without being too hot for my girls. Jalapeños or green hot fingerlong chilies would work.

preparation notes

Preheat the oven to 400F (375F convection).

Mix the glaze ingredients together thoroughly.

Coat the bottom of a flat-bottomed backing dish with vegetable oil. Place the salmon filets skin side down on the oil. Salt and pepper the filets. Cover the filets with the glaze and bake them for 8 minutes or until a fork will readily separate the segments.

The salsa is simple enough that you can prepare it while the fish is baking.

Serve each filet with a heaping tablespoon of salsa.

Words Words Words (like escabache, for instance)

I Am Not Wikipedia

Wikipedia provides fairly succinct and straightforward definitions of both escabeche and vinaigrette. Feel free to use those to describe your own recipes if that's your thing. I have my own definitions. I think mine are a little more practical than the Wikipedia definitions, which are more concerned with the historical significance of the terms.

So, when I say vinaigrette I mean any simple acid-based sauce or dressing. The acid can be any vinegar or citrus juice. Vinaigrettes usually contain one or more oils and some combination of herbs and spices. As far as I'm concerned, hot and cold vinaigrettes are still vinaigrettes. (I realize that "one or more oils" might sound a bit odd, but flavoring oils— like sesame, lemon, or hazelnut oils—and some infusions—like commercially available chili, basil, and garlic oils—tend to be a bit too stout to use as the sole oil base in a vinaigrette.)

When I add vegetables to a vinaigrette and cook the mixture to produce a sauce that I will use to marinate or dress a protein, I call it an escabeche. I could call it lumpy vinaigrette, but it just doesn't sound as appetizing. I know, strictly speaking escabeche is used only for fish, and it's usually chilled before use. I don't care. I need the term and choose to co-opt it in this fashion. So sue me. (Litigious pedants should note, however, that the Persian root for escabeche is sikbag, which means simply "acid food.")

What "Chicken" Means at My Place

A few years ago, while experimenting with ways to make grilled chicken breasts taste more like food and a little less like charred paper, I came up with a fortuitous pairing of a sweet chili marinade and a tomato and onion escabeche that I originally intended for use with red snapper. My daughter liked it so much that she began asking for it every week. Originally, I'd come home from shopping for groceries and answer her, "What's for dinner?" with, "Chicken on escabeche." Later, she started recognizing some of the ingredients and would ask, "Are we having chicken?" Occasionally, she has asked, "Can we have chicken for dinner tonight?"

The first time she asked that question, I countered with, "How do you want it," and was answered with a dumbfounded stare. "You know, the sweet one with the tomatoes." I'm not certain where the transition occurred, but at some point chicken came to mean that specific dish. Any other chicken dish—even a plain old roasted chicken—required an adjective to distinguish it from chicken, which implied the exclusion of non-breast meat and the inclusion of one specific escabeche.

Chicken (grilled marinated chicken on escabeche)

Yes, that's on, not en. Serves three.

dramatis personae

three chicken breast halves

the marinade:
one cup water
one quarter cup white wine vinegar
one quarter cup Sauvignon blanc
three chilis arbol, crushed
one quarter cup light brown sugar
one tablespoon salt (or one teaspoon—see preparation notes)

the escabeche:
one third cup extra virgin olive oil
one small white onion, chopped
pinch of sea salt
three garlic cloves, minced or crushed
one chili arbol, seeded and minced
one large or two small bay leaves
one quarter cup cheap balsamic vinegar
two tablespoons apple cider vinegar
one teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
one pint cherub tomatoes, halved

quality of ingredients

I usually buy split, boned, skinless chicken breasts. If they have chicken at the butcher's counter, I can occasionally find chicken that has never been frozen. Otherwise, I try to find the packages that are still frozen with no signs of having been previously thawed. Sometimes I just have to settle for the least freezer-burnt meat I can find. Freezer burn on chicken breasts creates whiter portions on the edges of the meat, usually where the breasts are thinnest.

Cheap Sauvignon blanc is a good generic marinating wine. It's available in most grocery stores, is fruity, mildly sweet, and not too tart.

The escabeche cooks long enough that it really doesn't matter what type of onion you use. After simmering in hot olive oil for ten minutes, onions all taste pretty much the same.

Use fresh bay leaves. You'll get ten times the flavor over the bay leaves. Dried thyme is strong enough but I find the taste of dried thyme a bit metallic.

See quality of ingredients under Composing a Symphony for guidance on garlic.

preparation notes

The marinade will be plenty effective in about forty-five minutes if it contains enough salt. One tablespoon should suffice. If you plan to marinate the chicken overnight, cut the salt down to a teaspoon to keep from oversalting it. Mix the ingredients in a ziplock bag (no need to seed the chili, you'll be throwing out the marinade once it's done its work). Trim any excess fat from the chicken breasts and drop them into the marinade. Express the air from the bag, seal it, and put it in a large enough bowl to catch the liquid in case of an accident. Refrigerate the marinating chicken for forty-five minutes. Remove the chicken breasts to a plate and discard the marinade. Blot the breasts dry with a paper towel and cover them with plastic wrap while you make the escabeche.

Heat the olive oil over a medium flame until it just starts to shimmer. Pour in the onions, garlic, chili, and bay leaf and sauté until the onions just start to reach translucency. Turn down the flame to low and allow the mixture to simmer for about ten minutes.

Add in the vinegars and bring the mixture to a boil. Mix in the thyme and tomatoes. This is your escabeche. Remove the escabeche from the flame and pour it into a bowl. Cover the bowl with a plate.

Unwrap the chicken breasts and bias cut them into 3/4-inch strips. I usually cook these in a grill pan (over medium high heat, about two minutes per side), but you could also grill them on an actual grill.

Pour the escabeche into a large serving platter and either remove the bay leaves and discard them, or set them off to the side (nice looking but inedible). Arrange the strips of chicken on top of the escabeche.

Serendipity—Salmon and Tomatoes and Orange Juice

Actually, the experiment was a combination of items that I know work together. The sum total of these combinations, however, left not only me but also my wife doubting the choices. The result was one of those fortuitous combinations that somehow manages to be more than the sum of its parts: sweet, rich, and savory with just enough acid to be bright without being downright sour. We all enjoyed it (Girltzik complimented the dish several times during the meal and twice afterward.) All in all, I have to say this was another first-time success.

As is often the case, this particular experiment began with me shopping for one thing (the ingredients for the chicken dish described above) and finding an attractive other. In this case, the grocery store whose aisles I was perusing had some beautiful sockeye salmon fillets on display. Bright, gelatinous, incarnadine—I have no will power where such things are concerned.

Because I was already shopping for the chicken dish, I had escabeche on the brain (not as uncomfortable as that probably sounds). Rather than completely revising my shopping list, I began mentally calculating changes I wanted to make to accommodate the richer, sweeter flavor of pan seared sockeye salmon. I immediately shifted from chili arbol to chipotle. The transition to orange juice and mexican oregano also seemed like obvious choices. Some of the other modifications I made to augment these initial transitions. Ultimately (right up to serving time), I was a little nervous about the combination of orange with tomato. My experience said both ingredients (in separate dishes) would work with salmon, but I honestly couldn't imagine how well the tomato-onion-salmon combination would marry with the orange-chipotle-salmon combination. For the life of me, I couldn't think of a dish I'd ever tried that contained both tomatoes and orange juice.

Charred sockeye with tomato-orange escabeche

This was just enough salmon for the three of us, but the quantity of escabeche would have been okay with enough salmon for four (translation—I threw out about a half cup of escabeche after dinner).

dramatis personae

one pound sockeye salmon fillets (skin on)
one quarter cup plus two tablespoons olive oil
two or more chipotle peppers, seeded and halved (see preparation notes for quantity)
two cups orange juice
one quarter cup white wine vinegar
two tablespoons light brown sugar
sea salt
one small onion, coarsely chopped
three garlic cloves, minced or chopped
one large or two small bay leaves
one pint cherub tomatoes
two teaspoons dried Mexican oregano

quality of ingredients

If the filets don't glisten, they've dried out. Sockeye salmon should be vermilion approaching red. If the salmon smells fishy or if the flesh is beginning to separate, it might be too old. This can be misleading with salmon. If the fishmonger has carefully removed all the bones, the meat might have separated along the rib line. If the meat is beginning to separate into flakes; however, it's definitely past its prime.


Chipotle peppers are the only choice. Anything else is just wrong. If you can't find them in your produce section, buy the canned chipotles.

Mexican oregano (which is actually more flavorful after drying) is pretty easy to find in Texas grocery stores. I'm not sure if that's true elsewhere. If not, substitute a teaspoon each of fresh minced peppermint and oregano.

preparation notes

I haven't separated these ingredients into marinade and escabeche sections because this preparation involves a bit of crossing over.

Place the filets face down in a wide bottomed bowl and pour a cup and a half of the orange juice over them. To the remaining one half cup of OJ, add the white wine vinegar, the light brown sugar, and a pinch of salt. Pour half of this mixture over the salmon filets, too, and set aside the remainder for later.

The fancy-shmancy foodie word for this ingredient will be infusion. We're going to make a quick chipotle infusion with the olive oil. This is incredibly simple. In a non-stick sauté pan, heat a quarter cup of olive oil over medium heat until it just begins to shimmer. Place the seeded chipotle chilis in the oil, insides down. Two chilis (three, if they're from a can) should be enough to just taste a little smoky bite in the final dish. If you like your chipotle dishes to be more assertive, use four chilis (six, if you're using canned chilis). Let the chilis infuse the hot oil for about ten minutes, and then remove (I use chopsticks) and discard the chilis.

Turn up the flame to medium-high and add in the onion, garlic, bay leaf, and a pinch of salt. Sauté these until the onions just start to reach translucency. Turn down the flame to low and allow the mixture to simmer for about ten minutes.

Add in the reserved orange/vinegar mixture, and bring the mixture to a boil. Mix in the Mexican oregano and tomatoes. This is your escabeche. Remove the escabeche from the flame and pour it into a bowl. Cover the bowl with a plate.

