September 8, 2020 Lunch – Costco hot dog Dinner – Steamed Stuffed Red Snapper with sautéed Spaghetti Squash and spinach and Cream Sauce

 September 8, 2020 Lunch – Costco hot dog Dinner – Steamed Stuffed Red Snapper with sautéed Spaghetti Squash and spinach and Cream Sauce

Lunch was a throw away but dinner was memorable.

I walked ½ mile and ate granola, blueberries, banana, milk and yogurt.

I then drove to a meeting until 12:15, when I went to Costco and filled the tank. I then drove to Talin and bought, tofu, hoisin, fish cake meatballs, fresh egg white noodles, coconut milk, a fresh 2 ½ lb. red snapper and ginger root.

Another terrible day in the market.  I napped for a couple of hours in the afternoon.

We had decided to use the baked spaghetti squash for dinner. The spinach was getting old, so I wanted to use it.  When Suzette arrived at home we decided to steam the whole red snapper in the steaming oven and serve it with squash and spinach.  Suzette also added piñon nuts and dried cranberries to the squash sauté.

We decided to use s Swedish recipe for stuffed fish that stuffs the stomach cavity with a mixture of herbs, butter, and green onion.  I went to the garden and picked about eight chives and a few sprigs of tarragon.  I chopped up the herbs and a green onion and added butter and stuffed the mixture into the stomach cavity and lay the fish on a steaming rack.  Suzette found the proper setting for a 2 ½ lb. Steamed fish, which was 43 minutes and checked the water level and steamed the fish. 

When Suzette removed the fish from the steamer there was about ½ cup of liquid in the bottom of the pan holding the fish.  I asked Suzette to make a cream sauce with the steaming liquid.  She melted a T. of butter and stirred in a T. of flour to make a roux.  She then added the steaming liquid and then about ¼ cup of half and half,, 1/2 tsp. of lemon zest, lemon juice, and a T. of the herb stuffing from the fish.  The result was a delicious thick cream sauce.

Suzette the ladle several Spoonfuls of the squash and spinach mixture into a pasta bowl and I added a filet from the steamed fish to the top of the squash. Suzette then added a large dollop of cream sauce to the top of the fish filet.  The result was very attractive.

When we started cooking I chilled a bottle of 2018 Domaine du Touch Cotes du Gascogne White wine (Trader Joe’s $7.99?). It’s flinty flavor  turned out to be perfect for the slightly gamey red snapper and cream sauce.   

This was an amazingly wonderful meal.  The kind of dish one would find in a high end farm to table restaurant, like Blue Hill in NYC. The lightness and freshness of the fish was exquisite, the squash grown in Suzette’s garden in Los Lunas had been roasted and then blanched in the microwave and then sautéed with nuts, spinach, and cranberries was also incredibly fresh.  The aromatic cream sauce was the heaviest part of the meal, made with the fish stock and herbs baked in the fish was Devine, and bound all the ingredients together.

The fact that the flinty wine contrasted with the fresh delicate fish and vegetable flavors made the dinner even more interesting.

After dinner I heated a square of blueberry cobbler and surrounded it with scoops of vanilla ice cream for a delicious dessert with a cup of tea.

We watched Rachel interview Michael Cohen and the Dallas lose to Las Vegas and then to bed.

An owl hooting outside our window last night had kept us up, so we went to bed early.

Bon Appetit