Liberally salt and pepper the fish fillets. Add oil to a pan heated to medium heat and lay the fish fillets onto the oiled surface. Cover the pan and cook for 6-10 minutes (depending on thickness of fillets), or until fully cooked inside (~140ºF/60ºC), flipping the fish halfway through cooking. Transfer the fish to a plate and set aside. Add the butter and garlic to the pan and heat, swirling the pan occasionally, until the butter has start to turn a golden brown. Add the wine and broth, stirring well. Allow the sauce to reduce by half, then add the whipping cream. Allow the sauce to cook for a 2-3 minutes, then add the tarragon, stirring in completely. Add the fish back to the pan, spooning the sauce over the fish. Transfer to a serving dish. Serve immediately.
Keyword Butter, Fish, Monkfish, Sauce
And now for the details…
So… monkfish. Have you tried this fish before? If you haven’t, I would say: no time like the present!
Monkfish has often been referred to as the “poor man’s lobster”, since it’s quite dense in texture, and a bit sweet in taste, a bit different from the typical flaky texture you get from many other white-fleshed fish. But I don’t love that reference, to be honest. It devalues the monkfish. Monkfish is similar to lobster in texture, but to think that the only thing it has to offer is as a cheap replacement to lobster is taking away the amazingness that is the monkfish! It doesn’t have quite the same flavour as lobster, it has a taste all unto itself: a bit sweet, salty, and of course there is no mistaking that it is in fact fish, but not an unpleasant fishy taste. And can we talk about the fact that you don’t need to shell it like you do lobster? BONUS!!!
Monkfish is a weird looking fish. I’m not sure which of our ancestors decided it would be okay to put this in our mouths, but they were certainly quite brave! Seriously, do a quick internet search for “monkfish” to see what these look like pre-fillet and you’ll understand what I mean. They are also aptly called “sea-devils”, which is nomenclature I can get behind. Could you imagine swimming and seeing one of these things drawing near??? Okay, I’m exaggerating, since you probably wouldn’t see them… From what I’ve read, they aren’t stalkers like a shark, and like to hunt by camouflaging themselves and waiting for their prey to draw near, but still!
An interesting bit of information I have found on these is that the only useable bits for the entire fish are the cheeks and the tail. If you’re not squeamish about watching a fish being filleted, check out this super cool video by Fish For Thought TV, where the gents break down an 18kg monkfish. They did some weighing throughout the process, and in the end, there was only just over 3kg of meat on an 18kg fish!
To get started with our cooking process, check out your fillets to make sure there is no membrane left on the fish. The fishmonger I had purchased my fish from had done a pretty great job of cleaning that fish before selling, and I had only a tiny bit of membrane left, and was able to remove it easily with my fingers, no knife needed! The membrane will cook to be quite tough and chewy, and considering the plump, meaty, juiciness of the fish, we definitely want to lose that membrane!
Next, salt and pepper your fillets quite liberally and let them sit for at least a few minutes. While you are waiting, get your other ingredients out and chop the garlic and set aside. This will allow you to move quickly through the cooking process, so you get to eating faster!
Next, add the oil to a medium- to large-sized pan. I suggested 1 tablespoon, but to be honest, you want just enough for a light coating on the pan. You can even use a paper towel to swish it around, coating the bottom surface, and soaking up any excess that isn’t needed. Heat the pan over medium heat, and then add the fish to the pan.
Cover the pan while the fish is cooking, lifting it only to turn the fish halfway through the cooking process. How long to cook the fish will totally depend on the size of the fillet. I used a temperature probe and aimed for an internal temperature of 140ºF/60ºC. It took my fillets about 10 minutes to cook through. The goal, like most fish, is for the translucent colour to turn opaque. Try to avoid overcooking the fish, since it can get dry and kind of tough if you cook it too long.
Once the fish is cooked through, take it out and place it on a plate to the side while you prepare the sauce.