Heat two tablespoons of olive oil to the smoke point (just a wisp, not a black cloud). Place the salmon filets in the oil skin side up. Do not towel off the orange juice; it's going to caramelize. The trend in upscale dining establishments in the past decade has been to serve salmon medium rare. Personally, I don't see the appeal. I like raw salmon in some preparation, but not in the middle of my cooked salmon. With that in mind, cook the salmon filets for five minutes on the flesh side, turn them over, and cook the skin side for four minutes. While the flesh side is down, do not lift or move the filets as this will cause the just-forming caramel to flake off.

If you prefer medium-rare filets, cook the filets for three minutes on the flesh side, turn them, and cook them for another minute on the skin side.

Place the filets on a platter skin side down. Pour the tomato-orange escabeche over the filets. Remove the bay leaves and discard them or place them to the side of the platter. This is a damned fine looking dish already, so you don't need to bother with any extra garnish.

Composing a Symphony - king crab curry

Beethoven's Ninth versus Nirvana Unplugged

I used to make a variation on lasagna bolognese that tended to go over well at parties and pot luck gatherings. In my lasagna I substituted a layer of spinach leaves for every other layer of noodles, substituted hot Italian sausage for ground beef, and incorporated five cheeses: mozzarella, provolone, ricotta, cottage cheese curd, and reggiano parmigiano. My lasagna sauce was a thick concoction of tomato sauce, tomatoes, mushrooms, roasted red bell peppers, onions, garlic, oregano, and basil. In several years, I only received two complaints about the dish. One was from an acquaintance who didn't like mushrooms. The other came from an aunt of mine who tried a few bites and then pushed it away.

"I'm sorry," she explained, "it just contains too much stuff. It's too many flavors for me. My taste buds don't know what to concentrate on."

I shrugged it off: de gustibus. Still, the criticism has stayed with me all these years, and I occasionally find myself thinking much the same thing about overly complicated dishes. I've seen many fine dishes ruined by the addition of one too many stout ingredients. I stopped visiting one of the local Italian restaurants because they insist on putting garlic in everything but the drinks and desserts. Their bread sticks, salad dressings, red sauces, white sauces, and pestos all contain raw or sautéed garlic. Garlic is good where garlic is good, but not every savory dish needs garlic or even benefits from its presence. (Of course, it doesn't help that the restaurant in question uses too much garlic in every dish. After a few bites of any entrée, you can't even taste the parmigiano.) I've seen similar effects in various restaurants from unnecessary addition of balsamic vinegar, chilis, corn, sun dried tomatoes, ginger, citrus, and even cheese. After experiencing this problem enough, it's easy to conclude that a dish can have (to crib from Amadeus) too many notes.

How then do we explain curries? A good curry can include as few as a half dozen or as many as two dozen strong aromatics, and most curry cooks employ cooking methods that enhance the strength of some of the aromatics. Balance of flavor elements is the key. Achieving that balance in a curry—or any complex recipe, for that matter—just takes a bit more thought. The problem in unbalanced dishes isn't too many notes—it's too many clinkers.

For any dish to be a success, every flavor in the dish has to balance with every other. One strong element can overbalance all the rest. Even the best desserts contain some tart or spicy or even bitter contrasts to their essential sweetness. Generally, I want my meals to present a spectrum of flavors and textures. That means sweet elements have to be matched with spicy or bitter offsets, tartness has to play against salt, and buttery tenderness needs a contrasting crunch. You can enhance the sweetness of some items with other sweet items, but then you have to be doubly certain that the dish (or an accompaniment) provides something to achieve a balance. Otherwise, you get a cloying sense of sweetness. If I serve lobster with a peach gastric, for example, I would likely balance the sweetness by plating the lobster upon or against a bit of salad that included endive, cucumber, or celery (perhaps all three) for contrast.

Where this methodology usually goes awry is in adding one strong element too many or just too damned much of one strong element.

Consider, for a moment, two quite different but generally well-received musical presentations: Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as conducted by Herbert von Karajan and Nirvana's MTV Unplugged presentation of "Come As You Are." The former production required the cooperative interaction of the one-hundred plus members of the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Vienna Singverein Chorus, four other singers, and von Karajan. The latter required a three guys playing two guitars and a trap set. Yes, the differences in these two works are vast, but in some ways the similarities. Both of these works are complex, moving, and satisfying pieces of music thanks to the artful employment of harmony, melody, rhythm, and dissonance in balance. Each presentation contains strong elements capable of overwhelming the music if they're not properly controlled. Each work elicits a strong, positive emotional response from its aficionados. The largest difference in these works is a matter of order of magnitude. What Nirvana accomplishes by balancing three instruments and a single voice, von Karajan pulls off with twenty times as many elements.

A good curry works a lot like a well-orchestrated, well-conducted symphony. Too much of any one aromatic can overwhelm the dish. I've had bad curries. Sometimes the problem is just timing: overcooked or undercooked elements. Overcooking is a common problem in restaurants where many curries are prepared at the beginning of a mealtime and lift to simmer for a few hours. More commonly though the problem is too much. Too much cumin or garlic or ginger or cloves makes that particular ingredient stand out. Too much powdered spice makes the concoction taste and feel dusty. Too much curry relative to the main protein component kills the flavor of that component. If the dish is supposed to be curried shrimp, you should be able to taste shrimp.

I've experimented with a number of pre-mixed curry powders over the years. The biggest problem with them is that no single combination of aromatics can match with every possible protein. You can't expect a curry powder that matches well with shrimp and coconut milk to work with chicken. In composing my own curries, I have more success dividing my aromatics into two batches: a dry spice mix (masala) and a curry paste that combines dry and moist aromatics. This allows me greater control of the flavors of the ingredients. The ingredients in the masala are enhanced by a little extra cooking. The ingredients in the curry paste will be ruined if they cook too long. The crab curry I've listed here is one that I originally concocted for use with lump blue crab meat, but I found that—although the paste worked just fine with lump crab—the dry masala overwhelmed the crab. I decided that I needed a sweeter crab: stone crab, king crab, or snow crab.

King crab curry

The Girltzik (my step-daughter) returned from a summer visit with her father on Sunday night (July 29th). I served this dish over basmati rice. The crab proved itself perfectly capable of sharing the stage with my apple-pie spice masala. Everyone ate too much.

dramatis personae

one tablespoon peanut oil
one Fuji apple, cored and diced (skin on)
one quarter of a sweet onion
(optional) one quarter cup chopped snow peas
one pound of king crab meat
one half can of coconut milk

for the apple-pie spice masala:
one quarter teaspoon cinnamon
one quarter teaspoon ground cloves
one half teaspoon ground allspice
one half teaspoon ground cardamom

for the paste:
three tablespoons chopped ginger root
two tablespoons chopped garlic
one teaspoon ground coriander seed
one teaspoon ground turmeric
one quarter teaspoon cayenne

quality of ingredients

I would have liked to include a handful of snow peas in this curry, but the snow peas in my local supermarket were horrid: yellowish, hard as wood, and blighted with little brown speckles. Snow peas, if you plan to use them, should be bright green and pliable but not so pliable that they won't snap if bent too far.

The apple should be smooth, fresh, and crisp. This is usually not a problem with Fujis. I wouldn't recommend the double-sized Fuji apples sometimes sold as Hugey Fujis. They're inconsistent, and some of them are a bit light on flavor. If you cut into the apple and see any brownish flesh, throw it out. If, on the other hand, you see any translucent, lemon yellow, crystallized-looking portions, consider yourself lucky. The crystallized Fujis are sweeter, crunchier, and all around better tasting. As far as I know, there is no way to spot the crystallized apples until you cut them open.

The king crab should be as described in Keeping Cool - the crab course.

The ginger root, once peeled, should be bright yellow, juicy, and have a sharp, clean, lemony aroma.

The garlic should be fresh but not beginning to sprout. Sprouting garlic is bitter. If your garlic is sprouting and have no alternatives available, cut the cloves open and remove and discard the green center portions .

preparation notes

Mix the masala in a small bowl or ramekin and set it aside.

Place the paste ingredients in a food processor and pulse it until you have a uniform consistency with no outstanding bits of garlic or ginger. I have a small (3 cup) food processor that's ideal for small jobs like curry pastes, pestos, and ingredients for vinaigrettes. If all you have is a large food processor, you might find it more convenient to triple the ingredients and put two thirds of it in the freezer for later use.

Heat the peanut oil in a large sauté pan over medium-high heat. Once the oil begins to shimmer, pour in the masala. Let the spices steep in the oil for about five minutes. This allows oily aromatic compounds in the spices to leach out and blend in the peanut oil. It also makes the kitchen smell terrific.

Stir in the apple pieces and toss them to thoroughly coat the apple. Continue to cook the apple, tossing occasionally, for three to five minutes. This will allow some caramelization of the apple without softening the fruit too much.

Stir in the onion (and snow peas, if you have them) and the curry paste. Thoroughly mix the ingredients in the pan and continue to cook them until the onion is translucent and beginning to soften.

Stir in the coconut milk and the king crab. Continue to cook, stirring or tossing constantly, until the coconut begins to thicken.

Serve the king crab curry over basmati or kasmati rice and with your favorite chutneys on the side.

Acid Tataki

Wowing Myself

I like to experiment with variations and fusion cuisine. Luckily, this works more often than not. Otherwise, my family would probably groan every time they saw something unrecognizable on the plate. One of my most recent spectacular failures was pasta in a thick mushroom cream sauce. The sauce was delicious—cremini and porcini mushrooms in a chicken stock reduction with cream and sherry and a sprinkling of roasted ricotta—but, well, not wanting to be too indelicate, it looked like an unhealthy bowel movement. I'm still trying to figure out how to make that one look like food.

