Wednesday, August 18, 2010

halibut success

In my last post I said my husband doesn't get too excited about food. Either I was wrong, or I'm becoming a much better cook. Two nights ago I decided to make some fish, which we never do here just because we never do. Inertia. I bought some halibut at the supermarket, chosen because in Spanish apparently it's called "halibut", so it made sense to me. And then I decided to make a whole meal out of it. Started off with Turkish green beans, and I'm not going to tell you how to make them because my guess is you all know. The whole meal really was so simple, but it was so damn tasty I couldn't resist posting it.

Usually when I wear my glasses to cut onions, I cry a little, but with my contacts in it's like I have built-in eyeball shields, so I never even shed one tear. Grated onions though? I thought I was going to die. Literally, I thought someone had bombed the apartment with tear gas. My eyes, my nose, my throat, my lungs... is that normal? Does that happen to you?


Onions, green beans, diced tomatoes all tossed in a pot with olive oil, salt, white pepper, red turkish pepper, and, cause I felt like it, a dash of lemon juice.


Also made a pot of brown rice, and then, just like I saw on the Whole Foods website, rinsed my fish in cold water, patted it dry, sprinkled it with salt and black pepper, and tossed in in the pan. Just like that. I knew it was done when it started falling apart literally before my eyes. Is there another way to test if your fish is done other than seeing if it disintegrates? Honestly though, I think my method worked pretty well, because it was pretty damn amazing.


And my husband loved it. Loved it, with a capital L.

4 comments:

  1. You can add a little bit sugar to the beans instead of lemon juice. It will taste very good.

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  2. Your green beans look perfect. The beans themselves look like the ones we get in Turkey, and cannot get in US. Ugh.

    Re onions, yup, grating it makes all the juices run out, which is pretty obvious in your picture. You're basically releasing all onionness into the air. Which is also why it's never done in French cooking, I think. Frankly, I don't grate anymore. I chop. Or slice. For some reason, chopping is not a much-used technique in Turkey.

    The halibut looks fantastic. With good, fresh fish, the less you screw around with it, the better in general. Btw, don't expect all fish to flake. They don't.

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  3. Dusbahcesi is right, a little bit of sugar is the tradition. Make sure you don't lose control, though, like my mom did many years ago for some Swiss guests, and they complimented her profusely on the ingenious dessert.

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  4. yeah, I sort of knew about the sugar, but I try to avoid it. Unless it's in chocolate. If the beans had turned out a little funny I think I would have tossed some in, but they really turned out fine without it. Thanks for the tip though! Oh and the dessert story is hilarious!

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