Keeping the temperature the same, or just *slightly* higher, add the garlic and butter to the pan and let them cook, swirling the pan occasionally (as in, pick up the pan and swish it in a circular motion to get the butter and garlic to swirl around in the pan, then put it back down, repeating every now and again). This will go through a few steps here. First, the butter will melt down and encompass the garlic in a glorious hug. Next, the butter will kind of foam up, and the garlic will release that glorious smell. Then, both the garlic and the butter will start to brown and smell a bit toasty. That toasty smell is your cue to add the broth and the wine. When adding the liquid, things may get a little spurty. To minimize this, try to get the broth and wine to room temperature before adding, and stir well once you add them in. Let the sauce simmer until the liquid is reduced by about half, then add the whipping cream, stirring in completely. Let this come to a simmer and cook for another few minutes (1-3) until the sauce thickens slightly. Add the tarragon, then give the sauce a quick taste-test, and add salt and pepper to taste.
Next, add the fish back into the pan. This is just to reheat, not cook, the fish, so don’t leave it in for too long. Less than a minute for sure. Spoon the sauce up over the fish to help it reheat on all sides. Finally, transfer the fish to a serving dish, and then spoon the sauce over the fish, and serve!
Preheat oven to 425ºF/220ºC. Place 1/4 cup of butter in large glass baking dish and place in the oven until its melted. Remove from oven. Remove items from kit. Remove 1.5 cups from pizza dough mix, place the rest of the mix in a bowl. Add herb packet and cheese packet, garlic powder and salt, mixing well. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, with 1 tablespoon of water. Dip the drumsticks one at a time, from the egg wash, to powder mix, back to eggs, back to powder, then place in the melted butter in the baking dish. Drizzle remaining 2 tablespoons butter over chicken in dish. Bake in oven for 35 minutes, then remove and turn carefully. Put back in the oven for 15 more minutes, or until internal temperature of the chicken reaches 165ºF/75ºC. Sauté garlic in a pan in the olive oil until fragrant. Add the mushrooms and cook. Add tomatoes, sauce from the can in the kit, oregano, basil and wine, and cook down. Cook pasta in a pot of boiling water. Reserve 1/2 cup of the pasta water and add to the sauce, allow it to cook down further. Drain pasta. Mix the pasta with the sauce. Serve.
Keyword Chicken, Dinner, Pasta, Sauce
And now for the details…
We are at day 7 of 14 in isolation, and I am at day 7 of my quarantine challenge to post a new recipe every day. In the last post, I had talked about the Kraft Pizza Kit I received as a gag gift from a friend of ours while we are in isolation. The kit is something we both remember eating when we were young, and I think he was basically implying that since I am in isolation, I must be desperate enough to use the kit. And so this… this post is for you Marcus. I have reimagined the Kraft pizza box into oven fried chicken and pasta.
Let’s get right into it.
Start by preheating the oven to 425ºF/200ºC.
Let’s take a look at the contents of our pizza box: the dough mix, the herb packet, the cheese packet, and the sauce can.
Start by removing 1.5 cups out of the dough mix from the package and set it aside. Aside for what? No idea. From what I can see from the ingredients, the dough mix is pretty much Bisquick. So I guess use it as a replacement for that? Or………? *blank stare* The rest of the package goes into a bowl, along with the herb packet, the cheese packet, garlic powder, and salt. Mix these together well with a fork or whisk until they are mixed fully.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs with one tablespoon of water to make an egg wash for the chicken.
Before moving on, melt 1/4 cup of the butter in a large glass baking dish in the oven. Once melted, take it out, and set it to the side to start placing the chicken in.
We will be double dipping the chicken to get a nice crust for the oven fry. Dip one of the drumsticks in the egg wash, coating completely. Then place it in in the powder mix, turning to coat. Place it back in the egg wash, coat, and then back again into the powder mix, coat. Place the drumstick in the baking dish. Repeat this procedure with all the chicken pieces until they have all been coated.
Once all the drumsticks have been coated and placed in the dish, melt another 2 tablespoons of butter in a small dish, and drizzle it over the drumsticks. Place the drumsticks in the oven for 35 minutes.
After 35 minutes, remove the chicken from the oven, and carefully turn the drumsticks over, trying to gingerly make the flip without tearing the skin or crust on the chicken. I didn’t have success with all the pieces, but 80% is still a passing grade, right?
Place back in the oven and cook for another 15 minutes, or until the inside of the chicken registers at 165ºF/75ºC, making sure to not touch the bone with the thermometer.