Last night's experiment was more fortuitous. In fact, it was the best success I can recall in quite a while. Even for a success, this meal was pretty amazing, especially for a first time creation. Usually, I try to keep my mouth shut when I serve something new. I want to hear my wife's reaction, and I don't want to unduly influence that reaction by presenting a possibly contrary opinion. Last night, though, when I put that first bite in my mouth, I just couldn't help myself. I was stunned. I was wowed. I couldn't even give my usual, non-committal, "Doesn't suck." Autonomically generated by a beautiful balance of sweet, tart, salty, spicy, creamy, and meaty flavors—before I'd even finished the first bite, came the astonished words, "This is perfect." My wife agreed. Dinner disappeared rapidly.

It's exciting as hell to get one right on the first try. It's even better when "right" is sensual to a nearly orgasmic degree.

Earlier that evening, I'd had one of those little epiphanies that makes the experimentation worthwhile. Like many such creations, this one was inspired by more or less equal parts happenstance and cravings. I arrived at the market with a vague notion of dorado or wahoo with mango salsa. I had already picked out the mango, hot red chili, sweet onion, limes, and a bunch of cilantro for the salsa when I noticed that the greenskin avocados are in. We only get those for a short time in the latter half of the summer. As a rule, I don't have much use for greenskins. They have a watery texture and less creamy richness than Hass and fuentes avocados. They are sweet, however, and mild enough that they can pair well with delicate seafood dishes. In the past, I've served greenskin halves stuffed and heaped with chilled crab salad or tuna poke.

So, not wanting to miss out on the greenskins, I grabbed a couple, thinking, hey, I can always serve them tomorrow. When I got to the fish counter, however, I found that the dorado, wahoo, and kona kompachi weren't too impressive. The dark spots on all three were brown around the bone, so I knew they'd been out on the ice for quite a while. The wild caught sockeye salmon, on the other hand, was a glistening unbroken scarlet, and the yellowfin steaks looked like sashimi waiting to happen. So, okay, I thought, salmon and tuna poke in avocado. I bought enough to prepare poke for the two of us (my stepdaughter is visiting Daddy in D.C. this month), and then I noticed the king crab. They had a big pile of five-inch king crab leg segments at the incredible price of $10 per pound. They're frozen and would keep for a while, so I bought a couple pounds of king crab.

As I thought through the ingredients in the cart, I began to realize that I had two slightly contradictory ideas going in my head at once: I wanted to do a poke with the tuna and salmon, but I wanted to use mango salsa. I could taste it. I even had an idea how it would work. This dish is a ceviche/poke hybrid. Ceviche is a citrus-pickled seafood, often mischaracterized as chemically cooked seafood. Poke is a raw fish salad, typically dressed with salt and sesame oil. The result of the hybrid is like a chemically seared tataki.

Stuffed avocados with mango salsa young ceviche

dramatis personae
one mango, diced
one tablespoon sweet onion, minced
one tablespoon hot red chili, minced
two tablespoons cilantro leaves, chopped
juice of two medium limes
sea salt to taste
one third pound tuna, cubed
one third pound salmon, cubed
one third pound king crab meat, cubed
one tablespoon roasted sesame oil
one large greenskin avocado

preparation notes

Mix the mango salsa, onion, chili, cilantro, salt and lime juice and set it aside. Normally, two limes would be too much liquid for this much mango salsa, but for this application, you need the extra liquid to coat the fish.

In a separate bowl, combine the fish and crab and coat it with the sesame oil. To avoid damaging these delicate bits of seafood, I recommend mixing with your hands. The sesame oil, in addition to being mighty tasty, will keep the lime juice of the salsa from penetrating too rapidly.

Immediately before you are ready to serve the meal, split one large greenskin avocado and remove the pit. Do not damage the skin, but cut out any brown bits and use a knife tip to remove any obvious brown fibers (they'll get stuck in your teeth). Thoroughly mix the fish and crab into the salsa. Spoon this young salsa into the avocado halves and mound enough to cover the avocado flesh.

Serve the avocado halves with spoons. When it gets to the table, the outside of the salmon and the edges of the tuna will just barely have begun to pickle. The trick of eating this dish is digging in to get a bit of avocado in every bite. You'll want to bring the remaining ceviche to the table in a separate bowl so the diners can refill their avocados. Trust me, you'll run out of stuffing before you run out of avocado.

The one element this dish does not have is crunch, so you might want to serve a crusty bread as a side.

Keeping Cool - the crab course

The Case of the Missing Summer

Naturally, as soon as I start preaching about competing with the heat, the heat just up and runs to Montana. It's been raining for forty days and forty nights, now (give or take an order of magnitude), and the temperature in Austin probably won't make it out of the 80s today. So, my incentive for serving cold food is weakened a bit. My joints are achy and I'm bitchy enough that on the drive home I'll probably run down and kill the next moron who cuts me off in traffic.

I did say I'd follow up with the cold crab menu, though, so I'll get that out of the way before going on to some hot crab dishes, fish dishes, and various tartares and carpaccios.

Ice Cap Food

You just can't beat king crab (Arctic) and snow crab (Antarctic) for cold crab dishes. Both provide large, rich, sweet, meaty legs. Both are available year round. Both are usually sold fully cooked. Maybe it's just a matter of personal preference, but to me, blue crab, stone crab, and dungeness all taste a bit off when served cold.

Safety warning: whatever you do, do not use my recipes with artificial crab (also called krab, sea legs, or seafood sticks). Artificial crab is far more artificial than crab. It's actually a surimi (fish purée) of generic fishy white-meat fish like pollack, whiting, or hake. To imitate the sweetness of actual crab meat, the manufacturers add corn syrup. Spam of the Sea: ick. My daughter is fond of California rolls, which are usually made with this so-called food product, so I try to concentrate on other things when I know she's eating said rolls.

But I'm not talking about California rolls. I'm talking about cold crab recipes. Be aware, I have placed a curse on this blog entry. If you use artificial crab meat with my recipes, expect one or more of the following:

• one of your diners will spit it out in a planter when your back is turned, which your cat or dog will eat and later gack up on a fine silk garment or oriental rug


• you will suffer a nine-year bout of constipation following which you will bear a striking resemblance to the late Richard M. Nixon


• you will die (eventually)

King crab with avocado cream

dramatis personae

one pound of king crab legs
one large Hass avocado
one cup cream
juice of one lime
one tablespoon nonpareil capers

quality of ingredients

King crab legs, which are sold pre-cooked (steamed) and frozen, come in various sizes. I used two half pound legs for this preparation, and that was just barely enough to feed three people. In the next recipe, I used a single one-pound leg. Use only the leg meat for this recipe. The claw meat is tasty, but the texture would feel odd in combination with a thick cream sauce. Snow crab should work as a substitute. In either case, the legs should be intact, have no black spots, and should smell sweet.

I discussed avocado selection a while back in Skirting the Name Issue. Those comments apply here. If you can't find ripe avocados in your produce department of choice, see if they sell the vacuum-packed, peeled, and seeded avocados.

Just about any brand of capers should be okay, but I wouldn't recommend the Alessi brand capers packed in white balsamic vinegar. You want tart and salty, not sweet.

preparation notes

I know this is going to be a cold dish, but I recommend steaming the legs for about ten minutes before prepping them for the plate. Once they're done with their little steam bath, let the legs cool enough to handle. King crab legs are covered in thorny projections that are sharper than they look. Wear heavy gloves or wrap a pair of towels around the leg sections. Depending on how stiff the shells are, you should be able to break the legs at the joins. When you pull the sections apart, you should see two cartilage strips pull out of the meat. If you don't see the two strips, you'll have to pull them out another way. Pliers will work for this. To remove the sections of meat intact, snip away a portion of the shell at either end of the section and slide out the crab meat. If the meat won't slide out (usually this is only a problem with snow crab), you might have to cut the shell lengthwise.

The avocado cream is incredibly simple. Blend the avocado with the cream. Once they're thoroughly blended, add the lime juice and blend to a smooth consistency. The lime juice clabbers the cream, so this concoction thickens quite a bit. You might have to stop the blender and scrape down the sides a few times to get it all blended. Depending on how you want to present this, the capers can be scattered over the dish or blended with the cream.

King crab salad

dramatis personae

one pound of king crab legs
one small avocado
one green celery rib, sliced thin
one half cup thinly sliced radicchio
two mandarin oranges

for the dressing:
one quarter cup peanut oil
one half can coconut milk
juice of two limes
one teaspoon wasabi powder
sea salt

preparation notes

I prepared this salad to go with gazpacho, so I didn't want the spices competing. The wasabi powder is just enough to give a hint of heat. If I were pairing the salad with something a less spicy, I would probably add a pinch of nutmeg and a minced red hot chili (probably a fresno or hot fingerlong), and I would also leave out the wasabi.

The coconut milk probably seems an odd choice to some. Mayonnaise is the standard dressing base for crab salads, but I consider this a long-standing screw-up. I don't dislike mayonnaise (my wife and daughter do), I just consider it too heavy for crab.

After you've shelled the crab and removed the cartilage, bias cut the segments into half-inch pieces.

1. You want the avocado skinned (duh), pitted and cut into pieces about the same size as the pieces of crab. Here's how I do it:
2. Pluck out the stem piece, and cut straight down through the stem end until the blade makes contact with the pit.
3. Cut the avocado in half buy running the knife blade all the way around the pit. The cut should come back to the same starting point.
4. Twist the two halves of the avocado and separate them. The pit will stay in one half.
5. Remove the pit. I want to tell you how to do this cleanly, but without pictures to help clarify the instructions, someone could easily find themselves minus a finger or three. So, once I get the pictures, I'll revisit this topic.
6. Once the pit is out, with the peel still on, cut both halves length wise into half-inch strips.
7. Depending on the ripeness of the avocado, the skins might peel off easily. If not, removed them with a paring knife.
8. Cut the avocado strips to half their length.

The mandarins are, admittedly, something of a pain to prepare. They peel easily, but removing the membranes from the segments is a bit of work. I nick the membrane with a paring knife and then peel it off of each segment. Some of the segments tear in two or three pieces during this process, but it looks good that way. If this sounds like too much work, canned mandarins packed in their own juices are okay. If you use the canned fruit, discard the syrup and rinse the segments.

