Lent. It's a time for reflection. A time for humility. And definitely a time for fish.
For most American Christians, Lent began Wednesday (for the Eastern Orthodox churches, it began Monday). That means believers will spend the next seven Fridays avoiding meat.
A large number of people during Lent turn instead to fish (though the Orthodox churches avoid fish with backbones, as well).
For this Lenten season, I made four appropriate dishes, two with fish and two with shellfish. Each one was so delicious that I'm afraid they may not be entirely in the spirit of somber reflection and self-sacrifice.
But that's OK. They're great to eat when it is not Lent, too.
I started with the most typical of all Lenten meals, at least in this town: fried fish. I humbly suggest it was better than anything you could get at a church, but that is probably because I made a relatively small batch, instead of the churches' assembly-line cooking, and I used a slightly more expensive ingredient than they use.
The ingredient I used was panko bread crumbs for the breading. I had planned to use the traditional cornmeal, but I discovered as I started to cook that I had run out of the traditional cornmeal. So, panko _ which I did have _ it was.
And I'm glad it worked out just as I totally intentionally meant it to, because panko makes everything fried taste better. It gives it an extra crispy snap that is simply delightful.
Next up was a dish I hadn't made in some time but has long been a favorite: Shrimp with Soy, Garlic, Ginger and Lemon. When I first met the friends of the woman who was to become my wife, this is the dish I made. One plateful, and they decided to like me.
With the ingredients listed in the name (shrimp, soy, garlic, ginger and lemon), it is not surprising that it has a certain Chinese flair. It is even stir-fried, though I have also had considerable success modifying the recipe slightly and cooking it on the grill.
Unlike simpler stir-fries, it requires a three-part procedure to cook. First, you make a marinade with all of the ingredients in the title, and more _ sherry, for one. After you marinate the shrimp for an hour, you strain out the marinade and thicken it with a slurry of cornstarch and water to make an amazingly flavorful sauce.
Then comes the stir-frying of the shrimp, with more garlic and ginger, plus red bell pepper. Your house will smell as great as your dinner will taste.
My third dish was another old favorite and a traditional way to prepare fish: en papillote. The phrase means "in paper" or "in parchment," and it refers to a way of wrapping fish or occasionally chicken in a sealed parchment packet along with vegetables and a splash of liquid, often wine.
You bake the packets in the oven, and the fish gently cooks in the steam that is created inside the packet.
This particular version begins with salmon, which is placed on top of a bed of sauteed carrots and mushrooms. Dill is placed on top of that _ a natural with salmon _ and plenty of shallots to provide a mild, earthy onion flavor. The fish was cooked to perfection, and the whole dish from presentation (everyone oohs and ahs when you cut open the packet) to taste was stunning.
My final dish came from a cookbook by Legal Seafood, the popular East Coast chain of seafood restaurants. The book says that the recipe is one of the restaurants' most popular pasta dishes, which makes sense when you consider the main ingredients: scallops, heavy cream and mushrooms.
Imagine seared scallops served in an exquisite cream of mushroom soup sauce. Now imagine that the sauce gets its low notes from garlic and scallions, and its high from white wine, and it's all piled atop bowtie pasta.
Yeah. It's that good.