In the last 15 minutes, we will cook our pasta and sauce. Sauté the garlic in the olive oil in a large pan until the garlic is fragrant, then add the mushrooms. Usually this is where I would suggest adding salt to help the mushrooms release their liquid, but the sauce in the kit is plenty salty, so we will not be adding any additional salt. If the pan gets too dry before the mushrooms start releasing liquid, add a splash of broth or water to keep the mushrooms and garlic from burning. Once the mushrooms are cooked, add the tomatoes, and stir.
Finally, add the sauce from the can, the oregano and basil, and red wine, using your spoon to stir up any caramelization that formed in the bottom of the pan to absorb back into the sauce.
While the sauce is cooking, cook the pasta in salted water until al dente. Just before removing the pasta from the stove, add 1/2 cup of the pasta water to the sauce, mixing it in. Then, drain the pasta, and add it to the pan with the sauce, stirring well. Let the pasta and sauce cook for a short while more until thick.
When the chicken is done, remove it from the oven. Plate your chicken and pasta. I also cooked some broccoli in a separate dish while my chicken was cooking for some added greenery (just for you Mark, I knew you’d like that).
This dish was a family favourite. We were introduced to it by a family friend when I was young, and it quickly became a special dish in our household. We had it often enough, that after a bit of time my mom would not even bother pulling the recipe card out when making it, she had made it so often. We had a tradition in our household that on our birthdays, we would get to choose what we wanted for dinner. The amount of times that I would choose this dish as my birthday dinner are innumerable. Not… because of my age… but because… I liked it so much… I can’t remember how many times… Okay, I’m getting old. Regardless, this is a special dish in my heart, and any time I’m feeling homesick or want some comfort food, this is the dish I turn to.
It’s also a fairly quick and easy meal to come together. So even though it was a special dish, it was still something that could come together on a school/work night in a fairly short amount of time. Pair it up with a simple green salad, and you’ve got yourself a great meal!
Start everything off by mincing the shallot and sautéing it in a large pan on medium high heat with the olive oil just until the shallot has started to soften and turned translucent. Add the white wine to the pan, stirring to mix.
We are going to let the white wine reduce until the liquid has almost completely boiled off. Just a small amount of liquid should be left in the pan.
Next, add your chicken broth and clams. Yes, I am suggesting to drain the clams, and yes, this is an opportunity to use the clam juice to increase the “clamminess” of your dish. But to be honest, I actually find the clam juice a bit too salty (I know, it’s shocking, I’m calling something too salty, call the press) and not as rich in umami flavour as using chicken broth as your liquid source. It’s also important to use baby clams in this dish. I made the mistake once of not paying attention when buying the canned clams and ended up with whole clam pieces. The texture is just not the same as the small, juicy bites of baby clams.
Stir, bringing the sauce back up to a simmer, then add the oregano and hot sauce. Just a few dashes of the hot sauce, we are not trying to burn our faces off (I mean, unless that’s what you are looking for, then have at ‘er), just adding an extra layer of flavour to the dish. Now is also a good time to start cooking your pasta so it is ready around the time as your sauce.
Cut the cream cheese into smaller pieces. This will allow the cream cheese to melt faster, and meld into the sauce a bit faster. A quick note on cream cheese: you can use low fat cream cheese, but I would recommend the full fat. The low fat cream cheese does not melt as quickly, and it takes quite awhile before your sauce looks homogenous without a whole bunch of white chunks floating around.
Let the sauce simmer for a bit as you stir the melting cream cheese in. At this point, your pasta should be fairly close to being done as well. Before draining the pasta, add about 1/2 cup of the pasta water to the sauce and allow it to continue to simmer until the sauce coats the back of a wooden spoon. The addition of the pasta water helps the sauce to thicken, and will help it adhere to the pasta. Give the sauce a final taste test and add salt and pepper to suit your tastes.
Once the sauce is ready, add the drained pasta to the pan, and stir to mix the sauce into the pasta. Transfer to a wide serving platter, and top with the parmesan and fresh ground pepper, then serve!
Mix together the peanut butter, chilli sauce, coconut milk and soy sauce, and set aside.
Add the shallots, garlic and carrots to a large pan with the oil and sauté on medium high heat until the shallows start to brown. Add the ginger and stir, then add the cabbage and brussel sprouts, stirring while cooking until the sprout and cabbage have just started to soften. Stir in the kale and red pepper, and cook until the kale has turned bright green.