Make the dressing in a separate bowl by pouring in all the ingredients except the coconut milk. Then, with a whisk in one hand and the coconut milk in the other, slowly drizzle in the coconut milk while whisking vigorously. If you do this slowly enough, the emulsion won't separate right away.

One point about the limes: limes vary quite a lot in tartness, juiciness, and size. The limes I used produced about two or three tablespoons of juice. The quantity matters less than the impact of the juice on the dressing. Always taste your vinaigrettes—especially if you're using citrus juice as the souring agent.

Toss the crab, avocado, celery, radicchio, and mandarins in a large bowl with enough dressing to coat everything.

Keeping Cool - the soup course

No, it is not the humidity

Am I the only one who finds it odd that, when the summer heat gets to be nearly unbearable, guys all over the USA decide it's time to leave their air conditioned homes to stand over a barbecue or grill and eat hot smoke? Sure, grilled food is tasty, but backyard grilling always seemed to me an activity better suited for autumn or winter. At least here in Austin. Maybe it's just my genetic make up. I didn't get the beer or football genes, either.

As much as I generally enjoy playing with fire and flipping sauté pans, there comes a time here in Texas when no amount of air conditioning can keep up with the combination of the heat outside, the heat from the kitchen, and a hot meal. Just last night, we had pasta in a mushroom cream sauce. By the end of the meal, I was sweating. Guess it was a bad day for a dish that retains its heat. Usually on such days, to avoid torturing myself in the kitchen and my family at the table, I end up preparing a lot of salads, tartares, carpaccios, and the occasional cold soup preparations. Understand, many of these cold preparations do require a bit of cooking—vichyssoise, for example, requires quite a lot of cooking—but I prepare and serve the key components cold. These past two weekends, I experimented with gazpacho recipes and a couple of king crab preparations.

I'll talk about the crab dishes in another posting, which means this will be my first ever published recipe that is vegan-safe. (I was going to put an exclamation point at the end of that sentence, but even my hypocrisy has its bounds.)

Gazpacho

Tomatoey gazpacho is a long-standing summer favorite of mine. It always astonishes me how grinding up some tomatoes with some cucumber, peppers, garlic, and onion and mixing in a little oil and vinegar can produce such a remarkably cool and surprisingly buoyant texture. Gazpacho is an excellent adjunct to crab, shrimp, lobster, or just a little cheese (oops, so much for the vegan vote).

Purists and food historians will tell you that gazpacho has to be made with stale bread. Yes, gazpacho, which was around before the tomato and chili came to Iberia, was originally a concoction of stale bread, garlic, vinegar, and olive oil. I haven't tried it, but I have to admit: I think it sounds ghastly. Since I don't use stale bread in my recipe, some food mavens might say that mine isn't true gazpacho. I've tried it both with and without the bread, though, and I can't see that the bread adds anything to the flavor or texture of the soup.

I approached the gazpacho prep in these last few attempts with a few extra goals in mind. First, I wanted a recipe that uses a chili other than the traditional green bell pepper. Green bell pepper lends a slight pepperiness but I believe it also gives a flat bitterness to the soup. Besides, bell pepper and my wife don't get along. Second, I wanted to use roasted garlic and chilis to lend a little smokiness to the soup and to reduce the harshness of the garlic. I also tried out two varieties of sweet onion in an attempt to eliminate the lingering oniony aftertaste I have experienced in some gazpachos.

In the first gazpacho experiment, I used two pounds of tomatoes, one English cucumber, two roasted garlic cloves, a roasted poblano pepper, and one quarter of a large Walla Walla onion (about a half cup of diced onion). It was tasty, but I thought the onion overpowered the garlic. I also noticed, about an hour after the meal, that I was still tasting cucumber. I decided I could do without that cucumber aftertaste. Based on these results, I decided that my next attempt would include twice as much garlic, a quarter cup of sweet onion, and half an English cuke.

Here is the recipe I finally settled on (enough for four diners):

dramatis personae

one poblano pepper
four garlic cloves
two pounds red tomatoes, cored and seeded
one half English cucumber, peeled
one quarter cup sweet onion, diced
one cup tomato juice
one quarter cup red wine vinegar or sherry vinegar
one half cup extra virgin olive oil
salt

quality of ingredients

The garlic should not be so dry that the husks have cracked. You also don't want cloves that have begun to sprout—they're bitter. If any have started to sprout, you'll see a green or yellow tail poking through the narrow end of the clove.

The tomatoes should be as red and ripe as possible. Fresh off the vine is best. Tomatoes sold as "vine-ripened" are probably the next best choice. Other tomatoes in the grocery stores are likely to have been artificially ripened by storage in ethylene gas, which makes them paler, mealier, and less flavorful. Any firm variety of tomato will do for Gazpacho, but I wouldn't recommend anything smaller than Romas, since seeding them will take a lot more time.

Some folks prefer sherry vinegar in gazpacho. I honestly can't tell the difference, and red wine vinegar is easier to find in the stores. The vinegar is only in the soup to add a little sparkle; it's not a major component. Since you're not going to taste much of it anyway, I certainly would not recommend wasting a premium sherry vinegar in something that's going to swallow up most of its character.

I usually use tomato juice from concentrate in my gazpacho. This boosts the tomato flavor and flavor just a smidgeon, but it has the negative effect of increasing the water content of the soup. Next time I do this, I think I'll try straight tomato juice concentrate instead of the reconstituted juice.

I have used Anaheim chilis and Hatch hot chilis in the past. I prefer the extra heat from the Hatch chilis, but they're not available year round. I like the smoky heat of roasted Poblanos, but their heat ranges from as mild as a bell pepper to not-quite-jalapeño strength. If you want consistency, taste the chili before you roast it.

I used a sweet red Italian onion in my second gazpacho experiment, but I still was not happy with the results. Next time, I'm going to try eliminating the onion altogether.

preparation notes

Making gazpacho is generally damned simple. You toss the ingredients into a food processor and run it till it reaches the desired consistency, chill it for a half hour, and serve it.

As I noted previously, I complicated matters by roasting two ingredients. I think the results proved positive.

You can roast the poblano under the broiler, but that heats up the kitchen and takes a bit longer. I just put it directly on the grate over my largest burner. Use a pair of forks to turn it every few seconds. Once all the skin is completely charred black, remove the chili from the burner and wrap it in a pair of wet paper towels. After about five minutes, wipe away and discard all the black skin. Don't rinse the chili. You'll wash away some of the flavor. You should be able to pluck off all the blackened skin with your fingers. If you can't, you didn't roast it long enough. Remove and discard the stem, seeds and any pulp remaining inside the chili.

The garlic is even easier to roast. Peel off the papery layers, but leave the hard husks intact. Place the cloves in a cast iron skillet or comal, dry, over a medium-high flame. Turn the cloves every three or four minutes (I use chopsticks). Every flat surface of the cloves should be black, and the cloves should be quite soft. Set the cloves aside to cool for a few minutes. Once they're cool enough to handle, peel away and discard the husks. With a paring knife, scrape away any black bits from the cloves.

Now you should be ready to process, chill, and serve your gazpacho.

Skirting the name issue

What's in a name?

Silly question, Will. As a writer, surely you know that names, like all words, are things of power. The words we use set the expectations of our audience. I mean, really, roses renamed Gomer's smegma might still smell as sweet, but who'd want to get close enough to find out? Likewise, if your surname were Tugger, would you ever name your son Peter or Dick? What's in a name? Please. If you were eating at a restaurant, would you order a dish called Squishy Pustules? or Sir John Falstaff's Navel Lint Pie? or even...okay, I better stop before I say something that makes Princess V ill (doesn't pay to upset one's editor).

Names carry associations. In My "Little Brown Jug" I took my favorite local restaurant to task for disappointing me by applying a misleading name to a dish. How would you feel if you ordered a spaghetti dish and got something that contained no pasta? Even if the dish is exquisite, your foiled expectations would ill flavor the meal.

Living in Texas, in the heart of TexMex country, I am acutely aware of the naming problem. TexMex has created a number of naming problems for anyone interested in the history of Mexican cuisine. Some of these naming problems can become problems for restaurateurs and other cooks. Take the burrito, for example. Efforts to determine the origin of the burrito place it variously in the Sonora region of Mexico and various parts of southern and central Texas? You wouldn't think this much of an issue, but if you're trying to document the influence of Mexican foods on American cuisines and vice versa, it all gets pretty confusing.

Certainly the idea of putting food in tortillas originated in Mexico—likewise the idea of rolling or folding food into a tortilla. Or so you might think. In truth, members of a number of Native American tribes had similar practices. Navajo and Hopi flatbread were topped or filled with meats and herbs in much the same manner as in Mexican tacos and tostadas.

Generally, here's what I've been able to determine with any certainty:

Tacos

Tacos fall into three basic categories: Mexican, TexMex, and American Fast Food.

The Mexican taco consists of a soft corn tortilla folded over or rolled around ground meat and some kind of salsa (salsa fresca, pico de gallo, or both). Some areas traditionally add guacamole. In some regions a wheat flour tortilla is used in lieu of corn. One interesting variation that you rarely see in the US (but I'm seeing more and more Taco stands in Austin offering this, lately) is the taco al pastor. The taco al pastor consists of thin slices from a spiced, rotisserie cooked pork loaf (similar to the spitted meat used in gyros). The traditional garnish for a taco al pastor is slightly different from the taco norm: onion, cilantro, pineapple, and a bit of hot salsa.

TexMex tacos tend to mimic Mexican tacos but with a couple of distinctly non-Mexican additions: cheese and sour cream. I don't know who added these or why. Mexican food purists typically claim the dairy products were added by gringo wimps to mitigate the heat of the chilis used in the salsas. Increasingly, however, cheese has crept into the condiments in Mexican towns catering to Americans. In TexMex food, Monterey Jack is the most commonly used cheese, but you'll occasionally see various types of cheddar or some of that plasticky, blond crap the supermarkets sell as American cheese. In Mexico tourist towns, you're more likely to see queso fresca or queso cotija.

