Whole fish roasted in salt

Fish cooked in a salt crust was one of our favorite dishes that we ate in Istanbul looking out over the Bosphorus and drinking glass after glass of crisp white wine with some of our closest friends. The presentation was dramatic- a tanned salt mound was wheeled out to the table on a cart where it was lit on fire before being gently cracked open to reveal delicious, tender filets cooked to perfection.

Recreating the dish at home seemed intimidating; I mean, that's a lot of salt. But after doing some research on the process, it seemed totally attainable, pyrotechnics aside.

It is a lot of salt. Once you get over that point, you are well on your way to an incredible dinner.

Whole Fish in a Salt Crust

Ingredients:
1 whole fish ~3 lbs, gutted and cleaned by your fishmonger
(we cooked enough Bronzino for our dinner party crew, well almost enough, but one 3 lb fish should serve 3-4 people)
6-8 cups kosher salt
3-4 egg whites (1 for every 2 cups of salt)
1 lemon
handful of parsley or other herbs of your choosing

Pre-heat your oven to 425° F. Mix the salt and egg whites together to create a wet sand-like mixture. Create a 1/2" layer of the sand mixture on the bottom of a rimmed baking sheet or baking dish large enough to hold the fish. Wash fish and pat dry with paper towels before placing on top of the salt layer.

Stuff cavity of fish with thinly sliced lemon and herbs. You can also tuck some lemon slices underneath the fish.

Mound remaining salt mixture on top of fish, taking care to cover completely. Bake for 25-30 minutes and remove from oven. The salt should be lightly tanned. Allow fish to rest for 10 minutes.

Gently crack salt crust and lift away. Scrape off skin and fillet fish. Serve drizzled with olive oil and with plenty of white wine to drink. View of Bosphorus not included.

Green Sauce

Meet your new summer friend - a sauce so bright and fresh that it begs to be slathered on grilled meats, diluted into a salad dressing or smeared on toasted bread with a slice of fresh tomato. A simple riff on a chimichurri, you won't know what you did without it.

It only takes a few minutes to whirr around in your food processor and can be adapted to fit what you have on hand. Then you can leave it in your fridge for weeks at a time, and it will be there waiting for you to come back and eat it some more.

Green Sauce

A couple cloves of garlic.... start with two
A healthy handful of parsley, with the largest stems removed (but no need to get crazy about this)
A splash of white wine vinegar
A handful of capers (if you like them)
Olive oil

Put the peeled garlic in the food processor and run until finely minced. Add the parsley... it will spin around, chopping some and leaving the rest stuck to the lid, use a spatula scrape it down and process some more.

Splash in your vinegar and your handful of capers, process some more (scraping when needed). You should have a pretty sparse looking processor bowl of chopped stuff. Now you could go crazy and add some sun dried tomatoes (the oil-packed ones in a jar please) or some roasted red peppers or olives or a little fresh basil... you can do whatever you want!

Now, my food processor has a little hole in the lid where you can pour liquids in while the machine is running, maybe yours has some kind of top hatch too?

I start the processor and very slowly drizzle in the olive oil. Eventually everything will come together all at once. You will notice that what was a bunch of wet chopped ingredients suddenly becomes a homogenous mixture moving around the processor. Open the lid and check, taste, and adjust.

The flavor should be bright and sharp; the raw garlic pretty powerful. It will taste great on those steaks coming off the grill or brushed on those shrimp kebabs.

Sopa de Sunday

It is the season for soup - and we have been eating buckets of it. Literally. It is hard to find something else that satisfies the chilly temps with the same warmth and bright fresh flavor. The fact that it can either come together in a snap or simmer for hours makes it incredibly flexible and easy to pull together in a pinch. Also most everything tastes good in soup. Ok that's a lie, but within reason, you can throw in what you have and end up with something pretty tasty - like that book you may have read as a kid; Stone Soup. 

I'm not much of a recipe follower - which makes me not so successful of a baker, but luckily soup is an improv meal. As such, I was hoping to provide instructions for this stockpot of deliciousness in a different form than normal. Less of a specific list, more of a rough formula for something tasty and easily adapted to what you love.  We love Mexican, so the below formula tilts that way. 

Sopa de Sunday

What makes good soup? 