Separate the veggies into two bowls. Top with the satay sauce and eggs, and serve.
Guilty admission: this recipe was created when I was trying to clean out our refrigerator. I had all these random bits of veg left over from other recipes that I had made and I needed to find something to do with them. Et voilà: a rainbow smorgasbord of sautéed veggies with a satay dressing and soft boiled eggs to top them off.
This recipe comes together fairly quickly, and so is a great option for a weekday meal. And since the main protein source is egg, it’s also appropriate for the non meat eaters out there! Have a vegan in the crowd? Swap out the eggs for pan fried tofu, and you are in business! The recipe also scales up an down quite easily, depending on the number in your crowd.
Start everything off my prepping your veggies and sauce. Once the cooking starts, this recipe comes together very quickly, so you want everything ready to go so you can just toss each element into the pan and plate immediately.
Slicing of your sprouts and cabbage could be done by hand or in a food processor, whichever is your preference. I like slicing by hand since it allows me more control and I prefer the veggies to be sliced thinner than the food processor will allow.
For the sauce, we simply whisk together the peanut butter, chilli sauce, coconut milk and soy sauce until they are fully mixed. I like using crunchy peanut butter for this so you get little bites of peanut in the dish after mixing the sauce into the veggies. I also added some sambal oelek for added spice, but if you prefer a milder flavour, you can omit it.
Next it’s on to cooking. Start with your soft boiled eggs. Bring a pot of water to a boil, carefully place the eggs inside (use a spoon or skimmer to help you do this to prevent dropping the eggs too fast and cracking the shells), then reduce the temperature to medium-low and cook the eggs for 6-7 minutes, depending on your preference of yolk smooshiness. Have an ice bath ready. While the eggs are cooking, we can start cooking the rest of the meal, but the moment the eggs are done, they should be removed from the hot water and placed in the ice bath.
Moving on to the veggies. Heat a large pan at medium-high heat with the oil, and add the ginger and garlic. Cook until just fragrant, then add your shallots and carrots. Stir, cooking until the shallots start to brown, then add the Brussel sprouts and cabbage. Stir, cooking just until the cabbage starts to soften, and add the kale and red pepper. One last stir and cook until the kale turns bright green and just starts to wilt, then remove from the heat and place into your bowls for serving.
Pour the satay sauce over the veggies, peel the eggs (yes, I definitely massacred them in this photo…), cut them in half and place on top, and you are ready to for dinner!
Wash the turkey, rub with the kosher salt (including in cavity), and place in a large pot. Fill pot with water until the turkey is submerged. Let sit overnight in fridge.
Melt 1 cup of butter in a large pan, add shallots and cook until softened. Tear the baguette into small-ish pieces, and mix in the butter and shallots, then the herbs and salt and pepper to taste.
Take the turkey out of the brine, rinse, and place in roasting pan. Fill with stuffing, close up, place breastside-down in the pan. Melt remaining cup of butter, and brush the entire turkey. Save excess butter to brush during cooking. Pour 1 cup of wine overtop, then place in oven heated to 325ºF/ 165ºC. Every 30 minutes, remove turkey from the oven, apply more butter, and top up wine in the pan, maintaining liquid in the bottom of the pan. At around 2/3 of the cooking time, flip the turkey breast side-up (approximately 2-2 1/2 hours), and continue with the 30 minute butter-basting and wine top-up until the turkey registers 165ºF/74ºC in the breast.
Remove from the oven, set the turkey aside to rest, and pour the juices into a pot and heat on medium-high heat until bubbling. Mix flour with about 1/2 cup water until there are no lumps. Add slowly to the juices, mixing constantly, until desired thickness of gravy is reached. Add salt, pepper or wine as desired. Carve turkey, removing stuffing, and serve with gravy.
This Easter was a pretty special one. This turkey was made remotely, in another city. The reason for this is that I was going to pick up a good friend of mine who had just done a very selfless thing. Connie had just gotten out of hospital as a living liver donor for a coworker of ours who was in need of a new liver. A bit of a long story, but the long and short of it: cancer is an asshole.
While in the city, we were also able to visit with another of our friends and her mom, who is currently undergoing chemotherapy. Say it with me this time: CANCER IS AN ASSHOLE.