Fast food tacos use crisp taco shells. I guess this is because they're easier to load, assembly-line fashion. The fast food guys also add lettuce. I think this is to make it look like the taco contains more food than is actually present.

Burritos

So, starting with that beef filled taco, fold in the ends and roll up the tortilla so that the filling is completely hidden. Voila: burrito. Mexican or TexMex? Hard to decide. Though available in both countries, burritos appear to have originated in either northern Mexico or southern Texas. These days, you find burritoid food items in southern Mexico and throughout Central America, but they are more frequently called tacos de harinas (wheat flour tacos) where folks apparently don't see fully enclosing the contents in tortilla as a distinguishing characteristic. I've met folks from Quintana Roo who openly scoff at the term burrito, "A little burro? Who wants to eat a little burro?"

Chimichangas

I have always believed that chimichangas originated in Texas. I mean, a deep fried burrito? How Elvis can you get? My research, however, suggests otherwise. These crunchy little cholesterol bombs were apparently invented in Mexico.

Fajitas

When you mention Y2K, most people remember all the hype about the millennium bug. Computer systems were expected to implode in the visionary vacuum of their own numerological constraints.

What I usually remember about Y2K is the millenium irritation argument. To most people in the world, the first day of the year 2000 was the first day of the new millenium. To anyone who had done the math (or otherwise been impressed by someone who had done the math), January 1 2000 would not end the millenium. It would mark the beginning of the 2000th year, A.D. instead of the end. For this minority, the new millennium would not begin and therefore could not be properly celebrated until January 1, 2001. This latter idea did not catch on too broadly, but did become a source of endless annoyance at academic and techie parties. Everyone seemed to fall into one of two cliques: those who wanted to save the 1/1/2000 celebrants from their ignorance and those who wanted to save the 1/1/2001 adherants from their pedantry.

Fajitas are the Y2K of the Tex-Mex world. If you want to make a Tex-Mex pedant sneer, just start talking about chicken or shrimp fajitas.

Originally, the term fajita was coined by someone at Ninfa's restaurant in Houston. The coinage may have been accidental. Street vendors in Mexico City at the time were selling what they called tacos rajitas, rajitas being thin slices (in Spanish, raja = slice) of barbecued or grilled beef. The Ninfas fajitas were made from the beef skirt, called the faja in Mexican carnicerias (faja = girdle), so the name seemed reasonable.

Logically, lexically, fajitas can only be made from strips of beef skirt. Shrimp and chickens don't have a faja. Beef fajitas are usually made with grilled or seared, marinated skirt steak (skirt is tough as canvas and absolutely must be marinated over night in lime juice and salt). The beef is served with flour tortillas, pico de gallo, guacamole, and grilled or sautéed onions and chilis.

In practice and popular association, fajitas are the combination of a grilled meat item with the appropriate Tex-Mex condiments. Chicken, shrimp, and even portabello mushroom fajitas are common in Tex-Mex restaurants. Lexically, all of these non-beef items should probably be called rajitas, or tacos, or something asado.

Shrimp and crab tacos (fajitas?)

This is a meal for three. The following recipes are for pico de gallo, guacamole, and the shrimp and crab filling. The crab matches remarkably well with the quacamole, especially if served with warm, fresh corn tortillas.

dramatis personae

three firm cluster tomatoes, diced
two serrano chilis, seeded and minced
one small sweet onion, diced
one small garlic clove, minced
one large hass avocado
juice of two limes
one bunch of cilantro
sea salt to taste
one tablespoon peanut oil
one half pound 10-15 count shrimp tails
one quarter pound lump crab meat
one tablespoon minced epazote
two tablespoons mulatto chili purée*

* This is the chili purée I described in My Latest Beef. The recipe is simple, quick, and makes more than you need, even for the albacore steaks. It will keep in the refrigerator for a few weeks.

quality of ingredients

The chilis are difficult. Serranos are quite variable in their heat. I usually try to use one green serrano and one red or mostly red serrano (the redder they are, typically, the hotter they are). You can substitute jalapeños or green fingerhots, but those are also quite variable.

Garlic is not a standard addition to pico de gallo or guacamole, but I like a little in each. Garlic bulbs should have a bit of heft to them. The really light ones are dried out. Don't use garlic that is showing green. Green in garlic will make your guacamole bitter.

You want Hass or Fuerte avocados for guacamole. Florida or green skin avocados are too watery and too sweet. In all honesty, though, the dark skinned avocados are a pain in the ass to pick out at the supermarket. If they're soft enough for guacamole, they're frequently overripe and mottled with nasty-looking brown spots. I learned a long time ago that an avocado that feels like the flesh has separated from the skin is definitely overripe. Beyond that, I still can't figure out how you're supposed to know, before you get them home, whether these damned things will have spots or not.

As I've noted previously, I use peanut oil because it has a high smoke point and does not flavor the food. You can also use high quality olive oil (not extra-virgin). I know that many cooks prefer canola oil. I think canola oil lends a plasticky taste.

Several grocers in the Austin area sell good quality cooked crab, and live crabs are usually more expensive. I have tried lump crab, snow crab clusters, stone crab claws, and Dungeness crab clusters. The stone crab claws were the best. The meat is flavorful and shatters in the cooking and coats the shrimp. The stone crab claws have two drawbacks: they are hard to open and two pounds of claws yields only a quarter-pound of meat. The lump crab meat was the second best (flavorful, pleasantly toothsome) and required the least work (just a little sifting for stray bits of cartilage and shell). Shelling the snow crab and Dungeness clusters was a lot of work, but they yielded about twice as much meat as the stone crab claws. I love snow crab, but it is a bit too mild for this dish, and the Dungeness (despite rinsing) was too salty. I'll have to try the Dungeness again and remember to taste it before I cook it to be sure it's adequately rinsed.

Epazote—either you can find it in your area or you can't. If you can't, just forget it. There is no substitute. Cilantro, thyme, or Mexican oregano might be just fine with this dish, but it won't be anything like the epazote.

preparation notes

I recommend the following game plan:

1. Mise en scene—dice, mince, seed, and juice all the vegetable matter except the cilantro and the avocado. The avocado should not be opened until you are ready to mix the guacamole. Cilantro should never be minced until just before it's to be added (it takes on a soapy flavor).
2. Purée the chilis (if you don't have some puree on hand already).
3. Mix the pico de gallo.
4. Mix the guacamole.
5. Shell the crab (or just sift it if you're using lump crab).
6. Peel and devein the shrimp tails.
7. Roll the masa balls (if you're making fresh tortillas)
8. Fry the tortillas and sauté the shrimp and crab simultaneously.

This program gets everything out at the right temperatures.

Step one is pretty straightforward.

Step two I covered in My Latest Beef.

Step three is also pretty straightforward: in a non-reactive bowl combine the tomato, onion, serranos, and half of the garlic. Mix in the juice of one lime and sea salt to taste. Mince enough cilantro to make about a tablespoon and mix that into the pico. For the purists: garlic is a non-standard addition, but it adds a nice kick. Incidentally, the pico de gallo will stay fresh in the refrigerator for a few days, so you can prepare this well in advance, if you prefer. Refrigerate this until everything is ready to serve.

Step four: guacamole. Traditional guacamole in Mexico is whipped to the consistency of thick oatmeal. The girls and I prefer chunks (roughly half-inch cubes). After cubing the avocado, immediately mix in the juice of one lime. This will keep the guacamole from browning right away. Note: the guacamole will still brown after about an hour, so don't make it too far in advance. An interesting side effect of the lime is that it softens the avocado. Mix in the other half of the garlic. Mince enough cilantro to make about a tablespoon and mix that into the guac. Sprinkle in sea salt to taste. Refrigerate this until everything is ready to serve.

Steps five and six are fairly straightforward. If the shrimp is not as fresh as you'd like (if it has a fishy or sulphurous aroma), drop the tails into a bowl of cheap white wine to saok until you are ready to toss them into the sauté pan.

Step seven: the masa for tortillas. You have to have a tortilla press for this. I'll go into this in more detail later. I really need to get some photos to describe this process. One thing I will say: if you can get the premixed masa (it contains lard), you'll get much better results than with masa and water.

Step eight: the tortillas and the seafood. For the tortillas (which I am not going to talk about, mind) you will need a seasoned comal or cast iron skillet. Wipe the skillet with a dab of peanut oil on a paper towel. For the crab and shrimp, preheat a tablespoon of peanut oil in a non-stick skillet until the oil shimmers. Add the shrimp (pour off the wine first) and sauté until the shrimp tails are nearly opaque. Mix in the chili purée and the crab meat and toss until the seafood is throughly coated and the shrimp are done.

The Secret Language of Fish, Volume 5

The Fishest Fish

As I mentioned in My Inner PETA, I just can't eat grouper...groupers. Aw, hell, I even have trouble thinking of them as grouper. They're individuals, not a substance. In fact, I can't understand how any diver can eat them. Groupers frequently follow us around the reef, and they appear genuinely inquisitive. Eating their flesh would be like barbecuing the cardinals who frequent the feeder outside my bedroom window.

Eating snapper, on the other hand, doesn't bother me. Snapper are a bit more skittish than groupers, less inquisitive, less intelligent, less expressive. Any curiosity from a snapper ends at the realization that I don't have any food for it. Not, mind you, that I've seen too many red snappers during dives. Red snappers prefer to stay in the 100 to 200 foot depth range, and they prefer to stay out of sight of humans. I've seen more than my share of cubera snappers, grey snappers, and dog snappers. They show up frequently on night dives, and they usually hang around hoping I'll point a light at something they can eat.

Since they don't pass my sapience test, I consider red snapper fair game. That and they're delicious. Red snapper is my number one generic food fish choice. When I think of fish for dinner, my usual thought process begins with red snapper. Though rarely falling prey to the pungent nastiness we call fishiness, snapper is the fishest fish I know: the quintessential non-fishy-tasting fish taste. Since I live in Texas, I usually think of red snapper, which I can usually get fresh. If I lived in Hawaii, my first choice would be ruby snapper, which is similar to red snapper but slightly more flavorful.

