Surf and Turf Dinner

Usually Surf and Turf means seafood and steak. We had seafood and chicken instead, it was so good I just had to share. On the menu: Honey-glazed Salmon, Asparagus and Tomka (Coconut Chicken soup).

A little citrus was used in all of the dishes so they complemented each other very well.

Honey-glazed Salmon (by Bob Martin)
Salmon Fillets
Sea Salt
1 stick of Butter
3 tsp Honey
Lemon

Pat a little sea salt on the fillets and grill until done to your liking. While the Salmon is cooking melt the butter add the honey and simmer to make the glaze. Squeeze some lemon into the glaze and top the cooked fish. Finish the top with lemon slices.

Asparagus
Slender fresh Asparagus
Olive Oil
Lemon Pepper

Trim the tough part of the stalk from the asparagus and place into a roasting pan. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle lemon pepper all over. Toss to cover well, then roast the vegetables in a 400 degree oven until tender, about 25 min (watch carefully, do not burn!)

Tom Kha (Coconut Chicken Soup)
2 pounds chicken, cut into bite size pieces
2 Tbs coconut oil (you can use butter)
6 Green Onions, slice thinly (trim roots from bottoms and use entire stalk)

1 Tbs. Turmeric

2 Tbs. Ginger, Fresh Grated
1 cup water
1 tsp. Sea Salt
2 - 14oz cans coconut milk
1 cup Snow Peas, cut in half
1 cup Carrots, sliced thinly
1 cup Mushrooms, sliced
4 Tbs. Fish Sauce
1 tsp. Cayenne Pepper (add more if you like it spicy!)
1/4 Lime Juice, fresh squeezed

Saute the chicken in the coconut oil until no longer pink, add the green onion and saute 2 minutes longer. Add turmeric, ginger and salt. Stir well, make sure all the chicken is coated with the spices.   Add water and bring to a boil. Add the coconut milk, just before it returns to a full boil lower the heat and simmer until the chicken is tender (about 30 min). Turn heat up to medium and add vegetables, fish sauce and cayenne pepper, cook (do not boil) until veggies are tender (about 10 min) then add the lime juice.

This dinner served 6 with leftovers. Enjoy, but be careful you just might stuff yourself.

Coconut and Almond Crusted Fish

You know that eating fish is good for you,
but are you eating it on a regular basis? You should be at least 2 six ounce servings per week. Fish is brain food, rich in Omega 3. Some fish are higher in Omega 3 than others, but all fish are part of a healthy diet. Coconut and Almond Crusted Fish is a delicious way to enjoy fish and easy to prepare (it is also low-carb with 6 net carbs per serving).

32 ounces of fish (eight fillets) I used frozen Barramundi from BJ's
1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 Tbsp of Dijon Mustard
2 Tbsp of Lemon or Lime Juice 
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp of cayenne pepper
2 cups of ground almonds (or use almond flour)
2 cup or un-sweetened flake coconut  (you can make your own, you will have milk as well, you want to use the strained solids).

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Defrost fish if necessary. Mix mayo, mustard, juice, 1 tsp salt and cayenne pepper. In a separate bowl mix coconut and almonds. Coat fish fillets in mayo/mustard mixture and then coat the fish with almond/coconut mixture. Bake for 15 minutes.

Here are some neat NC Fish websites:

http://marinersmenu.org/
http://www.fishwatch.gov/

Feasts of Faith - Fish Recipe

Feasts of Faith is a series of cooking videos posted on You Tube. An Italian Chef goes to the Holy Land to walk where Jesus walked and to prepare the foods that would have been prepared during that time. I have really enjoyed the videos and have enjoyed preparing the foods demonstrated. If you would like to see the videos you can get to them from this link FEASTS OF FAITH VIDEOS.

The fish recipe demonstrated in the video is wonderful and simple to prepare (even though I cooked it too long, it was still pretty tasty). For me, getting the fish was no simple affair. It started with my son and I watching the videos and deciding we wanted to prepare one of the meals. He had come home from school to help take care of me on the weekend as I was recovering from surgery. While we were out we decided to visit an Asian market we kept passing on the highway on a regular basis always saying we were going to stop and take a look, finally we took a look.

The market was different than I was used to, I was completely out of my comfort zone. There was food I did not recognize labeled in a language I could not read. We took a look at the housewares, the vegetable section and worked our way to the back where the fish market was located. I was impressed with the variety of fish being sold there. That is when my son said we should make the fish recipe. OK, which fish are we going to use? We needed a whole fish and there were many to choose from but none of the fish on ice had labels, at least not in English. We both stood there obviously lost. As we looked around I noticed that the live fish tank was labeled, sea bass. Well we could use sea bass so I pointed them out to my son and he said yeah, that will work.