And you may be wondering… wait Emily, you said this Easter was special. And it was. I got to spend time with an extremely giving, selfless, and loving friend (Connie) who seems to be well on the mend, visit with our other friend and her mom, who is one of the most lovely, joyful, and kind people I have ever met (she passed these same attributes on to her daughter!), and have a tasty meal with all these amazing women, as well as with some additional family. Not to mention, we spent the day, while the turkey was cooking, hanging out and watching Star Wars. #starwarsnerd
I started naming my turkey when preparing turkey dinners years ago, and I guess it’s become a bit of a tradition for me. This year, the naming responsibility went to our donor, Connie. In honour of our brave and strong donee, and a story that her and her husband had told, we ended up naming the turkey “Mo”. His full name is Morton Turkington, but he prefers to go by by Mo.
Let’s start cooking. Well… preparing. Big side note before we start preparing Mo! Was Mo frozen? Yes. Standard thaw time is about 5 hours/lb in the fridge. For Mo’s case, who was 14 lbs, this means he needed 70 hours, or almost 3 days of thaw time before we would be ready. And in our case, since we are brining the night before, tack on a bit of time. It’s okay if Mo is still a bit chilly. As long as you can “clean” him properly and get him in the pot for brining, he should be okay.
Once thawed, we are going to get Mo prepared the night before his big day. The night before, find nice big stockpot that will be able to handle Mo. All of him. Before we place Mo in the stockpot, give him a clean once he is out of his package. And by clean, I mean that if he has them, remove the giblets and his neck out of where they have stuffed them (up his behind), and give him a rinse, inside and out. (Side note: save them both. You can use the giblets, if you want, for the stuffing, and the neck is great to add to the pot when making stock.) Next, we put him in the pot, and take out the coarse or kosher salt. We will be giving Mo a salt scrub, rubbing the salt into and all over his body, as well as in his cavity. Any extra salt that falls off of Mo can stay in the bottom of the pot. After his vigorous exfoliation, let’s give Mo a nice refreshing bath. Fill his pot with cold water until he is completely submerged. If the pot is a bit too small to do this (mine was), cover whatever pieces of Mo that are poking up above the surface with some aluminum foil, making sure the foil ends are in the water (this will keep all of Mo humidified, and make sure portions of him do not dry out).
Mo has had his body treatment and is ready for an overnight soak
Before moving forward, let’s check the time required for cooking. Like I said, Mo was about 14 pounds, and I was planning on stuffing him. Recommended cooking time was 3.75-4.25 hours (thanks Food Network!). Factor this in to when you plan on eating to make sure Mo is ready for dinner. We were aiming to eat at 6pm, so I got Mo in the oven by 1pm, to allow for resting, carving, and gravy preparation time.
This all means that Mo got pulled out of his bath at about noon and got a quick rinse. We’ll transfer him to the roaster, and he can rest here until we have the stuffing ready.
Start by melting the 1 cup of butter, then add the chopped shallots (and giblets, cut into smaller pieces, if you so desire), all over medium heat, stirring occasionally. As we are waiting for the shallots to soften in the butter, tear the bread into small chunks into a large bowl or container. Once the shallots have softened, pour the butter and shallots over the bread, mixing well. Then sprinkle with your chopped herbs, salt and pepper, and the cognac. Taste testing is clearly required… Y’know… for quality.
Before moving on, preheat the oven to 325ºF. And now that the stuffing is ready, we’re going to get some of that up in Mo. Stuff in as much as Mo’s cavity can handle, leaving a tiny bit of space so we can stitch Mo up without working around the stuffing. Next is time for some stitching. I… clearly made the right choice by not becoming a surgeon.
And yes, I did use red thread. This is something my mom always did. It makes sure you can find the thread easily after the turkey has cooked, so you remove all thread, instead of chancing that someone else find it in their teeth…
Now that Mo is ready to go, flip him breast-side-down before putting him in the oven. By starting the cooking process with Mo flipped down, it will give the light, typically drier, meat a chance to cook in the juices, so Mo is nice and moist (yes, moist) once he is done.
Next, pour about 1 cup of the wine over Mo, and baste him with a whole lotta butter (you don’t need to use all the butter at this time, we will be basting him more than once), and sprinkle him with a bit of S&P. Then, we place him in the oven and get him to cooking. Every 30 minutes, we will be taking him out, re-basting with more butter, and adding wine to make sure there is always liquid in the base of the pan. Here’s Mo after the first 30 minutes. Did I use a foil pan instead of a roaster? Yes I did. I’m super lazy, and it’s way easier to clean.
