I call this a new recipe but it is really exploring the
versatility of cedar plank cooking with a new fish with a different glaze that we usually use for salmon marinated in Teriyaki
sauce.
When a meeting with a client evaporated and there was no
sitting, I was suddenly free to cook this evening. I had
stopped at Sprouts today and bought a large (1.3 lb.) fresh filet of corvina
(sea bass) that looked and cooked like
red snapper ($7.99/lb.). I had made a
fruit salad with papaya, pineapple, orange, and mango two days ago, so we
decided to make a variation on fish tacos, by grilling the corvina. When I handed the filet to Suzette and she
opened the package and saw that the filet was over 18 inches long, she said, “This
looks like something that should be grilled on a cedar plank.” I immediately agreed because I love plank
cooked fish because it does not burn and it holds the sauce in suspension with the
fish juices for a terrific combination of flavors.
Suzette wanted to make
a basting sauce with butter and herbs, so I cut 4 oz. of butter and put it in a
pyrex measuring cup. Suzette added some
oregano and a couple of dashes of dried ancho chili powder and I chopped and
added about 2 Tbsp. of fresh garlic and garlic greens from our garden and
melted all of that in the microwave.
Then Suzette took the saw and cut a cedar board to fit the size of the
filet (we buy 1”x6”x8’ cedar planks at Home Depot for this purpose).
We fired up our propane grill with our new canister of
propane and, while Suzette was grilling and basting the fish, I heated up the
PPI Calabacitas from last Thursday evening’s party for Willy and took the fruit
salad from the fridge. I then diced two small avocados (Pro’s Ranch Market
4 for $.99) and mixed them with about 1 ½ cups of fruit salad and squeezed one
half of a sweet (Meyer’s) lemon on the fruit and avocado mixture and added a finely
diced large shallot. The shallot made the salsa a bit bitter so I added the
juice of ½ Mexican lime and a handful of fresh cilantro and the salsa tasted
better to Suzette. The calabacitas was not very moist so we added
some PPI chicken stock that Suzette had made from the chicken bones from last
Thursday’s party.
When the fish was grilled to medium rare at its thickest
portion, Suzette took it off the grill and I fetched two Negra Modelos and crema
from the fridge and heated 8 small corn tortillas wrapped in a damp tea towel in
the microwave for a couple of minutes and we were ready to eat. We put
a scoop of calabacitas and a wedge of grilled fish on each of our plates and took
that with a beer to the table where we added salsa and crema and folded those ingredients
into the tortillas.
We received a great photo from Luke of Willy and Luke with their cousins,
Rebecca Simon and Ryan Goggans, eating at the restaurant Luke works at sometimes
in Brooklyn named "EATS". I cannot suppress my good
feelings about Willy’s departure on Thursday, April 25th for his European
trip and his arrangements for graduate school in Dublin in September.
Bon Appétit
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