Surf and Future Turf

Moqueca (moe-keck-kah)

Wow! This dish is an amazingly taste-filled way to prepare fish!  It's called a soup, but not by me. "Soup-y" maybe, but there's not nearly enough liquid to be a soup. Whatever you want to call it, it's downright delicious! Moqueca is a Brazilian dish, and not particularly spicy. Just a few red-pepper flakes from one of those packets you get with take-away pizza.  

 

I made this for two instead of six or eight diners, which was a sort of a pain. Sometimes it's hard to divide down a recipe. So, you do the best you can. I used half a pound of nice cod for the fish, but used more like half the onion and peppers rather than one-fourth of the recipe below. I used half a can, not a quarter, of the coconut milk. I also skipped the cilantro, as Sally doesn't like it, and I'm not that fond of the taste. Still, the result was very tasty, and nearly equal to moqueca that we've had at a couple of Brazilian restaurants around town. In retrospect, little cilantro would have been a nice touch.

1-1/2 to 2 lbs of fillets of firm white fish

3 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 Cup lime or lemon juice (three limes or two lemons juiced)

1 Cup Onion, sliced

1 bunch Green Onions with greens, chopped

1 Yellow and 1 Red Bell Pepper, seeded and sliced

2 Cups chopped Tomatoes (fresh rather than canned)

1 Tbsp Paprika (Hungarian sweet or smoky)

Pinch or more Red Pepper Flakes, to taste

1/2 Cup or more chopped Cilantro, to taste

1 14-ounce can Coconut Milk

Salt & fresh ground Black Pepper

Olive oil

Place the fish in a flat, fairly tight fitting pan or baking dish, add the minced garlic and lime juice so that the pieces are well coated. Sprinkle generously all over with salt and pepper. Keep chilled while preparing the rest of the soup.

In a large covered pan (I used my electric skillet) with 2 Tbsp of olive oil, saute the chopped onion, bell pepper, paprika, and red pepper flakes. Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. Cook until the bell peppers begin to soften. Stir in the chopped tomatoes and onion greens. Bring to a simmer and cook 5 minutes, uncovered. Stir in the chopped cilantro, to taste.

With a large spoon, remove about half of the vegetables (you'll put them right back). Spread the remaining vegetables over the bottom of the pan to create a bed for the fish. Arrange the fish pieces on the vegetables. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Now add back the previously removed vegetables, covering the fish. Pour the coconut milk over the fish and vegetables.

Bring to a simmer, reduce the heat, cover, and let simmer for 15 minutes. Taste and adjust seasonings. You may need to add more salt, lime or lemon juice, paprika, pepper, or chili flakes to get the soup to the desired seasoning for your taste.

Garnish with additional cilantro. I served it with white rice. 

 

Then on Sunday evening, I combined the leftover 'soup' with the leftover rice and added some beautiful 16-20 shrimp that I barbecued with a bit of butter and some Pride of Szegedtm Hungarian Fish Rub spice blend, to make a great second meal.

Chicken with Eggplant, Onion and Ginger

This is my take on a Mark Bittman recipe from the New York Times.  Mark has shallots, I didn't.  I had a couple pieces of cooked chicken breast and needed to make something "light with vegetables" for Sally's dinner one night last week.  I had an eggplant that needed to be used up, an onion and some powdered ginger.

Peel the eggplant and cut into 1" cubes. Peel the onion and cut into long slices.  Saute the two vegetables with a splash of oil, and get those onions sweet and caramelized.  When they're nearly done, add about a two teaspoons of ground ginger.  Add a bit of water, if necessary and saute to a thick consistency.

Ladle the vegetable 'goulash' onto plates, and add half a chicken breast and, in the foreground, the remnants of the Cauliflower Parmesan from last week, as a third veg.  Pretty darn tasty for leftovers.

Jones Creek Beeftm

From a food blogger site, I heard that Jones Creek Beef, out of Springville, UT was looking for some bloggers to help them promote their grass-fed, humanely raised beef, which just happens to be marketed through Walmart and its organic foods program. This is not stringy old range cow, folks. This is some fine, top-of-the-line beef!

After providing Jones Creek with my bona fides as an experienced food blogger and writer, I was given several categories of beef to choose from, and I elected to work with Chuck and/or Rump Roasts.

Jones Creek is sending me a Walmart Gift Card to buy five 2-pound roasts, take them for a test-cook, and present you my readers, and the Jones Creek Beef Company, with the delicious fruits of my labors. The five recipes I've chosen to develop present a wide range of "cultural flavors" which suitably enhance, without overpowering the delicate flavor of top quality grass-fed beef.

Over the next several weeks, I'll be preparing some of the recipes at Sally's. Others will be prepared and shared with my "dock mates" at the City of Fort Myers Yacht Basin, where I hang out in my sailboat ManCave when I'm not at Sally's. The recipes will be named in the appropriate week's blog title along with the usual assortment of other recipes, tips, and techniques.

Here are the five recipes, in no particular order, that I'll be sharing with you:

Cuban Ropa Vieja

Bajan Pepperpot Beef

Rump Roast Wellington

Mexican Shredded Beef

Mississippi Roast

Some of these you may have seen in earlier blog posts, but the new recipes will put those old posts out to pasture as I work my "culinary magic" on these Jones Creek roasts!