Like mahimahi, snapper is frequently and erroneously classed as a "white-fleshed fish." Anyone who's ever had red snapper sushi or sashimi knows that raw snapper is a glassy translucent pink. Snapper are active feeders. They may not spend their lives swimming through miles of pelagic currents like tuna and mackerel, but neither are they as sedentary as flatfish, cod, or other truly white-fleshed fish. Snapper decidedly does cook white, but so do sardines and anchovies.

Many cooks, I've noticed, complain that snapper is over-rated, that it's bland, that the meat tastes muddy, or that snapper cooked in any way outside of the oven is a waste of fish. Trust me; they're wrong.

To be more specific:

If you try to use snapper in a recipe that works well with salmon, tuna, mahimahi, or a strong fishy fish, you'll overwhelm the delicate flavor of the snapper. In that case, snapper will seem overrated.

If you overcook it or simply do nothing to enhance the inherent crustacean-like sweetness of snapper, the flesh will seem bland.

If the meat tastes muddy, you got one that was caught too close to shore. This seems to be a problem frequent to Florida and the east coast (which apparently gets most of its snapper from Florida). Restaurants in Florida prefer yellow-tailed snapper to red snapper, which always sounded screwy to me. Yellow-tailed snapper are garbage disposals. They feed near the surface like Bermuda chubs, and they'll eat just about anything that hits the water. In much of the Caribbean, anywhere a dive boat docks, the yellow-tailed snappers show up looking for handouts. If you get seasick, these are the fish who'll likely be doing the cleanup. As we've all been told since childhood: you are what you eat.

Red snappers, on the other hand, subsist primarily on live crustaceans and small fish. Apparently, this is not entirely true of the snapper population close to shore, where the red snappers have learned to eat scraps off the bottom. You can usually tell just by examining the fish with your eyes and nostrils. If the flesh is mostly a uniform translucent, pale pink and has no odor or smells faintly of shrimp, you can be fairly certain the fish was not eating garbage. If the flesh has a brownish tinge to it, is mottled, or smells faintly of bowel, don't buy it.

As for baked snapper, hey, baked whole snapper is a marvelous dish. I know several good recipes for taking advantage of all the various textures of the snapper carcass. I don't recommend this treatment, though, unless you're feeding a large party. Personally, I prefer sautéed red snapper filets to the baked whole fish.

For sautéing snapper I have just a few rules of thumb:

1. Scale the fish but always leave the skin on. It tastes great. In some treatments, it looks great. Even if you don't eat the skin, the savory gelatin from the skin will help flavor the fish.
2. Finish the fish in a poaching or braising (same thing, different depths) liquid. If I've browned the non-skin side, I braise rather than poach so that I can keep the browned portion dry.
3. Avoid vinaigrettes and escabeches. Vinegar overwhelms the delicate flavor of the snapper. Note, I said avoid. If you do use a vinaigrette or escabeche make sure it's a mild one.

I previously shared one of my favorite traditional recipes, Huachinango Veracruzano, in My Little Brown Jug. The following are a couple of my more recent red snapper successes.

Curried red snapper with Thai spice crab chowder

dramatis personae

These proportions will feed two.

chowder components:
one tablespoon peanut oil
one half medium onion
two cloves garlic
one tablespoon ginger, minced or grated
one thai pepper, minced
one medium russet potato, peeled and diced
one cup water
one can coconut milk
four snow crab claws
two or three keffir lime leaves, finely minced
cilantro leaves for garnish

haricots verts, snow peas, or snap peas (handful)

one red snapper filet
Madras curry powder

quality of ingredients

Again I tackle the topic of oil. I think all the chefs out there using canola oil are deluding themselves. Canola oil does not cook without imparting flavor. Canola oil tastes like plastic. If I want to minimize the flavor imparted to a dish, I prefer peanut oil. It's not flavorless, but it is mild and pleasant tasting. As for transfat and cis-fat concerns, I've yet to see any evidence that the relatively small quantities of cis-fats and transfats produced from cooking with peanut oil threaten my health. Besides, they've been using it in much of Asia for decades with no discernible increase in health problems.

To recap on the matter of snapper selection: the filets should be intact (no splits or gaps in the flesh), should appear uniformly translucent pale pink, and should have either no odor or a faint aroma of shrimp. For this dish, since the skin is an important element of presentation, the skin should be brightly colored, intact, and unblemished.

I know: haricots verts sounds just too too pretentious, but the green beans sold in the US under this label (which translates, ironically, "green beans") are thinner, sweeter, and less stringy than the ones sold as "snap beans." If you can't find haricot verts, either select the thinnest snap beans you can find, or substitute fresh snow peas or snap peas.

Yes, it has to be a russet potato. Well, okay, not really, but it has to be a high starch, low moisture potato. Why waste anything more complex (a white rose or Yukon gold, for example) when you just want something that will cook down to a starchy pulp as and provide a good chowder base? Besides, russets are cheap.

On a similar note, this treatment has you cooking the onion down to a soft component of a chowder, so sweet onions are wasted here. There's nothing wrong with a sweet onion in this recipe, but you'll usually pay more for it. Use the sweet onions if they're what you already have on hand. Otherwise, for the sake of your shopping list, get a basic white or yellow onion.

"Madras curry powder" is a phrase that will cause many foodies to turn up their noses in disgust. If you're making a curry, I agree that designing your own spice blend can be a rich, rewarding experience. Besides, different types of flesh require a different balance of flavors. In the case of seared fish or curried broils (rubbed meats), where the "curry" is just a small flavor element, I use curry powder. To be precise, I use Sun Brand Madras Curry Powder. I find most other curry powders too high in cumin, too high in chili, or too bland. Pick a curry powder you like. If you want to grind your own, knock yourself out.

Don't use prepared ginger or garlic. The preminced mashed stuff in the jars tastes nasty, and the dried stuff tastes altogether wrong. I also don't recommend pressing the garlic. For this dish, you want the garlic to mellow and soften like the onions. Crushing it will make your chowder taste too garlicky.

I use canned coconut milk. I've done the fresh coconut milk thing, and it really doesn't seem to make much difference. If you want to use fresh, you have to remove the flesh from the coconut (remove the liquid and put the segments on a cookie sheet in a 400 F oven for ten minutes or until the shells pull away from the meat), pulverize it in a food processor, and blend it with the fluid from the coconut. If you use fresh coconut milk, depending on the richness of the resultant milk, this recipe will require one to two cups. (If you're not sure how your coconut milk stacks up against the canned stuff, when the recipe calls for the milk, add one cup and then taste the chowder. Add as much more as you think it needs.)

I used snow crab claws, but Jonah, stone, or dungeness crab claws should work, if that's what you have.

In this particular recipe, the keffir lime leaves are not a requirement, but they add a bright finish. If you can't find the leaves, add a little lime juice just before serving. (Thai basil might also be a nice touch, but I haven't tried this yet.)

notes on preparation

Remove the pin bones and scales from the filet. Leave the skin on. Cut the filet into two serving-sized pieces, and sprinkle the flesh side of each with a fine dusting of curry powder. Set the filets aside while you prepare the chowder and beans.

In a stock pot, heat a teaspoon of the peanut oil to shimmering and add the onion, garlic, thai pepper, and ginger. Stirring frequently to avoid browning, cook the mixture until the onions begin to clarify. Add the potatoes and a half cup of water (the water is just to keep the vegetables from browning). Continue to cook the mixture, adding water as necessary to keep everything moist, until the potatoes are soft enough to mash (about fifteen minutes).

Once the potatoes are soft, add the coconut milk and blend the mixture thoroughly. I had intended to do this with a stick blender, but my stick blender seems to have wandered off. Pouring the concoction into the blender worked fine (be careful to cover the lid with a dish towel or something similar to keep the hot chowder from gushing out the top and scalding you).

Return the chowder to the burner over a low flame and add the crab claws (shells and all). Let the chowder simmer for twenty minutes, stirring occasionally.

While the chowder is simmering, blanch the beans (or peas) for two minutes in boiling water. Drain the beans in a strainer or colander; then, sauté them in a teaspoon of peanut oil over a medium high flame for another two minutes. Remove the beans from the pan and set them aside.

Heat the remaining teaspoon of peanut oil in a non-stick sauté pan over a high flame until the oil begins to smoke lightly. Place the filet portions in the sauté pan flesh side down. Leave them alone for two full minutes. Turn the flame down to medium and—being careful to keep them intact (this may take two turners)—flip the filets and let the skin side cook for three full minutes. Again taking care to keep the portions intact, remove the filets from the sauté pan to a plate to cool.

Once the chowder has simmered for twenty minutes, remove the crab claws and to allow them to cool (don't rinse them). Stir the keffir lime leaves into the chowder. Once the claws are cool enough to handle, remove the crab meat. Discard the shells and stir the crab meat into the chowder.

to serve

In two individual pasta bowls or similar flat-bottomed bowls, arrange a web or nest of beans (or peas). I put down five or six beans in parallel and top them with a layer of five or six beans perpendicular to the first set. Place a filet upon each nest, skin side up. Pour chowder all around the filet at least up to the level of the fish but not enough to reach the skin. Garnish the chowder with cilantro.

Red snapper and sea scallops in salsa verde

This started out as a scallop dish. I knew that tomatillos do a nice job of bringing out the inherent sweetness of scallops. I only threw in the snapper because I knew girlchild wouldn't eat the scallops. She has a remarkably broad palate, but she just doesn't seem to have the scallop-lover's gene. To my surprise, she has requested this dish again on more than one occasion.

dramatis personae

These proportions will feed three.

one pound tomatillos
one tablespoon olive oil
three green poblano peppers
one teaspoon lime juice
pinch of sea salt
one red snapper filet (about a pound)
three epazote leaves, minced

quality of ingredients

Tomatillos look a little like green tomatoes. Although they are in the same family as tomatoes, tomatillos are actually more closely related to ground cherries and cape gooseberries. Like those two odd fruits, tomatillos grow in papery husks. If you've never used them, you're in for quite a surprise. Tomatillos should be green (they ripen yellow, but ripe tomatillos have little flavor), firm, and free of blemishes. I'm sure this drives the produce guys nuts, but I always tear the husks (they're just going to be discarded anyway) to check the quality of the fruit. When you remove the husks at home, you'll find that the fruit is sticky with sap. That's normal. The sap rinses off readily.

