Day 34 - Conquering Fear of Fish

Fish in Breadcrumbs (pg. 124)

Beet Greens with Gorgonzola

Leftover Marinated Beets

Olives

I LOVE fish! If someone else is cooking it. Like meat, I thought you had to make a pact with the devil to know how to cook fish. Well, one of the points of this project is to overcome all my food and cooking fears. Fish. Yes. I must confront fish.

For my first fish encounter I decided on (frozen) "pacific red snapper" (there is no such thing really) from Trader Joe's. I know, I know. Frozen. But fish is expensive. In case I had blown it, I didn't want to be putting $20.00 worth of fresh fish down the disposal. I pan-fried this stuff (rock fish? cod?) since I've had success with pan frying meat up until now (pork, beef and venison). Yeah, baby! It was pretty good. Just a tiny bit overcooked, perhaps, but better that than undercooked. Alice has you dredge the fillets in flour, then in egg, and finally in fine bread crumbs. Her secret then, is to chill them (they can't touch) in the frig for an hour for the crumbs to "dry." Well, whatever, you do end up with a perfect coating. I fried in canola oil and butter.

The beet greens? Just because I'm swimming in a sea of them. Unfortunately, I hadn't washed them off as well as I thought I had and they were somewhat gritty. Fortunately, I got most of the gritty part. Randy loved 'em. Alice isn't thrilled about beet stems, but I've found that you can use all the parts of the beet successfully. I learned this while we subscribed to a CSA in our former community.

Otherwise, I spent the day running various errands. I have just a few items to get out of the storage locker and then everything we own (except our old house) will be here in/at the new house. Yeah!!! A good, productive day. And it was a gorgeous day here, too.

23 recipes completed; 282 recipes to explore