July 22, 2014 New Recipe Cascades Baked Stuffed Flounder with Seafood Stuffing with Stir Fried Baby Bok Choy and Shitake mushrooms

July 22, 2014   New Recipe Cascades Baked Stuffed Flounder with Seafood Stuffing with Stir Fried Baby Bok Choy and Shitake mushrooms

It was hot today, probably around 100˚, so I went to Café Trang for a late lunch after a meeting with a client and ordered “Patted rice noodles with grilled shrimp sausage and pork” and an iced coffee.

I then went to Ta Lin to shop and in the fish department saw that they had a small fresh Rex flounder.  When I asked the fish department attendant, who I have known for at least fifteen years from helping me, “What is freshest today?”, he said,  “Flounder is freshest.” 

When I asked, “Do you have larger ones?  I need one about 1 ½ lb.”

He waved his head toward the refrigeration area in back and answered, “I get you a nice one.” And walked through the swinging rubber slats into the darkened back area of the store to fetch a fish.

Soon he returned with a firm large fresh 1 ½ lb. flounder from the back and cleaned it and bagged it ($4.99 lb.).  While he was cleaning the fish I picked up a 19 oz. plastic tub of medium soft tofu ($1.45)

As I walked around the corner from the fish department past the meat department I encountered another attendant bagging shrimp for a man from Santa Fe.  I stopped when I saw that there was a lovely batch of 30-40 count heads on shrimp and asked the attendant for a pound of them.   He said, “They are fresh and nice.  I just thawed them.” and bagged a pound of them for me ($8.95/lb.).

After being handed my shrimp with a smile, I picked up a bottle of Pho flavoring (for Vietnamese beef soup, $2.15) and made my way to the vegetable section where I picked up a bag of Shanghai Baby Bok Choy ($.98/lb.), a package of fresh shitake mushrooms ($3.98/lb.), selected some shallots ($1.49/lb.) and fresh green ginger root ($2.49/lb.).  When I returned to the car the temperature indicator on the dash read 102˚ and I had a déjà vu recollection of Fort Worth in the summer.

When Suzette got home and inspected the flounder, she said, “We should fix it the way they do in Maryland.” and soon she found her Williamsburg Cookbook.  Soon she found the “Cascades Baked Stuffed Flounder” recipe with Seafood stuffing and described to me that Cascades is a very famous restaurant in the Williamsburg, Virginia area. 

We decided that she I would prepare the flounder and I would prepare the baby bok choy and we would work together on the stuffing.

Soon we were talking about our respective trips to Williamsburg in our youth and our stuffed flounder recollections; Suzette’s at Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where her aunt had a summer home and mine at King of the Sea Restaurant in New York City, where my dad took me once and I ate my most memorable stuffed flounder.  Suzette’s memories corresponded more closely to the Cascades recipe with a breadcrumb stuffing while mine memories were entirely of a blue point crab lump meat stuffing without any herbs and breading. 

Since the flounder was large, we decided to double all the ingredients for the stuffing recipe except for the breadcrumbs (We used only 1 ½ cups of them).  Suzette and I selected French onion and sourdough breads to make into breadcrumbs and Suzette put them into the oven to dry the bread and we went to the garden and picked a sprig of lovage and three sprigs of parsley and checked our tomatoes and eggplants.  When we returned to the house I started slicing and dicing onion, pasilla chili (we did not have a bell pepper and decided to substitute the pasilla for the bell pepper and cayenne chili), celery, and then the lovage and celery for the stuffing.  Suzette fetched a can of Spanish pimientos and chopped 2 tsps. of them and cooked and peeled and chopped up 1 lb. of shrimps from the freezer (We have decided to make Cajun BBQ tomorrow night with the big heads on ones I bought today).  We decided to use the fish seasoning we bought in Morocco in April.  I fetched the sherry and helped melt the 12 ounces of butter while Suzette processed the breadcrumbs and mixed the other ingredients for the stuffing together.  Soon we had a large bowl filled with stuffing.  Suzette had washed the flounder and I took it from the sink and dried it with a paper towel laying the fish flat on a cutting board, exposing the side on which its eyes face up (the darker colored top of the fish).  I made a slit along the darker line on the side of the fish facing up and found that that was the point where the large central bone protrudes to the skin.  I worked my knife under the flesh and gently lifted the flesh away from the central bone by sliding the knife from the central protrusion on the central bone outward toward the thinner edge of the fish.  Soon I had opened up a large cavity with the central bone serving as a firm base on which to rest the stuffing.  I placed the fish into a pyrex baking that Suzette had buttered and Suzette filled the cavity with stuffing and then drizzled the fish with 12 oz. of butter and lemon juice and put it into a 375˚ for 30 minutes.

While the flounder was baking I went to the basement and fetched a bottle of a new Albariño I bought last week at Total Wine for $14.99 named Val Do Sosego and chilled it in the freezer.

Then I sliced four shitake mushrooms and three baby bok choy, separating the green from the white parts and chopped about 1 Tbsp. of ginger root and 1 medium shallot and Suzette chopped about 1 Tbsp. of fresh garlic.  I then heated the wok and added 1 ½ Tbsp. of olive oil and the white portion of the bok choy, the shallot, garlic and ginger to the wok and cooked them for about five minutes.  Then I added the mushrooms and about 1 Tbsp. of Chinese rice cooking wine.  After another couple of minutes I threw in ½ tsp. of salt and ½ tsp. of sugar and then threw in the green parts and another 1 Tbsp. of rice cooking wine and covered the wok to let it steam.  In another couple of minutes everything seems to be soft and the fish timer went off and we were ready to eat.  We poured glasses of Albariño and placed sections of fish onto a plate and then we each scooped some bok choy onto the plate.

This was the most delicious meal we have prepared in months.  This new old time recipe was delicious, in large measure due to the abundance of butter in the recipe.

The Val Do Sosego went perfectly with the meal; not too sweet like Durans and not too dry like Laxas, just a very balanced albariño wine and my new favorite Albariño.

While the flounder was baking Suzette made a simple cobbler with apricot butter and fresh plums picked from our neighbor, Megan's, trees.  According to Suzette it was a perfect end to a perfect Summer meal.
  

Bon Appétit