Fish Soup

This soup is delightful, and easy to make. Serves 2-3 people.

Ingredients:

4 T butter
1/2 onion, chopped
2 medium potatoes, peeled & diced
thyme
water
3 c. milk (or cream)
2-3 fillets of white fish

Procedure:

Melt butter in soup pot. Saute chopped onions until transparent.
Add diced potatoes. Saute for 1-2 minutes.
Add fresh or dried thyme.* Stir.
Add water to cover, enough to completely cook the potatoes. Boil lightly for about 10 minutes.
Gently stir in milk, a little at a time, and simmer until hot enough to cook fish.
Add 2-inch pieces of fish, and cook about 3 minutes.

If you use cream this dish will be decidedly richer, and probably better as a side dish than a complete meal. (Great for an appetizer to impress dinner guests!) Otherwise, dilute soup with milk to reach the consistency that appeals to you.

Serve with toast.

*When using fresh thyme in soups, bundle twigs and tie together, then remove when the soup is ready to serve. Dried thyme can more accurately be measured in pinches, to please your palate.

I'm a big herb freak, so I use a lot of dried thyme in this delicious soup.

Sexy Smoked Salmon Sandwich

This sandwich is so good, I forgot to photograph it before I chowed it down.

Toast English muffins to your preferred crispness.
Layer on preferred amount of sliced smoked salmon (lox).
Spoon dressing on top of salmon.
Add preferred greens (e.g. arugula, watercress, frisee, mesclun).

Dressing:
Mayonnaise, dijon mustard, dried dill.

For the Love of Oceans

As you may know, I am very concerned about vanishing fish. It still seems like few people know that all of the fish in the world are disappearing at a disturbingly rapid rate. Many people do know about this, and yet choose to do nothing to sustain seafood populations. If you, too, are concerned and want some advice on choosing what fish you eat, Chef Reinvented has written recently on this topic.

And BTW, good luck with that!

Worries & Fish Cakes

As most of you know, my daughter, Ariel, is the most awesomest person on the planet. I am so proud of her all the time. She is beautiful, joyful, friendly, caring, and intelligent. Most of all, she is beautiful. That is because she is so joyful, caring, and intelligent.

After spending time with her for a year and three months, I had to send her into the outside world, to preschool. You know, to broaden her horizons and such. I know she needs it; she needs more than me. But it has been painful and worrisome to me. How will other people react to her? How will she react to others? Will she be excluded? Will there be racism? etc. etc.

Raising a child brings out the best in me. It is also a mirror to my fears and my self-esteem. When her teacher told me some things about her that I had not seen as problems, they seemed like problems, and I took it personally. I worried all day about whether or not my daughter was going to be okay at preschool. So I did something even more worrisome: I made fish cakes!

I have eaten great fish cakes, and awful fish cakes. I have watched them made on TV, and read recipes on how to make them. Once, I was at a company Christmas party where we made fish cakes as an activity. I have to tell you, it has never, ever looked easy.

But WTH! I tried it last night. And they were damn good.

More with tilapia from CostCo!!!

FISH CAKES

Use frozen fish; thaw it half-way. I used tilapia and shrimp.

Process in a food processor, on pulse: 1/2 of the fish & bread crumbs. Keep it chunky.

Process the rest of the very cold (partially frozen) fish, plus one egg.

Process with more bread crumbs.

Mmmm... this paste looks good. Handle with care. Make cakes, and pat with Saltine cracker crumbs. Fry in oil.

Oh, it's amazing, and it has no mayonnaise. BTW, I used my strawberry-dill sauce for dipping.

Side Dish: SAUTEED FRESH CHARD

Fish On!

In celebration of Father's Day, my mom and I arranged for my husband and my dad to take the boat out on Lake Johanna. You see, the first boat trip of the season is an event full of frustration and foul language, and I didn't want to go this year. So, it worked out great! DH caught a fish on his first cast: a very nice bass. He brought it home for dinner. It tasted like fresh spring water, which is not always the case, but we've had so much rain this year that the fish tasted very clean. DH pan-fried it covered in Saltine cracker crumbs. I made the side dish.

This is a classic recipe my mom used to make when we were kids. I have always loved it. It takes about 45 minutes to an hour to cook, but it is worth it.

FISHERMAN'S POTATOES
Serves 3-4 people

3-4 potatoes (I like gold or yellow potatoes)
1 large onion (I like Vidallia sweets)
1 stalk celery, sliced or diced
2-4 T vegetable oil
herbs (I used rosemary, oregano, and tarragon; you can use whatever you like!)
salt & pepper

Cut onion into dice. Saute in oil in a cast iron pan. Add celery. Saute until transparent and soft.
Wash and peel, if necessary, potatoes. Cut into chunks. Add to pan and use additional oil if necessary.
Add salt to bring the water out of the vegetables.
When the pan is almost dry (but not burning; this takes about 5 minutes) add water to cover, just barely. You can always keep adding water. The more water you have to continue adding, the more the potatoes will break up and become mushy and sloppy. I recommend putting in just enough water the first time.
Add delicious herbs; I prefer dried herbs for this dish.
This dish requires a lot of stirring, that's why the potatoes break down.
When the potatoes are cooked and the consistency looks good to you, remove from heat and serve.

Rice & Tuna

No one knows what they want for dinner. Quick fix!

White rice
Canned tuna
Mayo
Soy sauce
Jalapenos
Tomatoes (optional)

Don't mix it all together!!! Each forkful (or spoonful) should be an individual creation of mouth watering sensation.

We used to eat this dish quite often. Then I read "Bottomfeeder" by Taras Grescoe. It broke my heart. It is very bad to eat tuna. I have too much knowledge about the woes of poor Mother Earth. The ocean is... well, you don't even want to go there. It hurts. It makes you have to make really tough decisions about what you eat.

I have always liked my tuna in a can. I don't really like tuna steak, or tuna sushi, but I can totally go for tiny morsels of seared tuna on a bed of micro greens.

Alas, I found myself at the grocery store just missing my canned tuna so much. I said to myself, "Should all the ignorant people eat all the food that is available without so much as a wince, as the oceans become depleted and our planet is destroyed, while I, with all my stupid knowledge, go without the splendors of seafood on my table?" I shrugged. I bought the evil food.