Poblanos are somewhat variable. One will have no heat whatsoever and the next will have a burn like a jalapeño. As a result, the odds are you'll get a slight amount of chilli burn in this dish, but even with the hottest poblanos, it won't be much. If you want a hotter version of this dish, you're in the wrong set of recipes. Snapper, remember, has a delicate flavor. The poblanos should be dark green, smooth, and shiny. Check the base of the stem to be sure no mold has snuck into the chilli.

If you live anywhere outside of Mexico, Texas, California, and the American Southwest, you may not be able to find epazote. I've seen a number of recipes purporting to create a substitute for epazote. None of them work. Epazote has a unique flavor that includes minty notes, sasparilla notes, and something that smells faintly like a petroleum product. Epazote has an ellusive electric quality that will make your lips and tongue tingle. If you can't find epazote, a little cilantro will add a fresh something extra.

notes on preparation

This recipe is consists of six steps:

1. Roast, peel, and seed the poblanos.
2. Sauté the tomatillos and roasted poblanos.
3. Process the tomatillo/poblano salsa.
4. Sauté the scallops.
5. Sauté the snapper filets.
6. Braise the scallops and snapper filets briefly in the salsa.

Roasting the poblanos

I've tried several techniques for roasting chillis: barbecue, comal, broiler, butane torch, and stovetop. None worked nearly as well as cooking the chillis directly on the stovetop. If you have an electric stove, you'll have to try one of the other methods. Before you start roasting the chillis, whatever method you use, cut off the tip of the pepper to avoid exploding chillis. I roast the poblanos one at a time over a high flame, directly on the burner. Once one side is black, using a pair of dinner forks, turn the poblano over to blacken another side. Keep turning the chilli until all of the skin is black. Remove the chilli from the flame and immediately wrap it in a damp paper towel. Leave that chilli to cool while you roast the next one. When all the chillis are done roasting, the first should be ready to peel.

Roasted chillis peel easily. Just wipe all the black skin off with a damp paper towel. Pull out the stem and core of the poblano. Tear or cut the poblano open, and remove and discard the pith and seeds.

Sautéing the tomatillos and poblanos

Hull and quarter the tomatillos. In a sauté pan over a medium-high flame, heat a half-tablespoon of olive oil (I use a non-stick skillet. For a stainless steel skillet, you'll need two tablespoons of olive oil) to shimmering. Add the tomatillos, roasted poblanos, and a pinch of sea salt and sauté until the tomatillos begin to soften. Once the tomatillos are about half cooked through (you'll be able to tell by the color, which becomes pale as they cook), remove them from the flame and add the lime juice.

Processing the salsa

Pour the tomatillo/poblano mixture into a food processor and pulse it a few times to eliminate the large chunks (nothing in the salsa should be larger than a pea). You want salsa, not a puree.

Sauté the scallops

Rinse the scallops and (if your fishmonger hasn't done this already) remove the tough bit of muscle from the side. In a sauté pan over a high flame, heat a half tablespoon (again, I'm using a non-stick pan; two tablespoons of oil for stainless steel) of olive oil just to the point of smoking. Place the scallops in the oil, reduce the flame to medium high, and leave the scallops alone for two full minutes. After two minutes, turn the scallops. They should be golden brown on the cooked side. Again leave them alone for two minutes. Remove the scallops from the pan, but don't turn off the flame.

Sauté the snapper filets

Divide the filet into three portions. In the hot, scallop-flavored oil, place the filet portions flesh side down and leave them alone for two full minutes. We want these guys browned, too. Turn the flame down to medium. Being careful to keep them intact, turn the filets over and cook the skin side for two minutes. Remove the filets to a holding plate.

Braising the seafood

With a spatula, scrape the sauté pan to loosen any remaining bits of scallop and snapper fond. Pour the salsa into the pan and stir it to incorporate the fond into the salsa. Place the filets in the salsa skin-side down. You want to keep the browned portion mostly out of the salsa. Similarly, place the scallops in the salsa, keeping the best looking side of each scallop up. Allow the seafood to simmer in the salsa for three minutes.

Being careful to keep the salsa off the top side of each, remove the scallops and filets from the salsa. Stir the epazote into the salsa and turn off the flame.

to serve

Pour the salsa into a large serving platter arrange the scallops and fillet portions atop the salsa. This dish goes well with saffron rice, achiote rice, or fresh corn tortillas.

The Secret Language of Fish, Volume 4

Death of the Gilded Warrior

Back before the Internet and personal computers—hell, before my parents even acquiesced to putting a television in our home (black-and-white, UHF, ostensibly 13 channels but at least eight were unused), my primary source of infotainment was the Colliers and Americana Encyclopedias my father had bought with the U.S. savings bonds that were supposed to have been my college money. I particularly enjoyed the Colliers volumes that contained extensive sets of color plates. Volumes A (amphibians), B (birds), M (mammals), and R (reptiles), for example, were like comic books for a junior trivia geek like me. The real treasure trove, however, was the F volume: flags, flowers, and fish.

It was in the Colliers F that I first saw what the encyclopedia then called a dolphin (I later learned that ichthyologists call them dolphinfish to avoid confusion with Flipper and company). What a bizarre character. The blunted-tomahawk face of the dolphinfish looks completely at odds with the fish's acute sternward body taper, its Mohawk dorsal fin, and its scissor tail. The effect is something like putting a Rolls Royce grill on a Lotus Europa. As if the shape alone weren't enough to make them look like something out of a Ken Kesey/Hunter S. Thompson collaboration, dolphinfish sport glam rock scales of electric blues and neon greens awash with what looks like gold dust.

A few years after my first discovery of the dolphinfish, furor over the trapping of dolphins, porpoises, and small whales prompted a demand in the U.S. and Europe for dophin-free tuna. Restaurateurs and fishmongers deemed it prudent to avoid the terms dolphin and dolphinfish in reference to anything they were hoping to sell for human consumption. The Hawaiian and Latin American names mahimahi and dorado were quickly taken up.

Mahimahi, I'm sorry to report, is the name that stuck. Mahimahi translates as "strong strong," a verbal construction that sounds a bit goofy to anyone accustomed to a language with either a bit of variety or even a few decent intensifiers. The English equivalent would be something like very strong or powerful or potent or kick-ass. Understanding the source of the word has not helped me learn to like it, nor has it made buying the fish any easier. I still feel like a dork asking my fishmonger for a mahimahi filet. It sounds like I'm stuttering.

The term dorado literally means "golden one," a name that was given to the legendary South American warriors who supposedly dusted themselves with gold dust after bathing. I like this name. It's fanciful, and it describes a striking aspect of the fish. It doesn't sound silly.

Sadly, the term dorado is being swallowed up by the encroaching mahimahi. Even the restaurants in Cozumel sell it as mahimahi. I'm not sure why mahimahi managed to outpace dorado, but I think it has something to do with a popular recipe. Search for mahimahi recipes online and you'll find quite a few versions of Macadamia-crusted mahimahi in coconut milk. Frankly, this is an unimpressive combination. I love fish poached in coconut milk, and I like Macadamia nuts, but the combination is bland. If you want to coat fish with nutmeats, hazelnuts or almonds provide a good deal more flavor and character, but I wouldn't use even those coatings in coconut milk. The result would be, as Princess V is fond of saying, much of a muchness. I think the Macadamia-coconut treatment is popular simply because of its exotic-sounding combination of Hawaiian ingredients.

The Non-White White

I know that I said at the outset of the Secret Language of Fish that I was going to talk about white-fleshed fish, and I know that a lot of cookbooks claim that mahimahi is a white-fleshed fish. In truth, mahimahi is not a white-fleshed fish—not exactly. The raw flesh is generally pink with dark red along the lateral line. This fish is a powerful pelagic, after all. These guys spend their lives on the go, and they depend upon their speed for survival—think of the dolphinfish as something like a billfish after an overzealous rhinoplasty. Like all his fully shnozzed billfish cousins, the flesh of the dolphinfish has a dense, meaty texture. Mahimahi cooks up slightly firmer than tuna but not quite as firm as swordfish.

The majority of mahimahi flesh does cook white. Whitish. Perhaps we should call it off-white. The red strips turn dark brown but taste pretty much the same as the white portions. Many diners find the dark strip unappetizing, and since the stripe in forward portions of the filet contains sharp little bones, I usually trim off this lateral line strip.

Like tuna, mahimahi stands up well to grilling, broiling, and searing. Many diners seem to be put off by the pink-within-white look of seared mahimahi. I suppose it looks a bit like undercooked chicken. This is unfortunate; rare mahimahi is delicious and has a firm texture.

Grilled mahimahi, like grilled tuna or swordfish, can be served like a steak with little or no sauce. One of my favorite treatments is grilled mahimahi with mango salsa served over chimichurri rice. I'm sure you'll find this treatment colorful, complex in flavor, and obscenely simple to prepare. The following recipe feeds three.

Half-grilled mahimahi with mango salsa

dramatis personae

one mango, diced
juice of one small lime
one half of a small sweet onion, diced
one red serrano chilli, seeded and minced
a few drops of sesame oil
a pinch of sea salt
a tablespoon of chopped cilantro leaves

one pound mahimahi filet
one teaspoon peanut oil
one half cup basmati rice

two tablespoons chimichurri or tomatillo salsa

quality of ingredients

Mahimahi filets should be pink with red stripes. If they're tan with brown stripes, they've been out too long. Also, the flesh should smell sweet, with no hint of ammonia. Mahimahi skin is a flat, steely grey. Sadly, the fish lose their brilliant colors within minutes of dying.

The mango should be yielding but not mushy or bruised.