About 2/3 of the way through cooking, we are going to flip Mo. In this case, that was at about the 2.5 hour mark. Mo looks a little rough here, his skin ripped a bit, and it looked like he had gotten into a fight… and lost. Honestly, when it comes to most turkeys, I have not found a direct correlation between prettiness and deliciousness, so I was not too fussed.
Now is also a good time to start getting the rest of your side dishes ready to go. The side dishes I chose for this meal were mashed potatoes, peas and carrots, and haricots verts with caramelized shallots and candied walnuts (Ohhh! It’s a throwback for this one). We do not need to start cooking yet, but there some peeling and cutting to be done! Peel the potatoes (1kg worth, yellow flesh) and cut into chunks about 1.5”x1.5”. To keep your potatoes from turning brown, place the peeled and cut pieces in a large pot, half-filled with cold water. We will be cooking the potatoes in this same pot and water, but for now, it can rest on the stove, ready for action. We will trim the beans and cook the shallots and nuts to get ready for fast assembly at go-time. Now… for the mashed potatoes we are going to be making, I am inspired by a potato recipe I learned in Paris. The original is Joelle Robuchon’s recipe, which, let’s admit, I bastardized pretty badly here. The main similarity I kept was the ratio of butter:potato, as well as the method of adding the butter. Because… well, for the high ratio, it just makes sense. We’ll take 1 cup (yes, a full cup) of butter out of the fridge (cold butter cuts much easier, you may even want to stick it in the freezer for a couple minutes) and cut it into small pieces, about 1cmx1cm. Put it back into the fridge, and we will have this ready for when we are ready to mash. We will also peel and cut the carrots (3 large-ish) into little medallions and placing them in a smaller pot in the same manner as the potatoes. I just use frozen peas, you could add them now (about 1 cup) in with the carrots, or just before starting to cook.
Juicy little carrot medallions and peas, just waiting to go
Even as do all this other prep, we still need to pay attention to Mo and continue with the 30 minute basting and wine refill through until the end of the cooking. Recommended temperatures for Mo are his thigh reading 180ºF and/or is breast reading 165ºF for him to be ready to come out. As Mo’s temperature nears final, (about 10ºF below doneness), turn on the potatoes and let them cook until when you pierce with a fork, they fall off on their own back into the pot. This timing will likely be pretty close to when Mo is ready to come out of the oven.
Heresy, I know, I cooked them without the skins…
Once out of the oven, Mo will rest to the side. Here’s where things get busy. Drain the potatoes, and keep them in their warm pot. Put the peas and carrots on the stove at medium high heat. Also, heat up the frying pan for the beans, and add the oil, then the beans and salt. Stir the beans regularly. Once the peas and carrots start to simmer, turn them off and let them cook a little further in the hot water. Stir the beans. Add the juices from the turkey roaster (you may want to strain yours) to a pot, and place on the stove at medium high heat, letting them come to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer. Stir the beans. Mix the flour with water and a little bit of the heated juices. Mix this really well, there should be zero lumps. Check the beans, and remove from the heat to a serving dish if they are done. Add the flour mix slowly to the juices, stirring constantly, until the desired thickness of the gravy is reached, then remove from the heat. Drain the peas and carrots, and place in a bowl, top with the butter, allowing it to melt down into the veggies. Take the cut butter out of the fridge, and mash those carefully cut small pieces into the potatoes, adding the grated garlic, and salt and pepper to taste, then transfer to serving dish (did you notice how easy it was to mash all that butter into the potatoes when it was precut??) Sprinkle the beans with the nuts and shallots. Transfer everything to the table, it’s time to eat!
No food mill, just a masher. Yet again… not at all according to Joel Robuchon’s instruction, but at least it wasn’t an electric mixer!!
I luckily had a helper at the end who carved Mo before he made his grand appearance on the table, but if he was prettier, there is always the option of presenting Mo is his full glory and carve at the table. Maybe even get those white fluffy shoes for his feet. Now is the time to kick back, relax, and enjoy the fruits of your labour! And let someone else clean up the kitchen 😉