I told him to ask for the fish, he said he didn't know how. I replied that I didn't know how, so we stood there a little while longer. Finally I told him that if he wanted to make this recipe he had better go get the fish. He wanted to know how many? I didn't know! I told him to get three. He asked the gentleman behind the counter for three sea bass. The man reached for his net and stuck it in the tank, it reminded me of Finding Nemo, when the huge school of fish were screaming "run away, run away". He finally got hold of a fish, pulled it out of the tank and whack, slammed it on the floor and put it on the scale. Well that was new. He got out two more fish in the same manner and put those on the scale as well. The fish were still moving a little, I then noticed that the big box of crabs I was standing in front of had a lot of moving critters in it, this was certainly an interesting place. I whispered to my son that if that man puts those fish in a bag and hands them to us, he was going to have the pleasure of eviscerating and scaling them when we got home, he said "no problem". Well after weighing the fish, we were asked if we wanted them cleaned? Yes!
After acquiring the fish we headed to the vegetable section to choose herbs to stuff the fish with. We settled on watercress, chives and parsley. Next, we went to BJ's to purchase olive oil. We needed regular olive oil not extra-virgin, we were going to fry the fish in the same manner demonstrated in the video.  Once we got home we had to remove the fish heads, my frying pan was too small for the entire fish to fit into. We also added slices of lemon along with the herbs we were stuffing the fish with. Next time I will use smaller fish, these fish were large and we needed bamboo skewers to hold the herbs in before frying.

The fish were delicious, I will warn you though, Sea Bass are really bony fish. The bones were easy to remove however. This is a recipe that I will definitely try again.

Ingredients:
Whole fish (gutted and scaled)
Fresh Herbs (we used parsley, watercress and chives) I would have used fresh dill but could not find any.
Fresh Lemon slices
Olive Oil (do not use Extra-Virgin, it is too delicate to fry with)
Skewers or kitchen twine if your fish will not stay closed and the filling is falling out.
Sea Salt
Fresh Pepper

Directions:
Rinse and pat dry the fish. Rinse your herbs and mix them together, make enough bunches for the number of fish you have. Stuff the herbs in the fish and place in lemon slices. If the herbs are falling out of the fish, secure with skewers or kitchen twine. Salt and pepper the fish and fry until done.

Sourdough Spelt

Ah, the things you do for your children. First he has me make my own starter. No yeast, no borrowed starter, no nothing, just some flour, a little pomegranate juice (he claimed it was better than pineapple juice and more reliable than just water) placed in a jar with a muslin cover and time. Well it started, lol (it's a shame when you crack yourself up). Next I'm feeding this stuff on a regular basis because it is well - alive, and you have to feed live stuff on a regular basis. And now I'm making this:

I have no plans on going on a bread-eating spree, for one I haven’t finished losing weight yet (48 pounds down, about 35 to go) and secondly, while this stuff is a lot better for you than regular bread (more digestible, lower glycemic index) I am still wary of grains and think you really should limit the place that they have in your diet.

But for an occasional sandwich this is the way to go, it tastes fabulous. 

Now I have posted about grains previously and you can go here to find out why I used a sourdough starter and why that improves the digestibility. You can go here to learn all about bread making (this guy is really good). Beware! there are just too many neat things to purchase at his site.

RECIPE – Sourdough Spelt Bread

¼ cup sourdough starter

1 ½  – 2 cups of water

1 TBSP unsulfured molasses

1 ½ tsp sea salt

5 cups of spelt flour (I plan on trying Kamut next)

Bring sourdough starter to room temp if you have been storing your starter in the refrigerator. Add 1 ½ cups of water and molasses and stir well. Mix flour and salt together and add to the starter mixture, if its too dry add the rest of the water, mix until completely blended, you do not have to knead. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest for 15 min. Take dough out of the bowl and stretch it once over itself gently (you will need to flour your hands, the dough is sticky) and place back in bowl and recover. Repeat this step 2 more times at 15 min intervals. Leave the covered bowl overnight to let rise. 

Line a cast iron enameled pot that has a lid with a sheet of parchment paper that you have oiled thoroughly. I know that the parchment paper box says that it is non-stick,

but if you ever want to get the paper off of your loaf of bread you had better oil it, I used olive oil. Place the dough into the pot and cover, allow the dough to rest for 30 minutes. Remove the dough in the parchment liner and place it in a bowl about the same size and depth.  Raise your oven rack to the upper 3^rd position and place the pot and lid into the oven and heat the oven to 450 degrees for 30 minutes. Using oven gloves, place the liner and dough (as one unit) back into the pot and carefully put the lid on, bake for 1 hour then remove the lid with the oven gloves (be careful!) and leave the bread for 10 more minutes so the top can brown. Test temp of the bread (it should be between 190 and 205 degrees.  Remove liner and bread from the pot and let cool for 1 hour before slicing.