If you can't find red serrano chillis, substitute red jalapeños, red fresnos, or red fingerhots.

Chimichurri is available at some grocery stores; tomatillo salsa is even more readily available. I use the prepared stuff because I only want two tablespoons for the rice. If you want to make your own chimichurri, it's not too complicated: fresh parsley, oregano, garlic, jalapeño, salt, peanut oil, and a little lemon juice.

preparation notes

Make the salsa first. Combine the ingredients (mango, lime juice, onion, serrano, sesame oil,
salt, and cilantro) and put the salsa in the refrigerator while you prepare everything else. After half an hour, much of the mango will have softened or dissolved in the lime juice.

Prepare the rice as you normally would. Once the rice is done but before it cools, stir in the chimichurri (or green salsa).

Remove the red flesh and any bones from the mahimahi, but leave the skin on.

You can grill, barbecue, or sauté the filet. I prefer cooking the mahimahi in two steps. First, in a non-stick sauté pan with a teaspoon of peanut oil, cook the filets skin-side down over a medium-high flame, just enough to cook them halfway through (about three to five minutes, depending on the thickness of the filet). Then finish the other side of the filets on a grill or grill pan.

Serve the filets skin-side down on a bed of chimichurri rice with a generous topping of mango salsa.

Piña Colada Mahimahi

This is my own kitschy, faux-Hawaiian answer to the Macadamia/coconut dish.

Most white-fleshed fish goes well with coconut milk, but it takes the sturdiness of mahimahi, swordfish, or albacore to stand up to pineapple enzymes. Despite the name, this mahimahi dish contains no rum. White wine, yes, but no rum. The miso serves to thicken the sauce and also harmonizes well with pineapple.

I've tried this recipe only once. The flavors meshed nicely, but I created waaaaaaaay too much sauce. In other words, I'm just guessing on these quantities.

dramatis personae

one cup of diced pineapple
one half can (7 ounces) unsweetened coconut milk
two tablespoons white miso
one minced red fingerhot chilli
three keffir lime leaves
two tablespoons peanut oil
one pound mahimahi
one quarter cup pinot grigio

quality of ingredients

I used fresh pineapple. The canned stuff always tastes too sweet to me. Because this recipe requires only a cup of pineapple, you'll have fresh pineapple around for other uses for the next few days.

Fresh coconut milk would be great, but (1) it's a pain in the tuchus and (2) the canned stuff is just fine. Be sure you're using unsweetened coconut milk and not sweetened coconut cream.

If you can't get keffir lime leaves, I don't know what to tell you. Keffir lime zest is almost as good, but if you can get the limes, you can usually get the leaves. A little lime juice will give the sauce a bit of zing, but it can't compete with the complex aromatic tartness of keffir lime leaves.

If you can't find red fingerhot chillis, substitute red jalapeños, or red fresnos. If you want something with a serious burn, use a cayenne chilli instead of a fingerhot.

preparation notes

This dish is prepared in three parts: sauce, topping, and filets.

For the sauce combine the coconut milk, the miso, and half of the pineapple chunks in a blender. Blend this concoction to a smooth, creamy consistency.

For the topping: (1) Mince the keffir lime leaves very fine. (2) In half of the peanut oil, sauté the remaining pineapple and the chilli. The pineapple chunks will get a wee bit darker and slightly more translucent, and the chilli will brighten. (3) Stir in the keffir lime and remove the topping from the heat.

For the filets:
Heat a teaspoon of peanut oil in a non-stick skillet over a high flame until the oil begins to shimmer. Spread the oil over the bottom of the pan (it doesn't have to cover completely), and place the mahimahi filets in the pan, skin side up. Leave them alone for two full minutes. Turn the filets over. The cooked side should be golden brown. Taking care not to pour any wine onto the filets, pour the white wine into the pan (the steam from the wine will help finish the filets more evenly). Cover and allow the filets to cook for another three minutes on medium-high heat.

Serve the filets individually plated on rice, skin side down. Top each filet with a portion of the topping and pour on enough sauce to cover the filets.

Hot orange mahimahi teriyaki

I was tempted to call this an American teriyaki, just to avoid nettling the purists. You see, authentic teriyaki—Japanese teriyaki—is made with four ingredients: sake, mirin, sugar, and soy sauce. American and European teriyaki's are typically made with garlic, which is rare in Japanese dishes, and ginger, which is more common in Chinese and Korean cooking. In fact, some argue that most American teriyaki sauces are closer to bulgogi sauce (Korean barbecue).

But why quibble? The name teriyaki translates as "shiny grilled thing," which provides no guidance as to ingredients. I and my audience expect teriyaki to have sweet, sour, soy-salty, garlicky, and gingery notes. With that in mind, I try to find the right balance of ingredients for whatever dish I'm preparing. In my years of experimentation, I've concocted teriyakis for steak, spare ribs, chicken, duck, eel, mackerel, bluefish, shrimp, salmon, scallops, and mahimahi. I don't know how many of those I can say I've perfected (okay, the scallops were ghastly and the bluefish was so-so) but this mahimahi recipe is easily my most successful to date.

dramatis personae

(these proportions will feed three)

1 lb mahimahi
1/2 cup tamari
1/3 cup sake
1/3 cup cider vinegar
zest and juice (1/3 cup) of 1 medium navel orange
1 tbl grated ginger
1 tbl minced garlic
2 tbls honey
1 Thai chilli, seeded and finely diced
peanut oil

quality of ingredients

I don't usually talk about the process of creating something like this, so I guess I'm overdue. Part of what makes dishes like fun for me is the chance to experiment, tweaking a flavor here, a flavor there, while maintaining the overall balance of elements.

For teriyaki sauces, I generally try to match what I expect of the flavor of the base ingredient against the following balance of sauce component types:

• soy
• rice wine or some other light wine
• something sweet
• something tart
• some ginger
• some garlic
• some additional spice for character

Garlic and ginger are relatively stable elements, but most of these items offers a surprisingly wide range of possibilities.

Over the years, I've gone through a number of different soy sauces. I now use just two: Chinese dark soy and Japanese tamari. Tamari, a soy sauce made from pure soya, tends to be much lighter and more subtle than the Chinese dark soys. The Chinese dark soy is made with wheat and soya and thickened with sugar, making it viscous, rich, and toasty. I prefer tamari with fish (except salmon and fishy-tasting fish like mackerel) and shrimp. For most applications I find that I will use three times as much tamari as I would dark soy sauce.

I don't fully understand the traditional use of sake, mirin, and sugar. Mirin is sweet rice wine. Adding sugar makes it sweeter. Adding sake makes it drier. Using all three just seems silly to me. Because it's difficult to find good mirin for a reasonable price (and without going to a specialty wine shop) and because the "cooking" mirin sold in US grocery stores is corn-syrup-fortified crap, I typically forego this. I tend to substitute michiu (Chinese rice wine) for the sake because the results are about the same, and michiu is far cheaper. If you can't find sake or michiu, any cheap, dry white wine will do.

For the something sweet, the traditional Japanese solution is a combination of mirin and sugar. Many American and European recipes substitute sherry for the mirin, but I don't recommend it. I can always tell when a recipe uses sherry. I find the distinctive sherry aftertaste out of place in teriyaki—reminds me of moules à la marinière. Don't get me wrong. I like moules à la marinière, but I don't want my teriyaki to taste like them. But, hey, whatever floats your boat. If you like sherry in your teriyaki, use it. Of course, as I said already, I prefer not using mirin or sherry. I prefer teriyaki sweetened with honey, brown sugar, or fruit juice. I am particularly partial to orange or tangerine juice with fish teriyaki. Brown sugar adds a molasses-y depth to your sauce, and honey adds a similar rich something extra.

For the something tart, I typically use apple cider vinegar. Be sure to check that the label doesn't say "apple cider flavored," which means you've been sold some artificially flavored white vinegar. Nasty stuff. Feel free to experiment with other vinegars (sweetened rice wine vinegar is not bad). Be aware, though, that balsamic and sherry vinegars will add a strong fruity note that you might not want in your teriyaki. Chinese black vinegar is good in sparerib teriyaki.

In this mahimahi teriyaki, I've added orange zest (to augment the citrus flavor imparted by the juice) and a Thai chilli to add a little zing. A few items I've tried that worked well with some treatments include star anise, white pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, and coriander seed. Your mileage may vary.

preparation notes

As with most teriyaki, the first step is to mix the sauce. Combine the tamari, sake, cider vinegar, orange juice, garlic, ginger, honey, and minced chilli in a glass or ceramic bowl large enough to hold the sauce plus the filets. Do not add the zest at this point.

Remove the skin and red flesh (which may have turned brown by the time you get it home) from the filets. Assuming you have started with a single one-pound portion of filet, you should now have two skinless slices of fish, one about twice the size of the other. Divide each of these into thirds. Immerse the six pieces of mahimahi in the sauce and allow them to marinate for at least fifteen but not more than thirty minutes. If this marinates too long you'll have teriyaki ceviche. I use this time to rinse my rice and prep whatever vegetables I am serving as a side dish.

Remove the mahimahi from the sauce and set the pieces aside on a plate to dry.

Pour the sauce into a small sauce pan and, over a low flame, reduce it by half. This should take about twenty minutes (making this an ideal time to cook the rice).

When the sauce is nearly reduced (after about fifteen minutes), preheat the peanut oil in your grill pan over a medium-high flame. When the oil begins to shimmer, spread it over the grill with a pastry brush or paper towel.

Once the sauce is reduced, pour it through a strainer or sieve to remove the solids. Return the sauce to the sauce pan over the lowest flame your stove will maintain. Stir in the orange zest.

Grill the mahimahi pieces on one side for two minutes. Turn the pieces over and grill them for an additional two minutes.

Remove the mahimahi from the grill and pour a teaspoon of the teriyaki sauce over each piece of fish.

I serve teriyaki with accompanying bowls of white rice and smaller bowls of the warm teriyaki sauce. The fish might not need any more sauce, but the girls and I like to add a bit of the sauce to our rice.