• Broth - low sodium is your best bet, we went with chicken, but you could easily do veg
• Aromatics - these are your onions and garlic - how much to use? Half an onion and a couple cloves is a good place to start
• Protein - shredded chicken in this pot which could easily be omitted or replaced with beans or maybe shrimp? We pulled the meat of a rotisserie chicken, but if you wanted to be fancier you could cook up your own chicken breasts, maybe in some spices to compliment your soup. 
• Vegetables - What do you have on hand? Carrots, celery, mushrooms, asparagus, green beans all went in this soup. Stuff in cans too, corn and hominy made our soup a little more Mexican.
• Canned tomatoes - We went with Rotel for the green chile kick.
• Citrus - To add a bright note - a little lime juice.
• Spices - We went without, but a bay leaf, chili powder or oregano might work nicely.
• Toppings - Fresh jalapenos, shredded cheese, avocado and sour cream round out the bowl. 

So as you can see, you could easily change directions. This could be a more Italian wedding style soup just throw in some pasta, or a traditional chicken noodle, if you have lemongrass and ginger on hand, something a little more Asian approaching Pho. This is the soup for turning what you have on hand into what you want to eat. 

How do you cook it? 

Decide what you're doing with the protein - do you need to cook it? Shred it? Get it ready and set it aside. 

In the bottom of your soup pot - start with some olive oil or butter and sauté the onion until translucent. Add in the garlic. Now start adding your veggies with the hardest ones (slowest to cook) first. That means carrots in first along with some celery. Potatoes as well (if you feel like using those). Move on to some softer veg after a few minutes - bell peppers, green beans, asparagus and zucchini. Save the softest for last with just a quick saute for mushrooms and light wilting for greens like spinach. Add the broth, maybe add some water with it and season away. Using a bay leaf? Stick it in. 

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BUT HOW MUCH VEGGIE?

Think about how much you are making. How many people are eating it? For the two of us I wanted a lot of veggies, but not a lot of any one kind. Think one stalk of celery, two-three carrots, a few handfuls of green beans, a pepper, a zucchini or two. Don't go crazy, but don't hold back. You want it chock full of goodness and the leftovers are even better. 

****

Bring this all to a boil. Taste, adjust. Add your protein in along with the canned goods - corn, tomatoes and hominy (One can of each, but two of Rotel)

Return to a boil. Taste again. Adjust. Put the lid on and let it simmer a while. Unless you're starving.

Keep tasting, keep seasoning. Right before you're ready to eat - stir in the citrus - just a 1/4 cup or so (if you want to). Ladle up big bowl-fulls and top with what sounds good. 

I hope you'll try this and remember that it's soup, not science. Forgiving, flexible and totally delicious. 

we made a movie

Cookies from Abbey Watson on Vimeo.

Yep - it's our first attempt on our new Canon - of course D's been making movies for work and school for ages, but this was a fun little late night project that also yielded delicious delicious snacks. We still have a lot to learn! If you're looking for the recipe in print, look no further. 

Please pass along if you like this little project, and let me know if you'd like to see more.

Clinging to Christmas

Happy New Year and welcome to 2012! I am, as the title indicates, still clinging on to Christmas, despite hauling out the tree and packing away all of the decorations yesterday.

It was a simply perfect holiday down on the North Carolina coast and up here in DC with plenty of parties and happy time spent with family and friends. It is my favorite time of the year and I've been down in the dumps all weekend thinking that I have to wait another 11 months for Santa mugs filled with spiced (and spiked) cider.

One thing I really should wait 11 months before indulging in again was one of our favorite dessert discoveries of this season. I've included the recipe below with the warning that this is dangerously easy and totally decadent. Create with caution...

Saltine Toffee

1 sleeve saltine crackers

2 sticks butter (I like salted)

1 cup brown sugar (dark)

12 oz. high quality semi-sweet chocolate chips

Pre-heat the oven to 400° F. Line an 11 x 17 pan with foil. I find it's best to use only one sheet to cover the bottom if possible - sides do not need to be covered all the way up. Lay out your saltines in the pan with their sides touching - fit in as many as possible. Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan over high heat. Add brown sugar and stir until dissolved. Once mixture starts to boil, stop stirring and start the timer for 3 minutes. It will look dramatic, you will be afraid that it may burn - but be brave, keep the heat on high, because the darker the caramel, the more delicious. 

Once the timer goes off, immediately remove the caramel from the heat and stir a few times. Pour over prepared saltines and use spoon to spread the caramel so all crackers are covered. Pop into the oven for seven minutes. 

Meanwhile, place chips in a microwave safe bowl and heat for one minute at at time, stirring in between microwave blasts until chocolate is nice and melted. 

Remove saltines from the oven and pour chocolate over the top smoothing with a spatula until a thick layer of chocolate covers all of the crackers. 

Refrigerate for one hour- or until everything is nicely set up. Break into chunks. Devour.